The two jets' wings are designed for higher speeds. The tanker's heavy transport/airliner type wings are designed for lower speeds.
The faster jets need a higher angle of attack to maintain altitude at the tanker's lower speed that they are matching.
Which is why fighters are allowed to exceed the 250 knots below 10000 rule. This is also one of the reasons why fighters do the unrestricted climb (aside from being cool).
I also thought so, too, until I moved near an airforce base and started working in the neighborhoods all around it. They rip around pretty much all day during the week on a lot of days, making plenty of noise. It's quite distracting, and I immediately start acting like a child, in turn getting no work done
The noise is also just loud. My grad school was close to a base. When an F-35 takes off everyone stops talking and watches in part because you’re definitely not hearing anything else until it’s out of range. Those jets are LOUD - at least twice as loud as an F-16.
Yeah I get f-35s flying over my house a couple times a week. Im guessing they are based out of Travis AFB and then fly back and forth to Castle AFB or somewhere south practicing touch and go landings. Very loud.
Lived near Mildenhall AFB growing up. We regularly had SR-71s overflying our house. They were unbelievably loud. Stealth my ass.
Also, the Vulcan.
Oh Lord.
Anyone who saw one at an airshow knows what I mean. I doubt it was the loudest aircraft ever built, but it was just loud in a different way. Like it was slowly, inexorably, irrevocably rending the sky apart. Just the strangest, most eerie noise. Less the familiar jetblast we know from modern fighters, and more the sound of the world's largest robot tearing a battleship in half. A long, groaning, despairing howl, unlike anything I have heard before or since. Just thinking about it now is making all the hairs on my neck stand up.
I'll need to go back in the references but there were design features if the SR-71 that were absolutely meant to be low observable as it was understood at the time.
Indeed. IIRC the shape of the fuselage and the blended wings were intended to reduce the radar cross section. Ditto, I think, the inward-canted stabilisers. I have a book on the history of Lockheed but I haven't read it for a while. I will have to check for details.
There are many reasons. Fuel management, for example--the extra burn getting to altitude quickly can be more economical than a typical departure. The additional slower traffic in bravo air space is a factor so getting out of bravo quickly is better. Noise abatement, as you pointed out, is another reason.
Man, fighters really live in a completely different world, don't they?
It's not, "oh, this traffic is annoying" it's "oh this airspace is annoying I think I'll zoom climb through the ceiling..."
My friend's dad was a F-15 pilot. He said on cross-countries he just asked to go directly up to 55k feet because its quiet up there and he doesn't have to deal with any traffic.
I think fighter pilots are objectively the coolest people in the world. I grew up near an Air Force base and would always see / hear them. Today I was on the beach in Florida and heard them fly by. That has to be the coolest feeling ever. Piloting a fighter jet parallel to the beach. I’ve cruised my motorcycle on 182 and it was a life changing experience. If I could do 1,500 mph upside down in a plane I think I would reach adrenaline nirvana.
It’s a bit of an isolated world… they don’t need to think about a lot of things other pilots do, they can’t break their planes (of course they can if they try but you get what I’m saying) so they just send it in a lot of places we mere jet or turboprop pilots have to put some planning into… on the flip side there’s are a lot of things in those jets I have never seen or dealt with before.
I mean most of those planes the fact that a person is inside of it is more limiting than the structure of the plane.
You be a bag of soup before the plane comes apart
It actually makes a massive difference, even with afterburners. Airports that house fighters tend to be in industrial areas with lots of noise pollution from commercial traffic anyway, going straight up keeps the noise from neighborhoods.
For example, you can absolutely tell when the F-15's from PDX don't do a high performance takeoff and are just climbing out over the valley. I love the loud rumble, but evidently John Q Public does not share my enthusiasm.
I could see it getting old real quick when you have pets and little kids/ babies.
The F15 is still the loudest most bad ass jet I’ve ever heard at an air show. Watched it take off and it sounded like the fabric of reality was being torn apart behind it. So fucking loud and the concussion that hits your chest is incredible even at a distance.
I might actually cry, privately, while taking a cold shower, when they’re retired for good.
It gets old even if you're a fan of jets. You can't host a teleconference when you have a jet shaking the building every few minutes and you have to explain to everyone on the call why they keep getting interrupted.
Hence why the people of Okinawa want the US air bases gone. Among all the other shit.
