This one's for laughs. Happy Thursday!
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Lockheed Martin coined the term fifth-generation fighter. It means an aircraft that employs stealth, supercruise and integrated avionics, a la F-22 and F-35.
Boeing apparently thinks it can do better, says Aviation Week's David Fulghum. He reports today that Boeing is working on a sixth-generation fighter that would appear after 2024.
Ok, since you've decided to mention it, Boeing, let's think about what new features will define a sixth-generation fighter?
My proposals: optionally manned cockpit, directed-energy defenses and variable-cycle propulsion.
Looks like the US Army yesterday officially cancelled the contract solicitation for the Joint Air to Ground Missile (JAGM), or so says this acquisition notice. I'm working on confirming the details, but it appears that JAGM may already be history ... like it's predecessor.
[UPDATE: I jumped the gun here. JAGM is alive and well. The army just cancelled a previous draft of the RFP that stated there would be no competition. This is because there will indeed be a competition.]
To celebrate 100 years of Flight International, we want to discover the "100 Greatest" in aviation; by determining the top twenty civil aircraft, military aircraft, engine, people & moments. Here the best military aircraft is put forward! |
(It's for our web site's AirSpace discussion forums, which are honoring Flight International magazine's 100th anniversary this year with contests like this.)
Now, back to the question. Where does one even begin?
Is it the F-22 or the B-29? The SR-71 or the Me-262? The Bell UH-1 or the Bell X-1? What's my criteria: the most sophisticated or the most revolutionary? The best-looking at an air show or the most operationally relevant?
I'm going with relevancy.
History's greatest military aircraft is a product of the Soviet Union. It first entered service in 1957 but remains operational today; sold a whopping 10,000 copies in more than 40 countries and fought in nearly every major conflict I can think of since the 1960s.
I hereby nominate the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-21.
In the Cold War era and beyond, the MiG-21 was aviation's answer to the AK-47: a rugged, cheap, easy to operate instrument of firepower. It's charm is not it's sophistication but its simplicity. Sure, it couldn't beat the F-104 in a sprint, but it isn't nearly as likely to crash as the Starfighter either, even with a lightly trained pilot.
More than 3,000 MiG-21s are estimated to be in active inventory today, even more than 50 years after first entering service. No front-line combat fighter jet can seriously make that claim. (But ask me again in 2025 if the F-16 is still flying!)
Do you agree with this choice?Why not nominate your own favourite of the following categores in our "100 Greatest" area: |
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Take a look at Flight International's official blog for my latest update today on Boeing's 777F Freighter. It appears the manufacturer has quietly been tinkering with the aircraft's performance statistics.
Blogs still don't have rules, right? So there's no list of concrete do's and don'ts out there?
Good.
Today, I'm going to fill this space by swiping a comment written by someone else in a blog published by my direct competitor. This would be a no-no in my print magazine, but, hey, this is a blog, right? Consider this a toast to publishing anarchy!
I'm doing this because the comment in question is so good that I instantly wished I could exchange brains -- however briefly -- with the person who wrote it. That person happens to be the pride of the Australia's defence blogging community, Eric Palmer, who also happens to be a frequent commenter on this blog. His comment appears at the end of my former co-worker Bill Sweetman's excellent blog on the Boeing-Lockheed team on next-generation bomber.
Here's what Eric said:
It will be interesting to see who ends up making the thing. I think bringing up Charlie Brown is useful. As we all know, according to Linus, on Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch he deems the most "sincere".The Great Pumpkin then flies through the air to deliver toys to all the good little children in the world. Apparently, one can cause the Great Pumpkin to pass him or her by merely saying "IF he comes", as opposed to "WHEN he comes". This could mean that the Great Pumpkin is likely to pass by anyone who doubts his existence.
Not to be sexist, but I hope the bomber program manager is a woman. Consider this:
Sally, is usually the one person who Linus convinces to sit in the pumpkin patch. Sally's number of Halloweens spent in the pumpkin patch, in fact, are surpassed only by Linus's. Sally's belief in the Great Pumpkin is quashed every year she waits in the pumpkin patch, yet the next time, presumably out of love for Linus, she believes in the Great Pumpkin just as strongly.
