Air performance

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Phoenix_Dragon

Most modern fighters are right around 1.0 thrust-to-weight ratio, which would be 1G acceleration. The F/A-18 is listed at 0.96 T:W when fully loaded, pushing up to 1.13 by the time it's burned half its fuel. Many modern fighters are above 1.0 even when fully loaded. It's quite hard to find a modern fighter that has a low enough T:W to need smaller systems instead of just rounding to 1.0.

The F-15 is famously capable of essentially ballistic flight, not dependent on aerodynamic lift at all. That was used for launching the ASM-135 ASAT.