Originally Posted by gums
I truly believe you could exceed the mach "protections" until reaching maybe 0.95M or so with no ill effects. I truly believe that you could fly the jet at 10 or 15 degrees AoA.
Your first sentence reminds me of D.P.Davies: "If you can choose between stalling and something else, choose something else" (IIRC). IMHO your second sentence needs to be qualified: At M.82 the airplane can be considered stalled at about 8 degrees, at M.6 (the speed at apogee, see the graph I posted recently) at about 11 degrees, whereas 15 degrees may be just flyable at Mach 0.2 - 0.3.