Peppermint Patty had been depicted at least once waiting in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin. She says she does so because she is very superstitious, as well as trusting, and, as she admits, a little bit stupid.
Marcie had sat with Linus in the Pumpkin patch on at least one occasion, and generally shows belief in the Great Pumpkin, albeit usually calling it the "Great Squash" or the "Great Grape".
While I loved all those Charlie Brown TV specials as a kid, I think in the current funding environment, hopes of seen a new next generation bomber are about on the same odds as waiting for The Great Pumpkin. Somehow I don't see the Obama/Winfrey elects as tolerating funding such things when the U.S. is billions in debt.
A bureaucracy that still smarts over revelations of $600 toilet seats and $1,000 hammers should be more careful than to spend $533,331 on a contract listed only as "B-2 accessories".
I know about this contract because of last week's post about the ongoing competition for the Flexible Acquisition Sustainment Tool follow-on (F2AST) program. This is a huge umbrella contract that allows the US Air Force to buy upgrades and modifications for aircraft a la cart.
(To find the B-2 item, click on this link, then click the "fast total orders awarded" tab on the bottom of the spreadsheet, then scroll down to entry #331.)
Who knew a stealth bomber needs accessories? I don't know for sure what a $533,331 contract buys in the defense business (besides two cups of coffee and a half-hour powerpoint presentation by a consultant), but I thought I might try a few other guesses:
1. Platinum-coated inlet grills, a la Flavor Flav
2. Inlaid mother of pearl embellishments for the mother of all bombs
3. This season's "it" electronic flight bags by Balenciaga
4. One celebrity-bred Chihuahua per combat-coded bomber
This is, of course, a competition. If you can come up with my favorite suggestion, I am prepared to offer as a reward one of my coolest conference freebies: a 2008 pocket calendar from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.
You’ll see a lot of news print (and electrons) this year on the big US defense procurements with names like KC-X, BAMS, JTRS and the like, and that’s appropriate.
But you won’t see much coverage of a very different sort of contract competition underway within the US Air Force, despite its enormous significance for the defense industry.
The contract is called F2AST for short, or the Flexible Acquisition Sustainment Tool follow-on. It’s scheduled to be awarded in June. The money involved – up to $5.4 billion -- is potentially greater than the BAMS and JTRS deals combined.
The contract focuses on the un-sexy task of sustaining and modifying existing weapon systems, versus developing new platforms. But that’s the market that the US defense industry covets the most as the balance of DOD’s money shifts from procurement to operations and maintenance accounts.
It’s also the hardest part of the market to keep track of, especially as a journalistic outsider. There are no line items in DOD’s annual budget request for small upgrades, no operational test and evaluation reports, no single-issue congressional hearings, no industry press conferences and – unsurprisingly -- virtually no coverage across the trade press.
As a self-appointed watchdog, I’ve never been comfortable with the anonymity of the acquisition process for contracts like F2AST, especially because of the huge sums involved. There’s too much money changing hands behind the scenes for this to be a good thing.
Thankfully, the USAF has just made my job much easier. As part of its new openness policy in acquisition, the USAF has released a motherlode of documentation on the F2AST program, including a detailed database of every task order awarded to a contractor during the previous contract.
Here’s the link to the database: https://pkec.robins.af.mil/FAST2/FAST_FOIA_Data_Release_31Jan07.xls
Lockheed Martin's fourth quarter financial statement out this morning carries a nice surprise for Wall Street. Since Lockheed's last financial update in October, the defense contractor has raised its minimum sales target for 2008 by about $550 million. Lockheed's press release explains the increase is "primarily as a result of volume and performance in the Aeronautics business area".
Hmm, let me think. What's happened since October that would boost sales for Lockheed's Aero sector by half a billion?
... a site like this starts up: https://uavjobs.com/
(Note: it appears no UAV jobs are actually on the site, but I'm sure that's only a matter of time.)
