We are comparing thrust to weight, not performance of two different motors. If you compare the F404 to the GE-129 motor on paper of course it will blow the F404 out of the water. That’s because the F-18 is a twin engine aircraft…
I am comparing the available public data on the motors. I also compared the static thrust to weight of the two motors as they would be on the same fuel load.
But not thrust to weight
I already shared all of the sources?
Those are Super Hornets, and are inferior to the legacy Hornets in energy-maneuverability.
I already showed you the F-16 peaks at 19 deg/s or so for the C model. 23 deg/s is the instantaneous turn rate… and the Super Hornet smokes it out of the water in instant turn anyway.
That creates issues for it in the dogfight, but the total thrust output in a vacuum is not the important factor here. The thrust to weight of the fighters is. Power to weight, wing loading, etc.
The Hornet will not have the specific excess power of the F-16 but certainly can ditch into a rate fight at low altitude after one circling it to the deck and win quite often. It will be very hard to counter the F-18 simply by staying fast.
The F-14’s rate speed is higher than the F-16 and has a higher sustained rate. The specific excess power is worse… but the difference between the F-14 and F-16 is that as the F-14 gets slower… it loses the edge. The F-18 is inverse of this. It loses the edge at high speed. Starting your engagement in one circle flow is crucial, from there you force the F-16 slow and get him into a rate on the deck. As it converts into a two-circle flow you will inch around the circle and eat him alive.
That’s what I just said, the F-18 has superiority to the F-16C in practically all regards for maneuvering combat.
That’s not what the sources indicate.
Again, that is not what the sources indicated.
The sustained turn rate at speeds lower than the F-16C’s peak turn rate are significantly better and with lower radius.
He can get a solution in the first turn quite often depending on how fast the F-16 is when he enters the merge. The F-16 will never get a fire solution in the first turn against the F-18 unless he messed up.
I looked in the manual for the F-16C Block 52, near the ground ( sea level) in clean configuration it has a sustained turn rate 22 deg/sec ( 9g) max and an instantaneous 24.8 at 8-9 g overload.
The F-15 is similar, but has more instantaneous turn.
If he’s talking about GR1F-16CJ, it’s export restricted so it can’t be posted here.
It has been referenced dozens of times in dozens of threads, so I’d assume it’s safe to use as a frame of reference.
I hope we will get aircraft carriers and bigger maps, so the naval part of the naval fighter is used. Also let’s see if the economic engines are of any significance, since the endurance of matches are just so short, that you don’t need the range the F/A 18 was designed for
I’d like to ask the weight loading and context regarding the aircraft, what engine, etc but I’m not sure you should be quoting the F-16C manuals in here without proof of declassification and no export restrictions.
On the one hand, I REALLY don’t wanna spend like 30+ minutes in transit to actually play the game, on the other hand Carriers, bigger maps, and longer matches all sound like good ideas.
It is a different playstyle. So tactical battles and missions, as opposed to the tdm we have. But this would be a massive change, so unfortunately unlikely.
Then how does “on paper” records of both engines at M0.6 not prove anything?
Seeing as we’re measuring weight in minutes and thrust at unrealistic dogfight speeds, I wouldn’t take any statement on T/W from you seriously.
If public data only had figures at Mach 1, would your hypothetical dogfight be restricted to >M1 speeds?
Ah, yes, 20 minute fuel weight… On two platforms using two different engine layouts of two different thrust classes, carrying heavily varying fuel weights, as well as consuming that fuel at different rates.
20 minutes.
Make sense…
Your source for thrust of the F-18 is purely a comparison between the F404 and F414, and its defining factor is altitude, not airspeed.
Again, I’ll consider thrust to weight when it’s compared at a reasonable dogfight speed with reasonable weight figures. Nobody bases thrust to weight at mach 1 with 20 minutes of fuel.
Does your own source not put the F-18E’s sustained rate at ~18dg/s, and the F-18C’s at ~11dg/s?
And I’ve already shown you that in the general regime of 400kn, the F-16C block 50 rates near 24dg/s.
What relevance does instant turn rate have for a rate fighter?
And all of those are dependent on the weight of fuel a fighter has… That isn’t tied to an arbitrary number anyway. Normally comparisons are done with the percentage of fuel load, not the amount of time that fuel is used in a vacuum.
Is it 20 minutes at sea level? What’s the ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure at play? At what speed? What rpm?
What issue would it create in a dogfight, though? It allows room for a more aggressive turn without the disadvantage of loss of speed.
I see you talking a lot about the thrust to weight and its importance (albeit poorly), but where is this relevant with the exclusion of induced drag from the data? The Su-35S, although also have a 20dg/s+ rate and a nearly untouched T/W, won’t be seen winning any rate fight against an F-16.
You know why, right?
The SEP at what? I didn’t know aircraft had 1 fixed SEP figure and that it wasn’t a snapshot figure to determine post-data analytics… You act as if it’s a defining factor to a rate fight. It isn’t. It’s a statistic that is calculated after the most basic of figures are determined.
Seeing as we have thrust at M1… 20 minutes of fuel… and… no stated drag…?
How do you expect to get any SEP reading from this botched attempt at a calculation?
The minimum SEP, max SEP, what SEP figure is worse? I can say that the F-4B has a better SEP reading than an F-16 and it would be true under a certain pretext. I can say the Su-27 has a higher SEP reading than the F-16, and I’d be right under certain circumstance.
The F-16 is already known to have one of the best retention models in the world. To simply wave this off by saying the F-18, at mach 1, 20 minutes of fuel, pulling god knows how many Gs, has a better SEP is downright laughable.
Ah, yes, sorry. I missed the memo where the objective of a fight against an F-16 was to try and get it to the deck.