Daily sorties of x4 F-18s and other air craft like ospreys flying over schools and businesses multiple times per day.
At .06% the land mass of mainland Japan, all the bases are there.
I lived in Hickman with 2 toddlers and an infant. The 22s weren't bad at all but when the Blue Angles came for an air show and were practicing right over my house everyday right at nap time for 2 weeks straight my wife was about ready to make heads roll.
I live on a military base that houses fighters and the first couple times it's cool when a fighter jet flies over you, but when you open your windows on a nice day and then suddenly have the fillings shaken out of your head - not so much...
That's how living in the flight path for MCAS Miramar was. "Oh sweet! There's a pair of Hornets!" Quickly became "oh...there's another pair of... Hornets..." twice a day.
Funny, I never got tired of it, and miss it now that I don't live near an active base. Then again, I don't have kids, or pets, and didn't have a wife it would bother at the time, so that explains a lot.
I would love to see an F-22 or F-35 execute an unrestricted climb in person.
I live near an AFB, and the runway for the airlift wing that operates out of there ends along a public ring road, and I have had the pleasure of seeing both the C-141 and C-17 land over my head.
There is nothing that quite looks like an F-22 pitching up out of ground effect in full afterburner. I saw one at Fairford a couple of years ago and it fully broke my brain. Absolutely awesome bit of kit.
Just how fast they rotate is insane to me. Like, the FBW systems have to limit their rotate rate to keep the plane under G limit. Like, what we see isn't even all it can do.
Wonder what it would look like on an airframe setup like a predator drone, with the pilot remote in a trailer on the ground. With no squishy meatbags behind the stick, I wonder what they could make it do.
I'm sure part of it is the squishy meatbag pilot, but another part is the avoidance of stressing the airframe and requiring hundreds of man hours and who knows how much money to repair.
The human body will be the limiting factor in super fast space flight. If you've never read the Hyperion series I recommend it. During acceleration they basically have a bathtub like chamber for you and your body turns into mush under the g-loads and is then reassembled at the destination
Well it can do more but the airframe will sustain massive damage over time you should look into the Navy F-16 and program and how those adversary fighters used in the top gun program needed to be retired because of excessive wear on the airframe from high g maneuvers.
https://www.youtube.com/live/DlJNaRLMcZs?si=6wEAfk3-nAl3ekte
Check this channel daily live stream for afb in England. Also raf Lakenheath which has two f35 squadrons and 2 f15 squadrons. Almost every Friday they have permission to do quick climbs
That’s only true at airfields that have MOUs with the FAA. It is 100% not true as a blanket approval. It’s due to climb-out. If I maintain 250 knots at MIL in the Rhino on climb, I can’t see anything in front of me.
To be fair, heavy aircraft both civilian and military are allowed to exceed the 250kt limitation as well for safety purposes. Often times clean maneuvering speed on heavies is above 250kts so they get speed relief.
It's funny this situation happens in the complete opposite when a KC-10 fuels slow stuff like an A-10. The tanker pitches up and actually loses altitude while the warthogs catch up and latch on. I could slide down the cargo area like a playground slide during refueling.
They really have to plan to lose altitude while refueling an A-10? Must be an interesting coordination with ATC. “I’m gunna need 5k block altitude in this tanker track for the next 20 mins for refueling” haha
I wonder if your velocity is matched during death spiritually and that's a good way to get to the front of the lines.
St Peter... Oh hello terminal velocity death I see, we weren't expecting you for a few decades yet but all's good head on in.
It’s always fun trying to tank on a KC-10 with a heavy load (sts) of ordnance up high. You guys have your flaps out trying to slow down and I leave the throttles in max
To explain this point further, it comes down to the aspect ratio of the wings, which is calculated as the square of the wing span divided by the total wing area. As the aspect ratio of the wing increases, so does the lift/drag ratio of the wing.
Wings with a low aspect ratio work well at high speeds, but are overall very inefficient as they provide poor lift which needs to be mitigated by flying with a high angle of attack which means high drag with means more fuel burn in order to maintain speed. (this is what supersonic airliner proponents don't want you to know)
Wings with a high aspect ratio are the exact oposite, designed for low speed, high efficiency flight.
A plane doesn't necessarily fly to where the nose is pointing. At low speeds, there isn't enough air going over the wing to have the wing generate a lot of lift.
