[terufish]

Be careful with the "top" speeds of military jets. The F-16 claims mach 2+ but it cannot do this with any realistic combat load or mission profile. The vast majority of its time will be spent subsonic, with mere seconds at mach 1.6 to release weapons.

[walshemj]

But specs are deliberately under quoted I recall a former co worker who had worked at RAE saying that whilst on the range at salisbury plain was over taken by a the then standard MBT in a land rover doing 50 he reckoned it was doing 65-70 well over the MBT's quoted top speed.

[terufish]

The F-16 values are from actual aircraft operations. I don't know what an MBT is or how it relates to aircraft.

[hydrogen18]

MBT usually means Main Battle Tank.

I agree, I have no idea how it relates. Plenty of MBT's have very high top speeds under ideal conditions. The actual top speed is usually to something lower to prevent damage to the tanks tracks however.

[walshemj]

And the SR72 / backbirds top speed is still classified to this day - I suspect that at WEP (war emergency power) a f16 is faster than quoted

[terufish]

Anything can exceed its design speed if you override or ignore the design guideline.

I am sure the F-16 may well be faster than the number I gave, but an F-16 has like 20 minutes fuel, maximum, on afterburner. Add in flight time to target, and drag from weapons, and the time taken to accelerate, and you see why they can't do it except on test flights.

I do not think you can find any documented instance of a Viper exceeding mach 1.8 in combat. F-18s recently intercepted a "suspect" airliner at mach 1.6.

[hydrogen18]

I believe you meant to say the "SR-71".

A SR71 would not have "War Emergency Power". I'm not even sure I've seen reference to "War Emergency Power" on any turbine engine. It's simply not a combat aircraft. As a matter of its regular operation, it must be capable of outflying any aircraft or missile in pursuit. In other words, flying at the absolute maximum airspeed was a normal event that is a possibility in every mission. Not a last ditch effort to disengage.

You really have nothing to back up the claims you are making. Not only is the SR71 no longer in operation, the aircraft don't even really exist anymore. The static displays out there largely had their wings cut off for transport. They were just reattached on site afterwards. They aren't airworthy any longer. Even if the top speed was a bit higher than published, there would be no reason to keep it classified now.

Plenty of pilots have published memoirs about how regular flight was Mach 3, with excursions to Mach 3.2. The absolute speed is just like any other aircraft. It's limited by design factors. Of course some crews wound up flying faster than Mach 3.2. But it's not like the blackbird was running around secretly at mach 10 or something.

[terufish]

I think he's referring to the fact that you can get higher than "normal" speed if you dump your weapons and accept damage from the heat, either air friction heating the skin of your plane, or just your engine temperatures. You may be able to maintain it for a short time to evade something.

Its similar to the way you can get your car to exceed design parameters if you risk blowing the engine and disable the speed limiter.