I just published a news story on FlightGlobal.com about Boeing's decision to open a modification line for the 787 airliner in San Antonio. Check out the full story here.
I don't mention this in the article, but I believe this carries some significance for the US defense industry and for Boeing's defense division, in particular.
San Antonio is the home of Boeing's maintenance and modification center for the KC-135, KC-10, C-17 and the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program.
This is the first time I can think of that a Boeing commercial program has leaned on a defense program to play a major role in production and not vice versa. In the past, Boeing's defense sector has borrowed the 737, 767 and even the 747 to sell militarized derivatives to the Department of Defense and other militaries.
But this is the first time I can think of that a Boeing airliner program has reached out to its defense brethern to play a major role in the production of a commercial aircraft.
I'm sure there must be other examples of this sort of thing US aerospace industry, but none immediately come to mind. Please feel free to share if you can think of some.
I've never met Carlos Longoria, but his YouTube profile tells me he's a Mercedes enthusiast living outside Travis AFB in California.
He's also apparently an unusually enthusiastic fan of the KC-30, so much that he created his own marketing video that frankly rivals the best defense industry propaganda I've seen.
So enjoy -- I think:
The E-10A program is supposed to be deader than a door-nail.
The E-10A is so dead Northrop Grumman went to the trouble earlier this year to issue a press release stating that its formerly prized surveillance and command and control aircraft program is, indeed, dead.
So why would Boeing apparently still be building it?
The question is raised because seattle-deliveries.com, a well-trusted Boeing spotter site, is reporting that Boeing has issued a line number (#965) to build a 767-400ER for the "supposedly cancelled" E-10A program. Scroll to the bottom of the list on this page.
From the Associated Press today, via Businessweek.com:
A major defense contractor is selling technology to a large oilfield services company that hopes microwaves will someday become a key tool in unlocking the vast but hard-to-extract oil reserves in the West's underground shale deposits.Much as a microwave oven heats food, Raytheon Co.'s technology relies on microwaves to generate underground heat and melt a waxy substance in the shale called kerogen so that it can be converted into oil. Carbon dioxide heated and pressurized into a liquid form then is used to extract the oil from the rock and carry it to a well.
The world's fifth-largest defense contractor isn't the only company focusing on microwaves or other heat-generating technologies to address an engineering challenge that oil companies have tried to crack for decades -- so far with no efficient, environmentally sensitive method that's proven commercially viable, despite rising oil prices.
In a deal to be announced Tuesday, oilfield services company Schlumberger Ltd. is buying technology that Raytheon developed with Boston-based CF Technologies, which supplied expertise to extract oil using so-called "supercritical" liquid carbon dioxide.
I’m on the hook this year for the first time to deliver Flight International magazine’s 2008 World Air Forces Directory, a massive beast of reporting and indexing the year’s major developments in global military aircraft inventories. It typically runs from 20 to 30 pages and publishes in the third quarter of the year.
But the job comes with a twist this year: not only do I have to deliver it, I also have to reinvent it.
The objective is to make the print directory more analytical than comprehensive. That means if you really want to know the composition of, say, Burkina Faso’s military helicopter inventory, you’ll have to check our web site.
Instead, the print copy will offer a thorough analysis of developments in world air force inventories, broken apart by region and focusing on shifts in market share and trends for orders and deliveries by category of aircraft.
As I’ve learned over the last few hours, compiling an accurate list of regions and deciding which air forces are “major” and “minor” is a very interesting challenge.
I’m hoping my list below makes for great discussion on this blog or just between yourselves.
I made my decisions based on three criteria: regional relevance decides page count, geo-political connections decide regions and a nation must have at least one operational squadron of effective combat aircraft to be considered “in”. (The term “out” means that nation’s military inventory could be listed online, rather than the print version of the directory.)
So tell me what you think.