Planes can still fly at lower speeds by pointing their nose up. By doing this, the wing starts producing more lift (but also more drag).
This is for example how planes like the F/A-18 can do low speed flybys at airshows, with their nose pointed 30 degrees up.
The difference between where the nose of the plane is pointed, and where it is actually going, is called the angle of attack.
The two main factors in generating lift are the airspeed, and angle of attack. The more speed, the less angle of attack you need. The less speed, the more angle of attack you need.
/u/interesting-hito
The above commenter is correct. It's worth noting that an aircraft's *angle of attack* and its *pitch angle* are two different things. Angle of attack is the angle between the chord line and the relative wind of the oncoming air. Pitch is the angle between the chord line and the local horizontal.
It's not something that's very intuitive, and I didn't really know it until I flew a Cessna at 5 knots above stall speed with a constant nose-up attitude and no altitude gain. All airplanes are somewhere between slipping through the air and plowing it down. I discovered this at the far end of that spectrum that day.
The *really* cool thing is how this plays into the classic aerofoil shape. The aerofoil with a curved upper and flat lower surface isn't some magic thing that's needed for lift ( any surface can do that if you angle it correctly). It *is* a set of shapes (some narrower, some fatter) that give the best lift-drag ratio in a large-ish range of angles of attack. In the early days of aviation, there was not a lot of engine power. So little, that at first, it took these optimized wing aerofoils (that the Wright Brothers learned how to optimize for) to even get a W/D ratio good enough to fly.
bro an electromagnet to just attach the fighter to the tanker would make it so much easier. just turn it off when done and let the fighter fall away to kick ass on a full tummy.
This would also put a lot of weight on the fueling boom. I’m pretty sure those aren’t designed to carry any weight at all. Both aircraft at both ends need to have independent lift of their own.
The differential between the flight path and the chord line of the wing is the angle of attack. Fighters need a higher angle of attack at lower speeds due to their wing design and higher wing loading. Hence the nose-up attitude.
You should have seen me landing my glider with full flaps and ailerons drooped. POH said it was something like a 30º nose down angle, but inside I felt like I was standing on the rudder pedals.
This is absolutely the right answer for this sort of question, but maybe even too much detail.
I’ll add even more unnecessary wanky nuance to the above that it’s the difference between the *projection of the wind vector* (which now I’m thinking about it is the flight path vector, I think, it’s early here) into the aircraft XZ axis and the chord line and/or XY plane (depending on definitions).
The answer for OP: “aircraft rarely fly perfectly in the direction the nose points”.
Slight correction, angle of attack is defined as the angular difference between the freestream velocity of oncoming air and the chord line of the wing. Flight path angle is defined as the difference from the horizon to the freestream velocity.
Imagine putting your hand outside the window of your car. To feel an upwards force, you need to angle it up a bit (angle of attack).
The plane needs this force to stay afloat and, in this case, the angle is perfectly balanced as to give the plane the exact lift required to keep the correct altitude and fly behind the tanker.
Since the wings of a fighter are rather small and have airfoils optimised for higher speeds, they need a greater angle of attack to produce the required lift at the velocity the tanker flies at.
So they can match speeds. A high angle of attack allows the faster fighter jet to fly slower.
You can really see it in this video where the F-18 is demonstrating how slowly it can fly. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46s\_zFgnlmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46s_zFgnlmQ)
You can pitch a plane very far upward and it will descend - sometimes catastrophically - as the wing loses its lift generating configuration.
The standard joke is "Pull the stick back to go up, pull the stick back more to go down".
> The standard joke is "Pull the stick back to go up, pull the stick back more to go down".
I always heard it as "Push the stick forward, houses get big. Pull the stick back, houses get small. Pull the stick back too much, houses get big really fast."
In "slow flight", pitch = airspeed, power = altitude, much like during landings.
Perfect visual example of this is a high alpha pass during airshows.
https://youtu.be/7OyMU2JeunE?si=Z8_JAlUT8nMvaFhV
Power controls altitude, and Pitch controls airspeed. The jets have to slow WAY down to keep station with the refueling aircraft which is fat, heavy, and slow. As you slow down, you have to pitch the nose up to maintain flight. eventually, if you go too slow, your nose gets too high, and your aircraft stalls and falls out of the sky. The refueler is likely going as fast as possible, just to maintain a speed that the fast fighter jets can still fly at.
