10. F-14A TomcatPosted on 06/12/2009 7:41:25 AM PDT by Notoriously Conservative
10. F-14A Tomcat
Speed: Mach 2.34
Altitude: 58,000+ feet
Primary Function: Carrier-based multi-role strike fighter
Contractor: Grumman
Crew: Two (pilot and radar intercept officer)
Unit Cost: $38 million
Powerplant: F-14A: Twin Pratt & Whitney TF30-P-41A turbofan engines (20,900 pounds of thrust w/ afterburner)F-14B/D: Twin General Electric F110-GE-400 turbofan engines (29,080-high/27,948 average pounds each w/ maximum afterburner)
Length: 61 feet 9 inches (18.6 meters)
Wingspan: 64 feet (19 meters) unswept, 38 feet (11.4 meters) swept
Height: 16 feet (4.8 meters)
Empty: 41,780 lb (18951 kg) -- F-14D
Maximum Takeoff: 72,900 pounds (32,805 kg)
Range: Deck launched intercept F-14A - 915 nautical miles radius with two 280-gallon drop tanks jettisoned when emptyDeck launched intercept F-14D - 656 nautical miles radius combat range with two 280-gallon drop tanksF-14D - With two 280-gallon drop tanks retained, 1,591 nautical miles ferry range
Armament: Up to 13,000 pounds of: 6 AIM-7 Sparrows, 4 AIM-9 Sidewinder, 6 AIM-54 Phoenix, MK-82 (500 lbs.)4 MK-83 (1,000 lbs.), 4 MK-84 (2,000 lbs.), MK-20 cluster bomb, 4 GBU-10, LGBGBU-12 MK-82 LGB, 4 GBU-16 MK-83 LGB4 GBU-24 MK-84 LGB, one MK-61A1 Vulcan 20mm cannon
9. Su-27 Flanker
Speed: Mach 2.35
Altitude: 59,055 feet
Primary Function: Air superiority fighter
Contractor: Sukhoi
Crew: One
Unit Cost: N/A
Powerplant: Two NPO Saturn AL-31F turbofans each rated at 17,857 lb (79.43 kN) dry thrust and 27,557 lb st (122.58 kN) with afterburning
Length: 71 ft, 11.5 in (21.935 m)
Wingspan: 48 ft, 2.75 in (14.7 m)
Height: 19 ft, 5.5 in (5.932 m)
Empty: 39,021 lb (17700 kg)
Maximum Takeoff: 66,138 lb (30000 kg) -- Flanker-B
Range: N/A
Rate of Turn: 22.5° / sec Sustained28.5° / sec Instant
Armament: One 30 mm GSh-301cannon, up to 6,000 kg payload of missiles and bombs including AA-10
(Excerpt) Read more at notoriouslyconservative.com ...
I would like to suggest that the Foxbat 25B performance is vastly overstated and the SR-71 performance is vastly understated.
I guess the DOD never released figures on the SR-71’s cost...
Yeah, I couldn’t find them
I am embarrassed to say this, but I am a former military pilot, and said to myself “no way, the F-22 and F-35 should be on this list.”
But the F-35 is 1.25 and F-22 is 2.25 (albeit with supercruise at 1.8 or so).
Very surprising to me, and I’ve only been out of the “loop” for a handful of years.
The F-35 is painfully slow.
Don’t forget, the F-35 is a VTOL aircraft; I would imagine there are top speed limitations with that design.
Only in one configuration.
I am hoping the public figures are sandbagged.
I didn’t know there are multiple configurations.
Which one is Navy?
The carrier version and the VTOL, I suppose would both be Navy, or at least Navy/Marine.
What I never understood is why the USAF dumped the SR71 but kept the older and slower U2?
Perhaps the SR71 was cost prohibitive.
“Fastest Military Aircraft in the World”? ...that implies the word “today”.
The F-14 is retired.
The SR-71 is no longer flown by the military; last I heard, NASA had 2.
Not quite 
Cool SR-71 video.
http://www.greatdanepromilitary.com/SR-71/index.htm
123,000 feet. Sure.
You must understand that the SR71 ate fuel;
The U2 is more economical and better for the
environment!
I don’t personally know, but I assume satellites or drones could do most of what the SR-71 could do.
I suspect he U-2 was relatively cheap to operate, relatively easy to operate “forward,” and all that was needed for certain less-than-tech savy opponents.