1 - United States (5 pages)
2 – The Americas (2 pages=Canada: .5 pages, LatAm=1.5)
In: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela
Out: Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatamala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay,
3- Europe (3 pages)
In: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, NATO, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom,
Out: Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta
4: Russia and the CIS: (3 pages)
In: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine,
Out: Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Republica Srpska, Slovakia, Slovenia,
5: Mid-east: (4 pages)
In: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
Out: Palestine, Qatar, Lebanon
6. Africa: (2 pages)
In: Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda
Out: Out: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe
7: South-Asia (2 pages)
In: Bangladesh, India, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan,
Out: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
8: Asia/Pacific: (3 pages)
In: Australia, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, North Korea, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam,
Out: Brunei, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines,
I’ve really been scratching my head over Boeing’s press release yesterday that claims the 767-200ER enjoys a 24% fuel efficiency advantage over the Airbus A330-200. The statistic is not trivial, as it could be a huge factor in the evaluation for the US Air Force’s KC-X tanker replacement contract.
But the statistic would seem – to me, anyway -- to be counter-intuitive. Airbus designed the A330-200 a decade after the 767 entered service. The whole point of the A330 design was to offer a more efficient aircraft in roughly the same passenger class.
Airlines clearly believe that Airbus has the more efficient aircraft, voting with their airplane orders heavily in the A330’s favor over the past decade. The A330 continues to be popular in the commercial market, even despite facing the hugely successful (marketing-wise) 787. By contrast, orders for Boeing’s 767 have slowed to a trickle, and it’s reasonable to argue the production line wouldn’t exist without the potential of the KC-X contract.
But, upon further study, Boeing’s claims appear to have some statistical merit, but also some serious potential flaws. To make sense of it, you just have to look at the performance statistics a little differently for a tanker than you would for a passenger aircraft.
An airliner carrying a maximum passenger load is not carrying anywhere near its maximum lifting capacity. For example, the 767-200ER’s empty-weight plus a maximum payload of passengers, luggage and cargo adds up to about 270,000 pounds.
However, the same aircraft stuffed with fuel instead of passengers is certificated to lift a maximum of 395,000 pounds. The total amount includes the weight of the aircraft (184,000 pounds) and the weight of the “useful load” of fuel (211,000 pounds).
[All of my statistics come from Boeing’s report.]
Looking at the statistics this way would seem to give the 767-200ER a clear advantage over its rival. The Airbus designed the A330 to be optimized for a growth version of the aircraft, so the -200 proportionally carries more “empty weight” (265,700 pounds) than the 767-200ER. This means there is proportionately less “useful load” available to carry fuel (248,065), factoring in the A330’s larger overall size compared to the 767.
But Boeing’s claim of a 24% fuel advantage rests on a dubious (perhaps even ridiculous) assumption, at least to my thinking. That statistic appears to assume that the US Air Force will operate the tanker at a maximum “useful load” of fuel on every takeoff for the next 40 years.
In fact, I would argue it’s more reasonable to assume the future tanker will almost never takeoff at the aircraft’s maximum gross takeoff weight, whether it’s the 767 or the A330.
This means Boeing’s entire statistical analysis is useless as a reasonable measure of operating performance, although it does raise an interesting point that in theory the tanker version of the 767 can be more efficient than the tanker version of the A330. I’d like to see Boeing re-compute the numbers, but this time using reasonable operating assumptions.
Reuters has an interesting scoop today on a key breakthrough for the Bush Administration's arms package to Saudi Arabia.
But I'm not sure what the reporter means by an "advanced" JDAM. He carefully references the laser JDAM as a possibility, but I also wonder if it could also be new JDAMs equipped with the anti-GPS-spoofing SAASM module.
What do you think?
Edmonton Journal (Alberta)January 14, 2008 Monday
Final EditionU.S. to provide Israel with 'smarter' bombs than they'll sell Saudis; Bush hopes to win over Arab allies against Iran through military sales
By Dan Williams, Reuters
JERUSALEM -- The United States has agreed in principle to provide Israel with better "smart bombs" than those it plans to sell Saudi Arabia under a regional defence package, senior Israeli security sources said Sunday.
Keen to bolster Middle East allies against an ascendant Iran, the Bush administration last year proposed supplying Gulf Arab states with some $20 billion in new weapons, including Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb kits for the Saudis.
