strykerxo wrote:quicksilver wrote:"That being said if the legacy hornet can fly like the SH why haven't we been able to witness it at a show?"
Because the juice is not worth the squeeze. Apart from interweb warriors and people who are trying to sell/buy aircraft, few really care about something that a jet does at an airshow.
If that is true than why do the SH, F-22/35 routines involve post stall maneuvering, airshow crowds want to see what these AC are capable of, we can't see stealth, SA, but we can see maneuvering. The F-18 has had this capability long before this new generation of aircraft, why hide it?
Once again, the risk was judged not worth the reward. If you bothered to read the doc by Dunaway et al linked by a poster above re: the effort to 'uninhibit' (my word) SH hi-aoa handling, you might have noticed that Hornet didnt get similar handling until the SH work had been achieved. Thus, while capable of such maneuvers, until that time Hornet was either very near, or in oocf in order to do so. That changes the 'risk' part of the equation for air show decision-makers because an air show puts the jet in close proximity to the ground, where there are people and things that people own/value, and where the probability and consequence of getting something even a little bit wrong (for a host of reasons) is very high. In training, these kinds of maneuvers generally happen well above 10K' and are performed for the purpose of preparation for combat.
Some elements of the early SH demos were far more aggressive but were subsequently altered for similar risk/reward judgements. If a SH, Raptor of F-35 are doing something in an air show, it has been deemed low risk for departure/oocf.