WWS pal Stephen Trimble has an entertaining post up at his always entertaining blog, The DEW Line. It seems that just a few weeks ago the Pentagon quietly released the supercruise speed of the F-22:
The US Air Force appears to have declassified the supercruise speed for the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor. The air force’s fact sheet previously listed the F-22’s speed as “Mach 2+”. But the fact file’s speed listing was updated in October 2007 to read “1,140 miles per hour (Mach 1.72); supercruise at altitude”. This clearly means that the USAF has clarified the F-22’s supercruise speed, but the still-classified maximum speed is presumably still somewhere in the region of Mach 2.5.
Trimble catches some other interesting changes to the “fact files” maintained by the military. If you’re an aviation geek, you’ll enjoy the read.