The plan has angered Israel's backers in Washington, who say the JDAMs, which give satellite guidance for bombs, may one day be used against the Jewish state or at least blunt its power to deter potential foes. Israel has had JDAMs since 1990.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
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Ehud Olmert -Search using:* Biographies Plus News
* News, Most Recent 60 Days's government dropped its objections to the proposed Saudi deal in July after securing U.S. military aid grants worth $30 billion over the next decade.
Two unnamed Israeli security sources said the United States further mollified the Olmert government with an "understanding in principle" that future JDAM sales to Israel would include advanced technologies not on offer to Saudi Arabia.
"We are checking which of the top-of-the-line JDAMs will become available to us. The agreement is that Israel's qualitative edge will be preserved," one source said.
The spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv could not be reached for comment by press time.
Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel's Defence Ministry, declined to give details on any specific defence deals, saying only: "The Americans are certainly taking steps to help us preserve our technological superiority, as is Israel." U.S. President George W. Bush was due to visit Riyadh today during a Middle East tour he hopes will shore up Washington's efforts to isolate Iran over its nuclear projects.
In Israel and the Palestinian territories last week, Bush worked to foster bilateral peacemaking but also discussed Iran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons but whose president has stirred fears of war by urging that Israel be "wiped off the map." Israel used JDAMs extensively in its 2006 offensive against Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, requiring urgent U.S. resupplies. Surprise setbacks in the 34-day war prompted Israel's top brass to order an overhaul of the armed forces.
Believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, Israel has vowed to deny Iran nuclear weapons and hinted at the possibility of a pre-emptive strike like its air force's 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor.
According to the Internet site of JDAM manufacturer Boeing Co, recent enhancements to the kits include laser navigators and glide wings which allow jets to drop the munitions from a distance of more than 64 kilometres from the target.
Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel but signalled a softening of this stance by attending a U.S.-hosted conference on Palestinian statehood in November.
The US Army has been in the entertainment business for a long time, so it's not surprising -- nor scandalous -- that they want to hire a band to entertain the troops in Afghanistan.
But it's the way that they solicit for rock bands that makes the whole thing hilarious.
I give you the army's solicitation posted today for a "professional celebrity rock music band".
Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band, group not to exceed seven people for tour of FOB's in Kuwait and Afghanistan for February 4-13 2008. The band should be an active rock band, with a music genre consisting of Southern Rock, Pop Rock, Post-Grunge and Hard Rock. At least one member of the band should be recognizable as a professional celebrity. Protective military equipment, such as kevlar, body armour, eye and ear protection will be provided when the group is travelling on military rotary or fixed wing aircraft.
What is a professional celebrity rock band anyway? Let's see: is Kevin Bacon (Bacon Brothers), Keanu Reeves (Dogstar) or Bruce Willis (The Accelerators) available?
The AUSA hosts the Army Aviation Symposium this week, which gives me the perfect excuse to ask one of my favorite questions:
What will it take to get US military helicopter technology out of its long and barren rut?
I believe the last all-new aircraft designed, built and fielded for the US military was the UH-60A Black Hawk. The army spends about $3 billion a year on helicopters, but all of that money pays for derivatives of technology originally deployed between 30 and 50 years ago, or militarized versions of civil helicopters.
Arguably no other sector of advanced US military technology – fighters, airlifters, UAVs, ships, fighting vehicles, missiles, satellites, etc – has tolerated a longer and deeper drought of deployable innovation.
Think about it: the last all-new aircraft designed for the army was the Sikorsky/Boeing RAH-66 Comanche, and that program was cancelled in 2004 after only two prototypes were built.
The Comanche would have been the first helicopter to introduce stealth design characteristics, but the fundamental limitations of helicopter performance – speed, range and payload – have been stuck in a paralyzing rut since the late-1960s.
Of course, there are a few programs in the very early stages of concept design that may offer a solution, but each faces an agonizing and perilous path to delivering a finished product sometime after 2015.
