Super cruise basically means that an airplane can go beyond Mach 1.? without using an afterburner.

A first question to ask is: why is this important?

The reply seems to be simple; an afterburner consumes (wastes) a huge amount of fuel. If speeds higher than Mach 1 can be achieved without using an afterburner, on normal engine functioning, then this is generally “fuel friendly”, postive for the combat range and so on…

Achieving supercruise depends on two things:

– the thrust an engine can deliver without afterburner
– the air resistance (drag?) of the plane

A fighter can accelerate on normal engine regime until drag equals max thrust, for anything faster the afterburner must be applied.

Comparing two planes one should not only look at which speed the planes need the afterburer to further accelerate but also look at the fuel consumption throughout the speed range.

Doing so, yuo could find a situation where a plane with one engine needs to start its afterburners at mach 1.1 where a plane carrying two of the same engines does not need to do so at that speed.

The devils question is however: do the 2 engines of the second fighter together consume at that speed less fuel than the single engined one.

Or said differently, we should compare the fuel consumption of two planes throughout the speed range and not decide only on the supercruise ability alone which one is best.

Altitude…

You’ve got a point here! and maybe you could add speed as well?

But in the AH-64D example it is not the flyign itself that exhausts the pilots, it is the hard workload coming from all the defensive and offensive systems.

Would you not expect that, in a extermily dangerous environment like open skies, stealth, advanced missils, sam… there would be work enough for two?

True except for the figure. The actual threshold for Nunn-McCurdy is 15% cost overrun, not 25%.
25% means automatic cancellation of the project (although that rarely happens because exceptions are issued all the time).
If F-35 met Nunn-McCurdy deadline twice, it means the project is at least 32.25% over budget. You won’t cheat math even if you call yourself pfcem.

Nononono…

You just don’t understand :):)

pfcem has explained it very well:

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE PROJECT!!!

All suspicion is purely based on fantasy :diablo:

There is a HUGE difference between the ways modern fixed wing aircraft operate & helicopters.

What do you mean by that?

Helo’s and figheters have different roles, that’s true but I guess that in both cases efforts are done to ensure that the pilots are able to handle the systems and apparently, this is rather difficult.

Except the V-22 is faster then its Sea Cobra escorts, that can hardly be a good thing.

The US Amphibs don’t carry enough Harriers to replace the Cobra’s in the escort role.

in that case they will send the cobras first and the V-22 carrying the troops will take of and appear near the landing zone once it has been cleared.

I understood from various blogs that RAF viewed the Typhoon as primarily an air superiority fighter with secondary ground strike abilities .

.

yep, I agree

while the F-35 is ground strike fighter with secondary air to air capabilities, .

How is the F-35 going to attack ground targets without compromising stealth?

It seems there are options:

– or the enemy is such that stealth is not needed. in that case there is no role for an expensive stealth craft

– or f-35 has to stick to its poor two bombs an attack (would it not be simpler and cheaper to keep the f-117 then?

Franckly, i don’t see the point of stealth when it means that the plane can’t fight anymore

the reply is very simple:

everybody looses:mad::(

Geez, someone please edited this poster.. :rolleyes: I never knew how official USAF and NAVY pages are full of factual errors until I met pfcem.

@pfcem

Could you please explain me how i should interprete the CBO statements on “scenarios” for filling the gap casued by F-35 delays?

To me it looks like decision makers are releasing such info to prepare the public for a policy change away from the F-35 but that can’t possibly be true, right????

To avoid demonstrating ignorance/disingenuousness/intellectual dishonesty I would welcome your view on the subject

In breathless anticipation 🙂