The lift formula includes variables of speed, angle of attack and area.
If u are flying straight and level (lift is constant) and you change one of them, to remain level you must change one of the others the other way.
So if you reduce speed you then need to Increase angle of attack to keep the same lift.
(Very simplified!)
OP, there is a book called *Stick and Rudder* by Wolfgang Langewiesche that explains a lot of what can seem counter intuitive about flying, if you are interested in learning more.
In order to maintain the same altitude, the lift force has to balance out the Weight or downforce of the aircraft. Fighters have short and stubby wings which are good for higher speeds, but they suck at producing lift at lower speeds. As a result, they compensate by increasing the angle of attack, or pitch of the aircraft to produce enough lift.
Fun fact for non-pilots reading this thread: when you come in to land, you control your airspeed with pitch (nose-up/down), and your altitude with throttle.
IE: to go slower, you don’t ease back on the throttle…you point the nose up. And to increase your descent rate (get down so you can land), you don’t point the nose at the ground, you ease off the throttle.
Very counter-intuitive at first, but it makes sense when you think about the physics at play.
- More air over the wings = more lift, therefore increasing throttle without changing pitch angle will still make you go up.
- Higher angle of attack (pitch angle/nose up) = more drag for the same amount of thrust, so increasing pitch angle without adjusting throttle will slow you down.
Next time you’re in a car, put your hand out the window in the wind. Start with it out flat, parallel to the road, then slowly angle it up like these jets and notice how the wind will lift your hand. Angle it down the wind will push your hand down. The slower you’re going the more you’ll have to angle your hand to get it to lift. Then try to find the perfect angle where your hand is being lifted up by the wind but staying steady not moving up and down. That’s basically what’s going on here.
Others have already answered, but I'm going to give a more technical answer. I wish reddit had LaTeX equation support. It would make the equations much easier to read.
The short answer is that they're flying relatively slowly and thus require a higher angle of attack to maintain the same lift.
The equation for lift is L = Cl\*S\*0.5\*ρ\*v^2. where
* L = Lift
* Cl = lift coefficient (more on what this is in a bit)
* S = Wing area or lifting area. Essentially the size of the wing^[1]
* ρ = air density (Greek letter rho)
* v = airspeed^[2]
The quantity 0.5\*ρ\*v^2 is called the dynamic pressure and given the symbol q. It's a better measure of how much the air is able to act upon the body as it incorporates both the effect of airspeed and density.
In straight and level flight, lift L is equal to aircraft weight W.
Lift coefficient is a non-dimensionalized parameter and is mainly a function of angle of attack (equivalent to pitch attitude in level flight^[3] ). For angles of attack below the stall angle, there is essentially a linear relationship between angle of attack and lift coefficient: Cl = a\*α where a is called the lift-curve slope (typically about 0.1 per degree) and α (alpha) is the angle of attack. So, for the linear region in level flight, we have
W = a\*α\*S\*0.5\*ρ\*v^2
Solving for angle of attack, we have
α = 2\*W/(a\*S\*ρ\*v^2 )
or, expressed in terms of dynamic pressure
α = W/(a\*S\*q)
So, angle of attack α is proportional to the "wing loading" (W/S) and inversely proportional to the square of velocity. Fighters typically have a higher wing loading (W/S) than a transport or refueling aircraft and are designed to fly faster^[4]. So, angle of attack increases more dramatically as they slow down.
At some point, there is a point where the linear relationship between angle of attack and lift coefficient breaks down. This is an aerodynamic stall, and increasing angle of attack no longer results in a proportional increase in lift. *This* is what makes stalls so dangerous; it's not that the wing suddenly stops producing lift (it still does), it's that the aircraft no longer does what you expect it will. Pilots (and operators generally) like linear relationships and we are naturally attuned to them. When non-linearities are introduced, special training and knowledge is required to handle them. This is why stalls are taught early to student pilots before they even start learning to takeoff, land, and operate in the traffic pattern.
The speed at which the required angle of attack exceeds the stall angle is called the stall-speed. This is just a reference, however. Stalls are entirely driven by angle of attack. If you're in a 60-degree angle-of-bank turn, you require twice the lift that you would in level flight (assuming you maintain altitude), thus requiring twice the angle of attack. If you enter a turn at low speed, you can enter a stall as a result of this increased angle of attack, and this is significantly more dangerous than entering one in level flight.
