You actually can in Falcon 4.0;) Maybe you give it a try, it’s quite interesting though the flight model engine has its limitations.
If you want to know more about it contact me via PM.

cheers

Thanks for the input.
The drag characteristics look very good at the first glance, as far as zero-lift drag is concerned. It is pretty similar to that known from public sources.
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The problem is, the program multiplies it with .6666, making it the lowest drag F-16 ever conceived. :rolleyes:

Thrust is quite OK, too, with some shortcomings in SFC (which is in A/B pretty much constant in the relevant parts of the flight envelope). Can’t say how partial power performance is modeled, but I guess as linear interpolation between IDLE and MIL fuel flow (which isn’t that great, but at least reasonable).

The data has the appearance that someone ran an optimization over the inputs to match certain corners of the known F-16 flight envelope (quite sudden dents in SFC or thrust).

Not that good is lift induced drag, where the Falcon is too optimistic.

In the end: useful flight model, not extraordinary (stuff I’ve shown above is more sophisticated) and in many cases too optimistic. Would be interesting to know how external stores are modeled, as an F-16 hardly flies without it.
The way the handling characteristics are put in is clever. I can’t tell about the correctness though.

I should have posted more carefully.
Combat radius: 450nm on hi-lo-lo-hi anti-ship mission

BTW, if the U.S. does not lift the ban on F-22 to exports to Japan, the the EF is possible option for the Japanese F-X program. And, according to the Japan Aviation News article, the improved F-2 is also possiblle option.

Then comparison between the EF and the F-2 is interesting to me.

To make this clear: as fighter-bomber with back-up fighter duties the F-2 is well suited.
As future and mid-term primary air defense fighter the F-2 is not well suited.

The Eurofighter clearly wins in terms of performance when it comes to a2a duties. When Japan actually wants a fighter bomber, it should go for the F-2, also for economical reasons. But if they wanted the F-22, they clearly look for an air defense fighter, as the F-22 sucks as fighter bomber.

Reading about the Blackbird, I stumbled across an interesting piece of information-the M-21’s J-58’s were improved engines and produced 40000 lbs. thrust as compared to the SR-71 J-58’s 34500 lbs. thrust:

http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/m-21.php

First, how could they have made the J-58 make even more power?
Also, in clean configuration, would the M-21 have been able to fly faster than other “standard-engined” Blackbirds?

Static reference thrust at sea level tells you nothing about the actual thrust where it matters.
So stuff it.

Yes obviously the sims are flawed as i stated, however you still get a good idea of the advantages supercruise can bring to the fight over conventional performing jets. I was not referring to the 35 though either in my post but simply commenting on haavarla comment that he thoguht supercruise wasn’t much use.

Unfortunately you cannot adjust your “aircraft” in your simulator, but if you could, and if the model was properly programmed, you would see that you trade subsonic range for dry thrust supersonic ability. When you now look at it statistically, and recognize that an F-35 will fly most of its missions purely subsonic, you’ll see that a “supercruise” F-35 would a bad trade.

However, even aircraft that don’t travel at Mach 3, such as the Mirage IV, Tu-144, and Concorde, have better supersonic range than the F-22.

The F-22 is a flying compromise, much different than a Concorde or Mirage IV, which were built to operate in one sweet spot. Therefore, I wouldn’t take too much conclusions from one single design (of which we know pretty much nothing). The only thing we should take away: “supercruise” is no advantage without cost, and “supercruise” does not mean that you can cruise supersonically without actually burning fuel, you still reduce range by a factor of 2 or more.

I mean to remember that the top speed is indeed not more than ~M 1.6 on the Super Hornet, while official sources still state M 1.8+. Take it for what it’s worth.

I might add that maximum thrust top speed of an F-18 A/C with F404-GE-400 engines is given with Mach 1.66 at US standard day (15° at SL) at 36000ft.
That is with two AIM-9 on the wing tips and two AIM-7 on fuselage stations, both which do rarely add any real drag. So, the baseline Hornet doesn’t really make it to its top speed.

A typical Combat radius: 340 mi (295 nm, 550 km) on a hi-lo-hi mission with six 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs.

Which is – given the small size of the airframe – quite remarkable.
I think with 3 ETs the F-16 has quite a good range, but of course, Norway is quite huge.

Yes. I don’t believe there is a huge difference between supercruise or a supersonic cruise. If an aircraft can travel at supersonic speeds for a long time, and is optimized for them, so what if it uses afterburner? I would call the SR-71 and XB-70 better at supersonic cruise than an F-22, even though they use afterburners.

When an aircraft cruises at Mach 3, the concept of dry and afterburner does not really apply any more. The SR-71 more or less uses a ramjet, not sure about the XB-70. Anyways, the normal job of the compressor in a turbojet engine is done by the inlet, and hence the compression ratio of the afterburner increases. In normal life (M<2) the compression ratio in the afterburner is quite crappy, making the machine less efficient.

There is by the way quite a lot of material about the XB-70 accessible via NASA reports server. Most of the stuff is declassified. As NASA ran the tests, it has plenti of reports. Different than the SR-71, where you don’t find jack about (except the normal stereotype stuff).

WOW! You meant Concord designers designed a large Mirage IV! LOL….

Kind of, yes. When the Concorde was designed, the Brits and French put together what they had. That was in France surely more experience with supersonic aircraft (Mirage series), and in UK more experience with engines.

The Concorde concept was easily adaptable for a supersonic bomber, but no one needed such capability in 1970 any more, as it neither was survivable nor affordable.

Basically, when it retired the IVP, AdA lost a HUGE capability, M 2.0 up and down a country the size of Serbia (border to border) over enemy air defenses engagement envelop…

You wouldn’t fly over enemy SAM sites and rely on your Mach 2 speed, do you? Could mess your day, even the SR-71 had some scenarios where an SA-2 could bring it down, still the SR-71 afforded twice the energy altitude of a Mirage IV (M2@15km).
I would actually think many other aircraft could do that, an F-4F is good for a 300km Mach2 run (flight manual values!, leaves appr. half internal fuel). Problem maybe is that it needs a recon pod, and tac recon was never considered a business of flying Mach 2 at high alt but rather subsonic and nose in the dirt.