Spurts

Actually, I think it's a ME thing where it sets the direction the wind is blowing to instead of from.

Little known fact is that part of the merger was that McDD employess would get conversion of their McDD shares into Boeing shares at a 2/3 ratio (two Boeing shares per 3 McDD shares). The result is that the McDD board became the majority shareholders of Boeing. McDD "bought" Boeing and made Boeing pay for it.

No, those were intentional. I was testing to see if a low energy radius fight could combat the high energy rate fight. It largely could. With some more practice I would be able to get the shot sooner.

There were tanks on in that mission? I didn't pay attention to the loadout at all.

Well, I see the behavior of the Flanker people are talking about, but I still get shots on him and avoid his nose with little more than timed small radius pulls.

lol, that's what I figured.

For my part, I don't expect the F-14D to come to fruition unless they get that PTID and Sparrowhawk data. They might use the Typhoon experience to fudge the IRST but they have flat out said that unless they know how the data was processed for PTID/SPHK they won't do F-14D

could rule out jester being the cause by testing with a human RIO

An F-14D "would be" an all new aircraft. Real HUD, IRST, PTID in the back for high resolution TGP work, modern radar, DFCS, JDAM. The flight mechanics would be "largely" the same but even then DFCS would smooth out the rough edges (where I like to hang out)

ED also has to release the API to the 3rd parties

Another paper I had read said there is a minimum mass flow out the nozzle required to not gum it up. This is what set the lower bound of the "throttle-ability" of the Meteor. As to turning the motor off and on again, I don't know if I have seen anything about that and I certainly cannot simulate that in my model (yet) but what you mention about it being a chemical reaction sounds plausible. Thank you for sharing that. That does not negate what I have read about needing a minimum mass flow rate however, nor does it negate the temperature imposed maximum speed I have read, and these two things determine my models maximum cruising altitude. Given then total battery life is not much longer than motor burn time at minimum throttle in my model there is no real advantage to turning off the motor either. The Meteor brings a level of nuance not found in other AAMs for sure.

To piggyback off my last post: The long range AIM-54 test was a 44kft 1.5M launch from 110nm on a 50kft 1.5M head on target. The missile reached 103,500ft and flew 72.5nm to the impact point. Last year news reports came out of an F-15 firing an AIM-120 resulting in a kill from the longest distance ever recorded. Even if we ignore the R-37 claims, this means the AIM-120D flew further than 72.5nm to impact. My sim shows the AIM-54 test profile would result in the kill occurring at 76.5nm, and my estimations of onboard power for the AIM-120D indicate the launch could have been from up to 139nm with up to a 96nm flight to impact. If the AIM-54 test was done with a Meteor I see a 75nm impact point. I see a max of 135nm and 92nm flight to impact. What if these planes were on a CAP station of .8M at 34,000ft? The AIM-120D could still barely make the 110nm launch with a 67.5nm flight to impact. The Meteor could make the 110nm shot with over 16 seconds of powered flight to spare with a 70.9nm flight to impact. THAT is the power of Meteor. It nearly matches a 1.5M 44kft launched AIM-54 from a CAP hold. No runup. No acceleration. No prep. Sorry the topic of this post was F-15E vs F/A-18C. Meteor has no place here. F-15E will be able to get 2 AIM-120C5s higher and faster than an F/A-18C will (assuming it has two), and it will have the stronger radar, so in self escort BVR the Eagle has an edge.

You are misunderstanding what high altitude means to a missile in this case, and any motor fuel needs a certain fuel/oxygen ratio to burn. Go too high and that ratio gets too low and the motor flames out. As to being mach 4... those are unofficial specs for public consumption. Reading about material limitations of components changes your perspective a bit. I have seen nothing outside of Wiki to support 65k but I would not doubt it. I have performance models for these missiles we can use to look at 65,000ft Meteor shot vs 65,000ft AIM-120D shot, both at 1.7M. Target is flying at 2.5M at 75,000ft (MiG-31 analog). Meteor Head On: Max launch range of 177nm results in the Meteor climbing to just under 80,000ft where min throttle causes a speed of 3.8M. Speed it maintained throughout most the flight with intercept occurring 105nm from launch location 3 minutes after launch. Average speed was 3.64M. Tail On: Max launch range of 32nm results in the same flyout as above. AIM-120D Head On: Max launch range of 193nm results in AIM-120D climbing to 134,000ft where it coasts over 4.0M. Speed above 4.0M is maintained throughout flight as the missile coasts downhill through thin air with intercept occurring 121nm from launch location 3 minutes after launch. Average speed was 4.13M. Tail On: Max launch range of 48nm results in largely the same flyout as above. Having the right prediction models for guidance allows you to take these shots where the AMRAAM is fully ballistic at high speed and altitude to drop into a "basket" of where the target will be when it it done playing spaceship. You can't loft that high without improved guidance performance. Even the Phoenix launched from 44k and 1.5M (much lower energy shot) lofted to 105k for the long range shot test.

