Personally I don’t know why they didn’t go with the Convair 200. The lift jets had already been built and run. Seems to me it would have been the less risky of the two. One of my favorite might-have-beens.

You’ll see with the F-35B, which is far away from being operational, that jump jets are a BIG pain in the a**. When you require them to start vertically and perform a mission, you virtually castrate the aircraft.
Pretty much all VTOL projects were either given up before anything close to perational aircraft came out or ended as failure (Yak-38). The only exception is the Harrier, which was very limited in performance in the beginning.

Even the F-35B will retain heavy scars from its STOVL requirement, and I guess it will be the least successful variant. Today’s exact specifications are yet to be released, but I think it will be less shiny than expected.

I guess it is relevant to the topic…

Yes, it is, but also at speeds below M1.3 inlet efficiency is an issue, other than one might suppose from the pitot intake pressure recovery.

Am not to sure about this one, i.e F119 vs F135 sort of optimisation and we all forgot to mention ceiling i mean tropopause and I think YOU can elaborate there……

Uninstalled normally means that some random correction factors apply.
Most thrust data is uninstalled, I have a few tables on installed engine (for example MiG-23 and MiG-29), and the characteritsics are not that different high up in reheat. A more detailed analysis would be needed to check the xact ratio between thrust at – let’s say Mach 1.5@45000ft – and dry/wet thrust at 0-0.

“Lack of” is relative, TWR is just marginaly lower than the German F-4s which are lighter than most…

The RB199 is REALLY a slouch at altitude.

I cannot exactly judge but if you make a visual comparison of the intake areas, and check the reference thrust, I mean the Tornado has twice the reference thrust of a Mirage 2000, but the inlets don’t seem to double the size.
Turbo-fan (and RB.199 has bypass ratio of 1) needs lots of air.
Thrust = mass * speed
Turbo-fan means more mass but less speed.

Isn’t Mass flow related to TET?

TET (Turbine Entry Temperature) is a hard limit, you cannot go beyond that.
The air that enters the combustion chamber is spilled with fuel and – guess what – combusted. Now, quite logical, more air means more potential to burn fuel. If not enough air enters the combustion chamber less fuel can be burned, otherwise the temperature would get too hot.
I am truly not smart on engines (and actually, have no idea about aerodynamics, either), what I write is basically digested basics. Normally engines are limited by various parameters (RPM, TET).
Would be interesting to know if the RB.199 is TET limited at altitude. Since arrival of FADEC I guess no one knows any more.

True but the F-3 was considerably redesigned this i believe did involve the inlets not as for design but optimisation of…

I guess enlarging the intake would have been a bit too much. Additionally, the Tornado F-3 performs magnificent in its role.
Too much “fighter” in an aircraft makes it a bad subsonic cruiser, I guess you know that after having spent some time in the Mirage.

This IS what i meant (on inlet pressure recovery)…

You are referring to the Mach number dependent pressure recovery by compression shock. But each intake will lose pressure (with can be translated as lose thrust) by its intake, even an A320 has a pressure recovery below 1.
Supersonic aircraft tend to have up to 10% loss at subsonic speeds (which have nothing to do with Mach number effects) due to mass flow issues and stuff. Intakes have optimum design points, the F-16 for example has much better recovery at speeds below M1.3 than the F-15.
The F-15s intake (which are similar at most 4th generation fighters) are not the best in subsonic cruise. Reasonable, but not optimal.

The Mig 23 should be evaluated as deployed in walls firing Apexes at theoretically outnumbered F16s without BVR missiles and outnumbered F15s in Central Europe. Unfortunately most of its engagements have been in WVR domain where like the Phantom it was flying out of the best part of its envelop. Conceptually the Soviets copied the USAF’s mistake with the Phantom, focusing on speed and BVR for interception at the expense of all else (an area where performance wise, it seems to have met its requirements).

The concept of BVR needs to be put into perspective. Calling the MiG-23 a BVR fighter is somehow a bit too much. In the 60ies all IR-AAM were rear aspect only, had limited range and lacked destructive power. To successfully engage an intruding enemy, which is identified by ground based radar, the aircraft needs radar guided missiles. The MiG-23 was never considered to work stand alone and find, track and attack targets.
The first aircraft able of doing that with a single guy was the F-15A.

The objective was to give frontal units the ability to engage enemies that would have been a huge problem to the MiG-21. The first truly operational MiG-23 also employed a limited look-down option, a big step forward, as before Western fighter bombers could enter the airspace virtually unhindered when the sticked to low-level high-speed flying.

The numerical advantage of the MiG-23 is offest by its defensive character. An air force needs to have a set number on station, and an attacker can normally outnumber the defenders by employing many aircraft in a short time frame on a single location. Nothing special, a normal fact of aerial warfare: the defender is usually outnumbered.

But the MiG-27s are almost a decade younger compared to the MiG-23BNs and overall have had a much better safety record.

And the MiG-27 uses some specific features of the MiG-23 for a different purpose with success: good (but slow) cruise performance, good low level handling. With turbo-fan engine it can be seen as a swing-wing Sepecat Jaguar (which the Indians also use I think ??).

As for the F-35’s top speed: as excess thrust will be quite marginal above M1.6 (look at F-18, it doesn’t really get above M1.65, even virtually clean). So I guess operational speed would – if no software restriction applies – not get much above M1.7ish, if at all.
The more interesting thing would be how long it takes to get to this top speed.
Some aircraft may fly M2.0, even with some weapons, but virtually burn all fuel to accelerate to that point.

As one previous poster pointed out, it is often “over-specification” rather than over-engineering. A problem even the Russians couldn’t avoid (look at all the swing-wings, M2+ aircraft and stuff).
In the 1950ies, the Soviet oriented pretty much on what was possible in which time frame.

In my opinion, a good example of well specified aircraft is the F-16.
A bad one is the F-111.