[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.