I caution you against outright underestimating the AIM-120D vs the Meteor. Advantages the AIM-120 have are that it can fly in thinner air for long range shots as it does NOT have an air breathing engine to support. The AIM-120D also has a much higher top speed (~1M) than the Meteor as the radome of Meteor is not rated for temperatures needed for true high speed flight. They each have advantages over the other. That said, you are not wrong in that " calling the Meteor an AMRAAM is misinformed at best." They are very different in how they operate and this plays out in what situations one is called for over the other. No the AIM-120D uses the same single impulse motor from the AIM-120C5. All advances in range come from improved lofting and flyout trajectories.

I mean, if you want a RIDE to the target then sure, use TFR. If you want to FLY to the target then you can already do that with AV-8B

On this we are agreed, we just have different data for the starting point. I am willing to leave it at that.

I never said that. I have been very clear that my sources are what have changed. I also explained that scans of the manuals cannot be posted due to forum rules. Also, if a plane goes out of production 30 years ago then gets new wiring, new radar, new mission computers, new EW suite, etc, the weight is going to change. I am not trying to attack you, so I don't understand why you feel the need to attack me.

I already told you. I am looking in the beginning of the performance section of the USAF flight manuals. Empty Weight. No fuel, no crew, no CFT. There is no data source more credible excepting an individual airframes unique weight and balance sheet. And Avionics do add weight. I am not claiming your initial claims were made in bad faith, just that you had incorrect starting data. 15 years ago I would have used the same weights you did.

Right, you only get DLZ when you are able to fire

This is exactly the point I was trying to make in my first post. I have documents I cannot post here because of forum rules (TO 1F15A-1 postJan84 and TO 1F15E-1 Apr93) saying F-15C MSIP I weighs 29,500lb empty and F-15E weighs 34,600 empty with no CFT, and I have seen this document for F-15C MSIP II with a weight of over 30,000lb. You are using the wrong weights, likely because those are easy to find numbers.

In fairness I am not able to locate my MSIP II source and only have 29,500lb for MSIP I for the F-15C so all I can verify is that the F-15E weight you used was too low

Okay, I didn't mean for this to get snarky, but if you want to insult my math, fine. F-15E-229 without CFT or anything else is 34,600. No fuel to power the engines, no crew, no CFT. You claim (invent) 1.84 T/W, that would be 63,664lb or 31,832lb per engine. Well guess what? That more than the rating for the F100-PW-229. I at least gave you the benefit of the doubt that you had an incorrect data source for F-15 mass, as most people do. Taking the rated values of the F100-PW-229 of 29,160lb, doubled, divided by 1.84 gives 31,695lb of weight. That is F-15C weight these days. I didn't "invent" anything. I checked my math, then even spelled out to you the weights I was using.

Sure, if you use the weight of the F-15C in place of the F-15E. Quick lesson in F-15 weight, F-15A/C has grown in weight (metric) from ~12.7t to ~14.1t and an F-15E with no CFTs weighs ~15.5t and ~16.8t with them (empty). If you have access to -1s you can verify this yourself. In the end, the F-15E-229 T/W(empty) is roughly the same as F-15C-220. Planes don't fly without fuel though, and the heavier F-15E needs more divert fuel so it has higher minimum reserves. Weighing more also means it will not go as far on a given volume of fuel for the mission so to match range you need more fuel. All of a sudden, the T/W isn't comparable anymore even if they both have the same AA loadout.

AIM-7 is not TWS compatible, need STT.

Will he sing with me too?