Namely, they are the payload-limit-busting Joint Heavy Lift (JHL) aircraft (post-2015) and the speed-barrier-busting Joint Multi-Role (JMR) aircraft (post-2020).
Elements within the army want to launch an X-Plane flyoff for JHL starting in 2010, but that project will face intense competitive pressure. The alternatives come from the USAF, and they range from the futuristic AJACS concept to near-off-the-shelf derivatives of the C-17, A400M or C-130J.
Requirements and technologies for JMR will continue to coalesce over the next five years or so. But the defense industry is already jockeying to be in competitive position.
Sikorsky plans to fly the speedy X2 demonstrator this year (the original first flight date was postponed in December).
Boeing is working with Piasecki on the X-49 compound Black Hawk. Boeing’s real interest is to apply the technology to the AH-64 Apache, either as a JMR-lite if the army starts pinching its pennies, or as a testbed for an all-new platform.
Another, more near-term, idea is to deploy the technology on the H-1 Cobra, to serve as an armed escort for the US Marine Corps’ MV-22 fleet. Sikorsky’s X-2 will likely also battle for the contract if this requirement emerges over the next few years.
The ground for greater leaps in technical sophistication is being prepared by DARPA, which is supporting BellBoeing’s evolving concept for a “folding tiltrotor” or “tilting stop-rotor”. Boeing also is working with DARPA to develop the concept for a new hybrid aircraft design called “Rotor Disk”.
Please excuse the absence of new posts on the blog this week. I am out of town attending a most unexpected funeral for a family member. But I will be back later this week.
Welcome back to The DEW Line after this blog’s extended hiatus for the holidays.
To kick things off for 2008, I’m going to share with you the fruits of a little investigative project of mine over the holiday break.
Using the Way Back Machine (thank you, Jon Ostrower – aka “Flightblogger”), I hunted for any changes in the US military’s official performance specifications for its major aerospace programs.
The Way Back Machine is an archive of millions of web pages, allowing you to track changes made to individual web pages over time. The US military keeps “fact files” on all the major weapon systems, allowing snoops like me a chance to prowl for any changes in their official performance record.
I wasn’t looking for news so much as hoping to dig up questions.
In that spirit, I didn’t find a great deal of meaningful performance changes, but a few interesting fact file tweaks did appear. Here they are:
1. The US Navy has quietly increased the maximum takeoff weight for the Boeing P-8A by two tons, from 184,200 pounds to 188,200 pounds. This is not scandalous, even despite aircraft weight challenges that have plagued the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and doomed the original Aerial Common Sensor. But it raises the question, why? The P-8A is the Boeing 737-800ERX, a derivative that blends the 737-800 fuselage with the extra fuel capacity of the 737-900ER wing. The new maximum gross weight remains within the 737’s previously-established limits, but would seem to eat deeply into the potential for growth margin as the program’s design matures. This is definitely a question for my next interview with the US Navy or Boeing on the P-8A.2. The US Air Force appears to have declassified the supercruise speed for the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor. The air force’s fact sheet previously listed the F-22’s speed as “Mach 2+”. But the fact file’s speed listing was updated in October 2007 to read “1,140 miles per hour (Mach 1.72); supercruise at altitude”. This clearly means that the USAF has clarified the F-22’s supercruise speed, but the still-classified maximum speed is presumably still somewhere in the region of Mach 2.5. But, again, that’s another good question for the next time I talk to Lockheed’s Larry Lawson.
3. Probably most puzzling change occurred with the BellBoeing CV-22 Osprey, the Air Force Special Operations bird. In November 2007, the USAF updated the fact sheet, boosting the CV-22’s maximum speed from “218 miles per hour (230 knots)” to “277 miles per hour (241 knots)”. The 218 mph number is obviously a typo, as 230 knots actually converts to about 260mph. Regardless, somehow, the CV-22 picked up some extra speed during the last year. Perhaps the USAF was being conservative in its speed projections, or perhaps something changed with BellBoeing’s aircraft to add about 11 knots to the famously fickle tiltrotor’s top speed.
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