What is the fastest speed a fighter aircraft can go, or should I say can be flown?

Question

In a recent debate somebody told me that US fighter aircraft can fly at 10000 mph, however I dont believe any human could fly a plane with such G force.

Answer 1

Raw speed has nothing to do with G-force.
The shuttle does 17000mph and the men who went to the moon did nearly 25000mph.
The fastest flying jet 'fighter' is the Mig 31. Its Russian and was designed to be a high level interceptor to counter the SR-71.
Its capable of Mach 2.8 (about 2000mph) but if it overruns the engines (pushes them beyond their design limits it will hit mach 3.2. The engines will be have to be replaced because the parts will melt together due to the enormous heat.

The SR-71 was the limit of what a jet powered aircraft could ever fly at. It routinely did mach 3.2 and was rumoured to have an absolut limit of mach 4+ but its all still highly classified. Its engines were unique because they were 2 types of engines in one case. Powerful turbojets for takeoff and speeds below mach 1.5 and a ramjet (which requires high speeds to work).
It wasnt a fighter though, it was good for ultra high speed straight line runs for recce sorties.

No aircraft, jet powered or otherwise cannot fly even close to 10000mph. There is no metal suitable for aircraft construction that will withstand the huge temperatures generated at that speed.
To put it into context, Concorde (mach 2 - 1400mph) was polished smooth before every flight to minimize the drag and lower temperatures.
The SR-71 was made out of titanium, and had to be designed to expand nearly 1ft in all dimensions due to heat. It leaked on the ground until it went fast enough to seal all the gaps. And that only did 2500mph.

The fastest manned aircraft in the world is the X-15 rocket plane. It did mach 6.85 (4520mph) but that was basically in space to minimise drag and heat. Most of the pilots that flew it were awarded astronaut wings because they went so high, upto 260000ft. It was air launched from the wing of a modded B52.

The fastest ever vehicle that flew in the atmosphere was the X43A scramjet. It did Mach 9 (6600mph) and was unmanned.

The G-force experienced by the pilots in all the above aircraft is no more then 5g and thats in a break turn. Thats half the limit of the Typhoon or Raptor and they are normal fighters.
You would typically experience 3-4g in acceleration in the fastest aircraft like the Sr-71.

In short, nothing flying will do more then mach 3 unless its rocket powered and human beings can survive ANY amount of g-force. But as the G goes up the time exposed has to come down. A man did rocket sled tests and survived 40g decelleraration.
Ejector seats on fighters have more g-force then and acceleration of an aircraft.
Its perfectly possible to survive flying at 10000mph, you just have to build the aircraft to withstand the temperatures and give it powerful enough engines that burn for long enough.

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What is the fastest speed a fighter aircraft can go, or should I say can be flown?
In a recent debate somebody told me that US fighter aircraft can fly at 10000 mph, however I dont believe any human could fly a plane with such G force.

Answer 3

The fastest fighters can fly between mach 2.5 and mach 3, but only when especially modified without radar or weapons. Some armed fighters can reach close to mach 2, but many cannot even break mach 1 when armed.
What is most important about a fighter is how it flies in its wartime configuration, not its technical top speed in a useless configuration.
The fastest operational aircraft is the SR-71, which is capable of mach 3.3, according to the aircraft POH, which is now declassified. It can climb at mach 3, but it has several warning about the engines being powerful enough to easily exceed the structural limitations, and operations above mach 3 must be approved by superiors.

Answer 4

Fastest Fighter Jets

Answer 5

The experimental fighter version of the SR-71 (YF-12A) could do 3000 miles per hour. The problem was it was so fast and turned so slow, it would only have one shot at the enemy and then it would be long gone. Not practical and they dropped the idea pretty quickly.

Today they make fighters trying for the BIG FOUR in flight characteristics, but have to compromise to get an overall good plane. What they want is:

high altitude capability, speed, maneuvering and range.

If you look at fighters of the past, they each had a compromise in there somewhere.

Answer 6

It would depend on what the plane was designed to do as speed is not always for many situations in combat as software becomes more apparent in new fighter or interceptor planes, identifying target from a great distance would serve in attack or defend mod for the pilot and give more advantage then just speed. However high tailing out of curtain situations speed is a good thing to have. I would say getting to a target one may need speed though dog fighting I have no idea what the pilot would feel he needed in gaining the upper hand. We can assume the program the plane has installed will determine the speed and action needed

Answer 7

Firstly, speed and G Force are not necessarily proportionate. Acceleration, and directional change, are what cause an increase in G Force.

Secondly, I don't think today's operational fighter aircraft exceed Mach 3.

Thirdly, British Harrier Jump Jets demonstrated during the Falklands war that slow is better, by using their vector thrust to out-manouvre the enemy aircraft.

Re the answer below, the Earth's escape velocity is 25,000mph so all astronauts have travelled at least as fast as this.

Answer 8

Fastest Us Fighter Jet

Answer 9

According to Aerospaceweb, the Russian Mig-25 is still the fastest fighter plane to enter service, even though it dates from 1964. This is an extract from an item on their website:
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"The MiG-25 began flight testing in 1964 and a special stripped-down, high-performance prototype called the Ye-266 soon broke all existing speed, altitude, and time to climb records. Ten of the records set by the Ye-266 and improved Ye-266M still stand today, including:

Speed over a 500 km circuit: 1,852.6 mph (2,981.5 km/h) set by Mikhail Komarov 5 October 1967
Absolute altitude: 123,523 ft (37,650 metres) set by Alexandr Fedotov 31 August 1977
Time to climb to an altitude of 30,000 metres: 3 min 10 sec set by Alexandr Fedotov 17 May 1975
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I hope this helps.

Answer 10

Fastest fighters can do mach 3, but practical machines can only do mach 2 [1200 mph]

As far as fastest speeds go, shuttles re-enter at 25,000 mph.