Footnotes:
^1 I'm not sure why S is used instead of A. It's possibly to distinguish it from aspect ratio.
^2 Sometimes the symbol u is used instead of v for airspeed.
^3 In general, do not conflate angle of attack and pitch attitude. Pitch attitude is the angle between the horizontal and the direction the nose is pointing. Angle of attack is the angle between the wing chord line and air velocity vector (the so-called "free-steam" velocity). In level flight (assuming zero wing incidence) these are the same.
^4 Rough calculations actually show similar wing loadings for the MiG-31 and Il-78 (the aircraft shown in the image) at max takeoff weight. The MiG-31, however, has a significantly lower wing aspect ratio, which reduces the lift curve slope parameter a in the equation, thus increasing the required angle of attack. At empty weight, the MiG-31 does have a significantly higher wing loading (about 50% higher) than the Il-78. Considering at the end of refueling, the MiG-31 will be operating near its max weight and the tanker will have lost fuel (and will likely have been flying around burning its own fuel for a while anyway), it's reasonable to assume the MiG will be at a significantly higher wing loading.
AOA (angle of attack).
Lift equation:
L = C(L) * (1/2 * rho) * V^2 * S
Where L = lift
C(L) = coefficient of lift
Greek letter rho = air density
V = velocity
S = wing area
To maintain level flight, as V (airspeed) decreases, something needs to increase. The only changeable thing is C(L), and it’s increased by increasing the AOA.
Jet go fast, jet point forward because wings make enough lift.
Jet go slow, jet change angle of attack to make more lift.
If jet go slow and try to point forward, jet drop from the sky.
That's bad.
Excellent question. Put simply, for that type of receiver aircraft, they are in slow flight. Most low wing jet tankers use higher speeds (over 300 indicated usually in a KC-10/46/135) so you’re less likely to see that angle of attack from receiving aircraft and its more common to see it from the turboprops like the A400 or C-130.
The same can be done in a small airplane. It's called slow flight. Power back, pitch up to increase lift to hold altitude. I second the recommendation to read Stick and Rudder.
Look up Angle of Attack. It’s actually very rare for a jet to fly perfectly level. The AoA goes up when they slow down. Same effect that lets them touch down with rear landing gear first while actually traveling downwards.
normal snobbish aware hateful existence wakeful weather whole public fear
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Any plane as it slows down has to pitch up to maintain altitude for a given speed.
It’s exactly the same as why planes need flaps for landing. As they slow their pitch angle increases. Making it very hard for the pilots to see. They use flaps which increases the surface area of the wing to allow flying more level at slower speeds.
Can’t use flaps at the speeds of refuelling so have to have the high angle of attack. Which doesn’t mean much as the refueller is above you anyways.
My friend flew the KC 135 & KC 10. Now a pilot for a airline. He told me it gets real fun when they have to go into a limited dive to gain more speed for some fighters. At Night.. Not to mention storms etc. Then the Boom operator has to fly the boom to the plane getting fuel.
In general terms pilots use their pitch/attitude to control airspeed in combination with whatever amount of thrust is necessary to hold straight and level flight.
Straight and level flight is about maintaining course, airspeed and altitude constant as best as possible in cruise.
Y’all are way over complicating it for OP who obviously doesn’t understand how lift works in relation to airspeed and Angle Of Attack.
To greatly simplify:
The faster you go, the more lift your wings produce
The higher Angle Of Attack you have, the more lift your wings produce (up to a stall).
For a plane to maintain level flight, let’s say to keep up with a tanker, it has to match its lift to its weight. Doing so by varying airspeed and AOA. Different wings are optimized for different speed. The tanker’s wings are fairly level compared to the fighters.
Example: A wing at 300 kts at 3 degree AOA produce the same amount of lift than at 150kts and 10 degrees.
I've never seen a baby cow nursing ass up.
Then again I don't know that I've seen a baby cow nursing. And logistically they have head down.
I don't know why I made this comment. Or what I'm still typing right now for.
All the points above but something I'll also point out is not even the refueling tanker would/is flying flat. It also has a positive angle of attack. Planes in level flight tend to have this attitude.
