eloise wrote:@Spurt: How many missile can F-15 carry before it has lower top speed and longer acceleration time than F-35?
Can a fully loaded F-15X with 16-22 AIM-120 catch a F-35?
By my model (and I have a fairly high confidence in this model) an F-15SA with 14 AMRAAMS and two AIM-9Xs with CFT only has a top aerodynamic speed of ~1.59M. With 60% fuel, it would take 54s to reach Mach 1.2 from 0.8 at 30,000ft and using 1,280lb of fuel to do it. It would have 3 minutes of AB time remaining under these conditions before nominal BINGO (3* reserve remaining).
Weighing in at 60,580lb, it has a Wing Loading of 99.6, and Lift Loading of 60.8, a remaining Fuel Fraction of 0.22, and an excess thrust to weight at 0.85M@36,000ft of 0.18. That T/W correlates to a 10 deg climb or an acceleration of 3.4kt/sec or 0.006M/sec. There is a lot of power in two F100-GE-129s.