Finally we have external temperature, which can be 20° more or less than the infamous “US standard day” (17° Celsius on 0 feet altitude).

EF cannot supercruise at 0 feet altitude, maybe not even the mighty F-22 😮

A-5 was a piece of crap, to be honest.. Ill-suited for a bomber, making it even worse recon aircraft. Due to large wing area and low wing loading, the photos Vigies took were seldom sharp enough to be really useful. No chance against the pics RF-4s took.

Strange because the RA-5 is not the only recce plane with low wing loading. Also strange the RA-5 got an increased wing area compared to the A-5…
But it certainly had some issues.

So this was not the same as the FB-111H?
That one was to replace the cancelled B-1 afaik.

Besides, has anyone ever tried sitting on the toilet at 9g :diablo: 😀 :diablo:

As long as they are positive g’s… 😀

The Su-34. No need for diapers. 😀

Well apart from the need to design a fuselage with increased internal volume for weapons, I dont see any disadvantage. and since most fighters dont go into combat without stores, internall carriage is an advantage because the increased fuselage drag is certainly less then external missile/pylon drag.

if the Mig-25 was really that bad then why did the Soviets build large numbers of them and assign them too different roles, interceptor, recon, defence suppression, high altitude bombing, research. the Soviets had other aircraft types available so why did they choose the Foxbat. the advantage the Mig-25 had over other mach-3 types was its simplicity. ok the SR-71 had better perfomance but it was extremly complex and expensive. how many Blackbirds was built compared too the Foxbat.
the Soviets could build large quantites of this effective “though not perfect” design and put the fear of God in the west for quite a few years, so i think the Foxbat done the job it was designed too do very well.

Yes, I wonder how the F-12 would have been operated. The SR-71 is not suitable for tactical operations thanks to its complexity so I dont think the F-12 was any different. What good is a Mach 3 interceptor if it takes an hour to prepare for take off. The MiG-25 however is a real tactical interceptor, a limited but very useful tool in its role.
A shame the F-108 never made it. It would have been worth it just to have the better toy. 😎

So the stealth , speed , altitude combo doesnt make any difference then just stealth? So a F-117 flying subsonic is equally hard to shoot down as a F-22A flying in stealth at mach 1.72 and at 50K feet??

To an AWACS, it probably doesnt make a difference. Except maybe the Raptor is a huge high flying IR target if the AWACS is equipped with IR sensors. Then I’d rather attack subsonic.