That isn’t any different from slowing down to get a tighter turn radius. Slowing down=bleeding energy. That’s what the physics of slowing down entails.Once again, learn to read. I didn't say TVC won't make much of a difference, I said specifically that it's a one-off thing. It reinforces WVR as a death zone engagement where aircraft want to avoid because it's too difficult to have enough superiority to avoid attritional combat.
And if your adversary has good supersonic maneuverability and supercruise while you’re trying to reinsert energy they’re already using their superior energy advantage to get a better kill position. As your plane slows down to get a better angle with a banking turn an adversary that can supercruise will probably try to both accelerate in order to out range you and also climb to get out of your line of sight. While you’re trying to terminate the bank turn to reposition and add energy they will then dive to get their kill shot from their higher position. I’m not assuming it’s difficult to reinsert energy via sacrificing altitude or adding thrust. I’m pointing out that to have to do so midcombat is costly to your position. Energy manueverability is all about relative energy states. Good subsonic turn rates are important for exploiting positioning but they are not the end all be all of dogfighting.As far as higher turn rate, you do sacrifice airspeed, but you're assuming it's difficult to reinsert energy via sacrificing altitude or just adding thrust.
That extra energy to reach the supersonic regime is reflected in fuel burn and the efficiency by which the plane adds more energy, not the energy state of the plane. The plane that is going supersonic will still have the higher total level of energy. What you’re saying is basically that the faster movng object has less energy than the slower moving object. That’s a violation of basic physics.One big mistake I think you're making when you consider supersonic maneuverability as dogfight maneuverability is that you're treating supersonic energy as linear or quadratic. In reality, there's a highly non-linear factor added when you get supersonic energy. The Mach barrier means that there's a spike in energy needed to go supersonic, so when you bleed off the potential energy you bleed it at a greater rate than you would were you to stay supersonic or stay subsonic. The additional energy at Mach 1-Mach 1.5 is less than it may otherwise appear for this reason.
Okay, so are you saying good ITR=bad subsonic manueverabilty? What do we make of the claim that the J-20 is comparable to an F-16 in the subsonic regime then, when the F-16 is commonly regarded as having the best subsonic STR of its generation (hence the best gun fighter)? Furthermore, to your point about G forces, if 9G is the limit for all fighters because of human pilot constraints then there really should be very little to no difference in STR between most fighters in the subsonic regime if they can all do 9G turns in that regime.Lastly, I want to go back to the Song Wencong paper. In the design paper, he talks about supermaneuverability. But strictly speaking, supermaneuverability refers to post-stall maneuvering, which is an instantaneous maneuvering factor, not a sustained maneuvering factor, meaning that it's more useful in terms of BVR or suicide WVR (point, bleed energy, shoot) than it is in strict dogfighting, where sustained maneuverability matters more
Do you know what helps sustained maneuverability? The ability to attain or recover energy. Do you know what helps attain or recover energy? Being able to accelerate faster, fly higher, reach higher speeds. Do you know what helps maximize combat usability in supersonic flight? Supersonic maneuverability. This goes to the point I made about how it makes no sense to talk about different flight regimes in aerial combat as if fighters are restricted to just one regime for one type of combat condition. In reality fighters will use any kinematic advantage they can get, and being able to maneuver effectively at a higher speed is a huge advantage even in close range. Maneuverability isn’t all about turn rates. Once again you are overextrapolating from a simplified shorthand because you seem incapable of grasping the more complex fundamentals.
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