Doubt all you want, as i said, it pulls 11.0 g publicly below 450 kt at low altitude with two smokeys, it is stressed for 9.0+ with 6 of them, as for its speed, it’s M 1.8 Operational (6 X AAMS) and Mach 2.0 DASH, ALL external tanks are cleared for M 1.6, the supersonic 1.250 l for 9 g full, the 2.000 l 5 g full and 9 g empty.

Regarding the 2000 l tanks:
I was of the impression the max. load was 5.5 g when full. Is there any source about the supersonic clearance of these tanks? They were limited to sub sonic speeds at some time, but I read long ago it was planned to make them supersonic capable or possibly better said clear them.

Were any charges pressed? Just joking, though you must see that Bowman has no real choice on the matter. I mean he’s hardly going to say “oh its very good but there are better alternatives if you’re willing to pay extra” is he.
Besides ALL pilots claim thier mount is the best regardless if its a F-22, Typhoon, Rafale or Mig-15.
See my point?

As the F-22 is not for sale and thereby no competor to the Typhoon on the market why not? Of course I agree that everyone is making this or that claim and everyone is trying to present his product in the best light possible, even if it means exeggerating claims. But it is necessary to apply the same measures and not rule A if it is mine and rule B if it is yours. It has to be recognised that while many pilots are confident about their mount there are also quite some which admit that the others mount is the better one. I remind on the frustated F-15 aggressor pilots fighting the Raptor or the greek Viper jockeys who stated they felt like fighting the F-16 in the A-7 when confronted with Typhoons.
One interesting part to note is that Mark Bowman was actually one of the pilots who ferried the Typhoons to the US for the deployment where this F-22 vs Eurofighter thingy supposely happened.

91-4001/4009 EMD aircraft (9)
99-4010/4011 PRTV aircraft (2)
00-4012/4017 PRTV II aircraft (6)
17 total EMD & PRTV aircraft

I do not know why but 2 EMD aircraft & the 6 PRTV II aircraft are included in the 187 (production) total.

The 20 Dec 2004 crash was PRTV II aircraft 00-4014.
The 25 Mar 2009 crash was EMD aircraft 91-4008.

Thanks for the info.

B- the only way to jam the APG-77 is to have enough emitters to jam every frequency that it’s capable of using simultaneously. In order to do that, you certainly would make yourself a inviting target. The most you could hope to achieve is some degradation, as there’s no way for the jammer to predict the order of frequencies that the radar is hopping to. In any event, the ALR-94 would’ve pinpointed your location long before the radar was seriously degraded.

Well an AESA jammer might have enough emitters and if the signals are detected anyway (even if you can’t jam them properbly) the enemies RWR can pinpoint it as well. It doesn’t work one way only.

Turning at the higher Gs and higher speed portions of the flight envelope, the F-35 will “almost exactly match a clean Block 50 F-16 and comes very close to the Raptor”, Beesley said.

Fanboys might get excited on that. The truth is at certain speeds there won’t be much difference for most combat aircraft, as pulling 9 g will result in an equal turning radius at higher speed.

Ironically, the Navy version, which has larger wings but a lower G limit of 7.5G, has the best turning capability of the three F-35 versions Beesley explained.

Particularly at lower speeds where 9 g couldn’t be achieved anyway the increased wing area means lower wing loading and the C provides more lift either. So it’s in fact not surprising either.

Moreover, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning JSF’s reported service ceiling of around 57,000 feet is superior to the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-35 Fulcrum’s 56,000 feet and the Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker’s 55,000 feet.

How official is that article anyway? And btw service ceiling of the Su-35 is 59k ft.

IIRC, Yefim Gordon’s “Famous Russian A/c” was published in 2006 (or is there a newer version out?). Don’t think the current production variant K was flying then. Although the 9.41 (Preproduction) did fly around feb 2007. Anyways, rosoboronexport puts it @ 6500kg. I believe there was another source stating the same. THings might have changed in the last 2-3 years for the prod variants. In fact I clearly remember Mig’s press release in 2005 quoting exactly the same numbers for payload/fuel as the ones above (matching Gordon’s book) but they always put the MTOW at 22400kg.

Anyways, the numbers that you put up don’t add up:
12400kg empty
5200kg internal fuel
5500kg payload
Equals about 23100kg.

WHere does the extra 1400kg come from in the MTOW? I understand pilot, oils/fluids/gun ammo/pylons etc. But it surely can’t weight 1400kg? Added l8r: I just checked Gordon’s Book and found that he puts the MTOW of the MiG-29M @ 23700kg and its max payload @ 6500kg! So, you have empty weight of 23700-6500+5200 = 12000kg, I guess deducting the additional weight of fluids etc, the weight would be around 11600kg (which is the published weight of the K). What makes no sense however, is why the K would carry 1 ton less and weigh 1 ton more in terms of MTOW. My guess is that the 5500kg he put in that chart is a typo. Esp. when you consider that the original K is shown to carry more payload than the M! Go figure.

Also, the BR source, which credits Y.Gordon’s book – shows MTOW as 22400kg, which was the figure on migavia until very recently, when they upped it to 24500kg. In fact, the 22.4 ton remained on the mig site until – 2008-09. It changed to 24500kg probly in the last 6-10 months. I had never seen a source stating 24500kg before that, only now with Rosoboronexports catalogue do we have a match, and rosboro puts the payload @ 6500kg. Ditto for the M.

All very confusing – but I think 24.5 ton MTOW makes sense with 6500kg payload +5200kg fuel and 12500kg empty

USS.

MTOW isn’t necessarily full internal fuel+max. payload. Some aircraft can’t achieve that at all. So they have to sacrafice either fuel or payload, to not exceed their MTOW.

The four FY2010 Lot 10 aircraft is what brings the total procurement up to 187.

But even the 187 number is misleading since it includes six Production Representative Test Vehicle (PRTV) II aircraft & two EMD aircraft. Plus one was lost in a crach last on March 25 meaning that (when the 4 Lot 10 aircraft enter service) we actually only have 178. And we will NEVER have all 178 operational at the same time.

I was of the impression that more aircraft were actually built as PRTVs (IIRC 18), but I’ll look it up again. Two EMD aircraft were counted in as well? What is there status are they still used or were they retired?

There was another crash in 2004, was it a PRTV?