The Sukhoi T-4 was the first aircraft with a FBW in the world

Same as above: Sukhoi T-4 was test aircraft, technology demonstrator to put it positively, failed result of a failed requirement if you put it badly. FBW was used in aircraft since the mid 1950s for tests. Most American fighter manufacturers had according test beds, as did Russian design offices possible had, too.

If I were on charge in Pentagon, after such incident I would immediately order a small ‘correction’ in AWACS data and ‘confirmed’ the lost F-15 as shot down by SAM. US tech fans would have their joy, US pilots would feel safe, combat morale would stay on desirable level.. Where is the problem?

You should not underestimate that groups use the failure of designs in actual combat (which was obvious in Vietnam for example) to argue for even costlier programs.

I am sorry that you are offended by deaths caused by military aircraft. This might not be the place for you. It is a sad fact that people die in war and that the machines that were built and used were built and used for the sole purpose of killing. If these aircraft did not kill, they would have no place in the wars that they have fought in.
your figures of 350,000 (214,000 from Nagasaki and Hiroshima) out of 3900 aircraft only make it at just under 90 kills per aircraft built.

I am not offended. I am just more cautious in celebrating aircraft designs, which have no particular technical achievement included (like the C-130) and got the “Body Count Award” just by effective weapons and total lack of resistance. Mount the first atomic bomb on an Opel Blitz truck and have the deadliest truck ever. Hey, that would make the Opel Blitz one of the most advanced trucks ever.

Would you count the B767 one of your favorites as it achieved the deadliest attack ever conducted by civil aircraft?

And still nobody discussed the A310 bomber. 🙁

If theres no need to go into combat, there are other, bigger platforms that offer more range.
I wonder if those containers can be jettisoned. Most likely not, because the idea will be dropped.

What do you think of, the B-1B? I think the F-15 is able to carry the missiles beyond Mach 1 at altitude.

In testing they did drop a pod from 60,000 feet at Mach 2. Just because it was in testing doesn’t mean it couldn’t have done it in service. The “only touch” Mach 2 is a little misleading I’d think as it was limited by the materials. It also managed to haul an 11,000lb payload to 85,000 feet in a zoom climb so it definitely wasn’t a “can hit Mach 2 in a dive, with a tail wind, and empty” kind of aircraft.

“One of the records was achieved on May 10, 1961, by 59-2451 of the 43rd BW, crewed by Maj. Elmer Murphy, Maj. Eugene Moses, and Lt. David Dickerson. After departing Edwards AFB, they flew a 669.4 mile (1,073 kilometer) closed course at an average speed of 1,302.07 mph for more than 30 minutes (the actual record setting time for the circuit was 30 minutes 43 seconds), thus winning outright the prestigious Bleriot Trophy.

Some two weeks later on May 26, 59-2451, nicknamed The Firefly of the 43rd BW, enroute to the 1961 Paris Airshow with Maj. William Payne, Capt. William Polhelmus, and Capt. Raymond Wagener as crew, set a New York-to-Paris speed record, covering the 3,626.46 statute miles in 3 hours 19 minutes and 58 seconds (average speed was approximately 1,089.36 mph). The crew was awarded the prestigious Mackay and Harmon Trophies for this flight. Sadly, the return flight crew, consisting of Maj. Elmer Murphy, Maj. Eugene Moses, and Lt. David Dickerson, the same crew that had won the Bleriot Trophy some two weeks earlier, crashed in 59-2451 on June 3, following departure from Le Bourget.”

You list records of the B-58 during testing but at the same time say that the Soviets couldn’t do this or that? Please stay consistent, otherwise you trigger another lengthy reply telling you that the Syrians did somehow win in 1982.

In the manual of the B-58 all charts end at M2 sharply, what does that imply? How do you think the peacetime rating of a G79 would be? Even in wartime overspeeding would be to dangerous. Most turbojets can be carried to higher thrust levels, but the danger of engine failure drastically increases. With test engineers in the telemetry you can risk that.

Nobody tells you in a shiny book how many records attempts were cancelled because they got a funny reading. The Russians don’t tell you either how many MiGs had to crash before the big record was attempted. Reading Russian test pilot’s statements from that era is pretty sobering, and I guess in USA it was only slightly better.

Many internet sources and many book sources are just crap when it comes to performance figures. You should know that by now. And if you still believe in them, you have to take all Russians accounts serious, too.

In that case there was NO bomber in Russia designed to cruise prolonged times at Mach 2 with a payload. The B-58 would have been the only bomber anywhere that could do that.

I used the term “outside Russia” to prevent the unavoidable answer by Garry or anybody else. And I didn’t want to spent 10 minutes going through performance data of Russian bombers. I think the Russians refrained from the development of such an aircraft due to the extreme costs. And “bomber lobby” in Russia was never as powerful as in USA (where people still believed firmly that B-17 really won the war).

Mach 2 sounds like a big thing, but actually it is only 10% faster than Mach 1.8. Problems start to mount beyond M1.5 with airframe heating, inlet geometry and increasingly different optimums for subsonic (98% time) and supersonic flight. The cost per additional speed gets so high and an airframe able of cruising beyond M2 is hardly useful for anything else.

(Still blows my mind that an aircraft with about the same power as an F-15E could cruise at Mach 2 and 60,000 feet with that massive two-component pod.)

I can’t do that simply. With the pod only in tests, but the Hustler could generally only touch the M2 mark, and that definetly not with a pod. However, it can be credited with the first aircraft able to cruise beyond M1. The corresponding headache for engineers, operators and pilots made it famous.

Except that if you only have one engine then it has to be roughly twice as powerful as the engine you use in the aircraft that has two engines. Very early aircraft had two engines for safety because engines weren’t very reliable or powerful. But these days you have to make a choice. One supercharged V8 putting out 300 HP, or two 2ltr engines putting out 150 HP each, though if you compare Mig-29 and F-16 you will see that the two Mig engines generate more thrust than the single F-16 engine. The real question of fuel economy is not how many engines you have but your fuel burn rate of each engine. If you need to exceed mach 2 then you might have no choice but to put in two engines, with the extra weight of all the extra fuel lines and the extra engine and mountings etc etc. If you reduce the speed requirement you can probably get away with one engine, or in the case of the Mig-21 you can have mach 2 performance with a 1.5 ton max payload and short range.
The twin engine design also generally has a larger frontal area, but the extra thrust compensates. Very simply you spend a lot of time at cruise speed, so while the cruise thrust setting for the V8 might be 150hp, for the twin engine it will only probably be slightly higher with each engine probably running at 80hp each. A bit more HP in total but nothing like twice the fuel consumption unless the V8 is very efficient AND the two 2ltr engines are very inefficient.
It is easier to make a 2ltr engine fuel efficient than it is to make a big powerful engine fuel efficient.

The F-16A and MiG-29A are useful to compare the ups and downs of single engine versus twin engine. Both have generally similar flight performance (the MiG reaches higher speeds, is supposed to have slightly better turn rates, the F-16 wins in turn above M1, but from distance they are both similar). The MiG-29 weights 2 to 3 tons more. While the design approach was different: the F-16 started with even lower weight and was upscaled a bit to fit the increased requirements by the customer (multi-role). The MiG-29 came from the upper end.