"The effectiveness of ANY weapon system cannot be objectively assessed by the fact that it can go quite fast carrying some weapons. The only OBJECTIVE assessment that we can do just now would be as I have said (and you have ignored) before is to run the simulations to check that it can do the job"
I agree, what happens under the skin is far more important
It is silly to use Jane's specs to judge an aircraft, but I'm not the one hand wringing over the F-35ab being a bit slower than a "clean" f-16 in level flight trans accel. (level flight trans accel is something I've never heard doing operationally) and for the hand wringers, block 6 has an engine upgrade
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The not going as fast as a clean f-16 in trans acell has been public for 12 months now and I guess would have been known that the pre 2001 wasn't going to be met when they put the 2005 design into a wind tunnel.
The 9+ air forces are running sims, They started with a LER of 3:1 and now have a LER of 6:1, 4 vs 8.