Basically the same reason my father drove a VW bug to and from our little farm outside TelAviv from 1968 until about a year ago. It worked, it was cheap, it had the same ground clearance as a truck, and we already owned it.
“Fastest Military Aircraft in the World”? ...that implies the word “today”.
How on earth does that imply the word today? It isn’t titled “Fastest Active Military Aircraft in the World Today”
Fuel is a big deal.
Better loiter time is how P-51s shot down German jets.
The SR-71’s speed was never fully exploited. Fact is the pilots had to watch their throttle settings very closely as they could easily accelerate to speeds at which the friction-heating would cause the airframe or windscreen to fail.
Did we ever get the SR-71 to successfully fire these missiles at speed?
BAE Lightning was very, very fast.
Don’t forget the advent of the UAV. We can flood the sky with them at much lower altitudes/cost and we don’t care if they get shot down. Their loiter times are tremendous too. That plus better satellites pretty much makes the SR-71 obsolete.
That’s ok with me, lets the gov spend money on real pilots like me!!! (MAJ, US Army, UH-60 Blackhawk driver). We’re always gonna need helicopters my friends.
There is a story somewhere about a pilot who pushed an SR-71 to the max to outrun some interceptors. It is here on FR but I cannot remember the title.
Ran into an Air Force test pilot in a rest area about 20 years ago. He told me at Edwards they were cleaning up some F-4’s and getting mach 2.6+ from them, albeit not in combat mock up.
And those alleged ground sources actually confirmed that what they speed measured was an actual Aurora?
I thought the Blackbird had been replaced....
Yes, I’m quite familiar with his detailed recounting.
Not as well recorded are the instances the SR-71 was used for ground tests in prep for tracking Shuttle re-entry.
As the SR-71 couldn't carry those missiles - the mission bays being different to those of the YF-12 version - I'd say: no.
The YF-12 made six firings of the AIM-47
Not officially....
But I suspect you’re referring to the “Aurora”.
It's not all about speed.
That is why.
I defer to Oztrich on the specifics. If I remember Ben Rich’s book about the Lockheed “Skunkworks”, he mentioned that the YF-12 managed a look-down/shoot-down kill of a drone target years before such a capability was actually fielded.
Kelly Johnson, Lockheed’s chief designer, was pushing high-altitude/ultra-high speed interceptors while the USAF was developing what would become the F-111. His idea was to show the vulnerability of the USAF’s low-level penetration concept and the continued advantages of high-altitude. Apparently, this didn’t go over well with some of the Brass.
I spend a great deal of time near Area 51 and know many of the watchers. I am not a watcher but I have seen things that are very unusual in the region. The watchers have various waypoints laid out and from certain places they monitor traffic. Several of the routes are correlated with commercial traffic speed(s) that are reported by regular air radio traffic. The upshot is that there is somethimg that is capable of near Mach 5 that flys over the area in fairly regular intervals.
I think the altitude ratings for the MIG-25’s are way too high. One’s a little over 100,000 and one is about 125,000 ft. That seems unrealistic. Since 100,000 ft is considered about where the atmosphere pretty much ends and space begins.
They should set a high speed camera along their normal watching routes and see if they can get a good frame of something flying by.
The may have hit 120,000 feet, but it wasn’t in controlled flight. They would have had to install a reaction control system like the NF-104 used.
It still seems unlikely, since the NF-104 shut off the jet engine and switched to rocket power somewhere between 70 and 80 thousand feet.
They might be able to zoom climb to such altitude, but I doubt that they could stay there. NASA had a heavily modified F-104 with a rocket motor in the tail and reactive control jets for steering at such altitudes (over 90,000 ft). The air gets so thin that conventional control surfaces cease to work.
The USAF did an anti-missile test with a special missile slung under a test-modified F-15C. They zoomed to some unreal altitude before weapons release. IIRC, it wasn't as high as those quoted for the Foxbats.
OK, by that logic, Fastest Military Aircraft in the World includes the P-51, if we’re talking about the Fastest Military Aircraft in the World in 1945.
But we’re not, are we.
Quite.
Iran’s F-14s are grounded for parts.....
MiG-25:
The Ye-266 was a stripped-down MiG-25 prototype used to set several speed and altitude records from 1965 to 1967; the
Ye-266M designation was used for the Ye-155M to set new speed and altitude records in 1975, as the Ye-266 had done previously. Absolute altitude: 123,524 ft (37,650 m): World Record.
But you can’t call the -266 a “military aircraft”....
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