In my own duels against F-18Cs and Fs, that’s what I aimed for…
The sources corroborating your 20 minutes of fuel and unnamed SEP? Sure… Let’s just say that…
Again, the datasheet you were posting previously put the F-18C at ~11dg/s sustained at M0.8… Unless I missed something between then and here, 11 is not greater than 20+, and the maximum figure I can find on the F-18C’s turn rate with the GE-402 is a sliver over 12dg/s.
If you’re entering the merge in an F-16 hoping for a first-turn confrontation, you don’t deserve to be in an F-16.
You are comparing a single engines’ thrust to a single engines thrust… when comparing a twin engine aircraft to a single engine aircraft. Of course the difference in thrust looked like the F-16 should be superior right? In reality, the F-18 was producing 38,000 lbf+ thrust combined at the speeds you mentioned the F-16 produces 36,000 lbf… of course the F-18 is a heavier aircraft when loaded with an equal % of fuel… because it carries more fuel… but the wing loading in general is less as well.
The aspect ratio is higher, the wing loading is lower, the thrust to weight is similar. The two aircraft perform very similarly in sustained turns with the F-18 having superiority at low speed, and the F-16 at very high speeds.
I am literally measuring things with the available data as it is presented. We didn’t have the thrust data available for lower speeds from the GAO report… so I used what was available. This is not being disingenuous or anything, it is literally presenting ONLY the known information and not conjecture.
My hypotheticals on the dogfight performance have been marked accurate again and again. People said I was wrong about the F-14, about the F-15, I was right about both.
I was comparing the F-16’s 20 minute fuel load in terms of fuel weight to the same weight of fuel loaded on the F-18. That is a fair assessment, if you think I should do it any other way please feel free to ask. If you think my hypothetical dogfight conclusion is wrong… give me a reasonable scenario from which to compare that you think might tear down my argument. Obviously, a full fuel F-18 is not going to beat a min fuel F-16. Be reasonable.
Okay, and? It is a reputable source stating the installed thrust for both engines by a third party whose job is to evaluate the two aircraft honestly. This information is very important because it gives us insight into how much the thrust increases with speed on the F-18. The lower static thrust to weight than some other 4th gen fighters is obviously offset by the ramp-up of installed thrust in flight. It shows us that at higher maneuvering speeds the aircraft is actually quite good and even in some regards superior to dominant fighters like the F-16.
Please provide me figures, if there is public data online that we can use for comparison at those speeds I’ll forward it and make the comparison. Of course, you could have already done this… but what I did was compare the aircraft with what data was available. It isn’t meant to skew the results in favor towards my conclusion.
You’re showing me the areas where the F-18E beats the F-18C as if I already didn’t say the F-16C is superior to the F-18C at those altitudes as well? And I’m being disingenuous?
No, you didn’t.
What relevance does a rate fighter have against a one-circle flow fight when HOBS missiles are involved?
That’s fine, that is done in real life. People do that constantly one the forums and then wonder why an F-14A with 18 minutes of fuel (min) is losing dogfights against a min fuel MiG-23MLD (8 minutes).
What we can do to make better comparisons in the context of the game is measure stuff as they would be in a battle. I unfairly skewed one of my comparisons with the F-18C’s performance at 60% internal load with 2x AIM-9 and 2x AIM-120 against a clean F-16C at 30 minutes fuel load. Under these conditions the F-16C is matched in turn rate and beaten in AoA, turn radius, etc.
Even in-game, the two will often face with the F-18 having a more favorable advantage than that against the F-16’s as both likely aren’t hauling around full fuel for takeoff. At least, I certainly won’t be.
We’re literally comparing the two American aircraft. We know they’re going off of the standard day temperatures from NAVAIR and NATOPS. The fuel levels were indicated. What are you even yapping about here?
No one mentioned one specific figure, simply put the specific excess power of the F-16 will always be slightly higher than that of the F-18. Are you even reading what I said?
Is that not a given that the specific excess power of the aircraft with on average higher T/W ratio… that is not optimized for stability at high AoA… is going to be higher than that with the numerous high lift devices?
At what point is the SEP of the F-4B in any clean configuration and equal loading better than the F-16? Do you know how silly that sounds? Quit building the strawman here.
Yet, we know the at-a-glance sustained turn rate of the F-14 to be superior. The retention is poorer, but the rate is higher. The same goes for the F-18, but the rate is higher at low speeds, and not high speeds like the F-14. This is the difference. The F-18 can force an F-16 slow, or get slow with him if necessary. This is advantageous for him unlike the Tomcat. This means that the F-16 has two options: Stay fast and likely eat a missile… get slow and end up being out-rated or killed on the way down.
???
What is your issue with comparing to the F-16 with 20 minutes of fuel to an F-18 with the same weight in fuel? What would you have me do differently? What is with your fascination with the SEP Strawman you’re trying to set up? Of course the SEP of the Hornet will be lower than the F-16’s.
Check the altitudes involved and try again
You’re right, that’s because 15,000 feet is greater than SEA LEVEL.
Why aren’t you ground pounding like you’re supposed to?
Not useful towards the discussion, especially when you are trying to form humor at someone’s expense… and especially rather pointless when you’re the one who is wrong.
Different armament loads, weight, etc. He said block 52 but he could have been mistaken since I thought we were discussing against War Thunder’s Block 50.
So instead of taking subversive discussion techniques you could instead try to degrade my position by asking for a comparison in conditions you think are more reasonable.
At 15,000 feet. You are comparing these to the sea level performance of an F-16 and making absurd claims of 23+ deg/s sustained turn rate. The block 52 doesn’t even do that in the restricted document you guys claim I’m purposefully avoiding referencing simply because it would degrade my position. It doesn’t.
Do you not know the difference between sustained turn rate and specific excess power?