
Gums is probably talking about running a grind. Despite the speculative tone of this illustration, it's a very real thing:
Before you take the picture at face value though, the chainsaw can be run in any direction by changing which leg of the loop the aircraft flies faster on, so you can run a "retreating" grind to kite the enemy along and keep them at arms distance. In such cases retreating aircraft would light blowers -- thus you can surmise, advancing aircraft would not be flying so fast.
One could view the chainsaw as a modern adaptation of the old WW2 energy grinder, where elements of a flight successively make swooping attacks on lower altitude targets before escaping to altitude and resetting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_iW1T3yg80 (15:00+)
In light of this, I think the F-35 is comfortably at home in a conventional, toe to toe, you-see-me-I-see-you engagement in the theoretical scenario that adversary sensor technology has eroded the VLO advantage. The F-35's ability to rapidly decelerate and make high ITR subsonic bat turns and then accelerate is perfectly tailored to a tactic like the chainsaw and is likely a major reason why modern aircraft designs have all trended towards favoring ITR over STR.
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You'll run into this before you even get past the sound barrier -- there's a reason why despite advances in potential in the past 50 years, ACM has remained inside a particular band of airspeeds.
Frankly, you sound like you've latched onto this idea of supersonic maneuvering because you "heard of this concept" and now you're trying view everything through this lens. The reality is that there are a lot of practical realities in time, fuel economy, maneuvering space, among others, that incentivize fighters to fly (perhaps surprisingly) slowly, relative to their potential top speeds.
Before you take the picture at face value though, the chainsaw can be run in any direction by changing which leg of the loop the aircraft flies faster on, so you can run a "retreating" grind to kite the enemy along and keep them at arms distance. In such cases retreating aircraft would light blowers -- thus you can surmise, advancing aircraft would not be flying so fast.
One could view the chainsaw as a modern adaptation of the old WW2 energy grinder, where elements of a flight successively make swooping attacks on lower altitude targets before escaping to altitude and resetting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_iW1T3yg80 (15:00+)
In light of this, I think the F-35 is comfortably at home in a conventional, toe to toe, you-see-me-I-see-you engagement in the theoretical scenario that adversary sensor technology has eroded the VLO advantage. The F-35's ability to rapidly decelerate and make high ITR subsonic bat turns and then accelerate is perfectly tailored to a tactic like the chainsaw and is likely a major reason why modern aircraft designs have all trended towards favoring ITR over STR.
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lrrpf52 wrote: A very low turn rate will still generate tons of G at those speeds, and corresponding concerns over GLOC.
You'll run into this before you even get past the sound barrier -- there's a reason why despite advances in potential in the past 50 years, ACM has remained inside a particular band of airspeeds.
Frankly, you sound like you've latched onto this idea of supersonic maneuvering because you "heard of this concept" and now you're trying view everything through this lens. The reality is that there are a lot of practical realities in time, fuel economy, maneuvering space, among others, that incentivize fighters to fly (perhaps surprisingly) slowly, relative to their potential top speeds.