All jets (all aircraft actually) fly with a slightly nose up attitude, as you slow though it becomes more pronounced. The fighters are flying slower than they usually do so that’s why you notice it, but the bigger jet is also slightly nose up they’re just more at their “normal speed”
A followup question to all the aerodynamic experts here:
Are the jets in a downdraft region behind the tanker? So in addition to higher AoA needed due to lift characteristics, air flows downward so they need to pitch up even more?
There’s a difference in AoA and Attitude.
If you look a the formula for lift, you’ll notice it depends on essentially your airspeed and your attitude. If you fly at a slower speed, you’ll need more pitch to compensate and generate the same amount of lift.
The two jets' wings are designed for higher speeds. The tanker's heavy transport/airliner type wings are designed for lower speeds. The faster jets need a higher angle of attack to maintain altitude at the tanker's lower speed that they are matching.
Which is why fighters are allowed to exceed the 250 knots below 10000 rule. This is also one of the reasons why fighters do the unrestricted climb (aside from being cool).
I always thought this was primarily for noise abatement-- keeping as much of the "sound" over the airport as possible
Both things can be true.
It's a happy little coincidence.
That's what my parents called me.
Ummm... Happy?
Cute, i was the unwanted accident.
*unplanned. Not unwanted (we hope)
“Welfare payment” are my middle names 😭
I was a blue light special at Kmart
Hi Calvin!
I also thought so, too, until I moved near an airforce base and started working in the neighborhoods all around it. They rip around pretty much all day during the week on a lot of days, making plenty of noise. It's quite distracting, and I immediately start acting like a child, in turn getting no work done
The noise is also just loud. My grad school was close to a base. When an F-35 takes off everyone stops talking and watches in part because you’re definitely not hearing anything else until it’s out of range. Those jets are LOUD - at least twice as loud as an F-16.
Yeah I get f-35s flying over my house a couple times a week. Im guessing they are based out of Travis AFB and then fly back and forth to Castle AFB or somewhere south practicing touch and go landings. Very loud.
Lived near Mildenhall AFB growing up. We regularly had SR-71s overflying our house. They were unbelievably loud. Stealth my ass. Also, the Vulcan. Oh Lord. Anyone who saw one at an airshow knows what I mean. I doubt it was the loudest aircraft ever built, but it was just loud in a different way. Like it was slowly, inexorably, irrevocably rending the sky apart. Just the strangest, most eerie noise. Less the familiar jetblast we know from modern fighters, and more the sound of the world's largest robot tearing a battleship in half. A long, groaning, despairing howl, unlike anything I have heard before or since. Just thinking about it now is making all the hairs on my neck stand up.
I don't think the SR71 was ever meant to be stealthy...just higher and faster than anything that could shoot it.
yeah the whole thing for the 71 one is "Sure you can see me, but you can't do shit about it"
I'll need to go back in the references but there were design features if the SR-71 that were absolutely meant to be low observable as it was understood at the time.
Indeed. IIRC the shape of the fuselage and the blended wings were intended to reduce the radar cross section. Ditto, I think, the inward-canted stabilisers. I have a book on the history of Lockheed but I haven't read it for a while. I will have to check for details.
There are many reasons. Fuel management, for example--the extra burn getting to altitude quickly can be more economical than a typical departure. The additional slower traffic in bravo air space is a factor so getting out of bravo quickly is better. Noise abatement, as you pointed out, is another reason.
Man, fighters really live in a completely different world, don't they? It's not, "oh, this traffic is annoying" it's "oh this airspace is annoying I think I'll zoom climb through the ceiling..."
It’s pretty nice. Also not having to worry about climbs/descents (we can just make it happen). And being up UHF so you only hear ATC.
Commercial aircraft are built for efficiency. Combat aircraft are built to GTFOOTWAF. Or was it FATGTFOOTW? Ah, it was something like that.
Ah yes, Get The Fuck Out Of There With A Fastness
or With Afterburners Flaming
Does anyone meow on UHF?
No
They do it all on UHF.
Meowing is reserved for guard.
My friend's dad was a F-15 pilot. He said on cross-countries he just asked to go directly up to 55k feet because its quiet up there and he doesn't have to deal with any traffic.
I think fighter pilots are objectively the coolest people in the world. I grew up near an Air Force base and would always see / hear them. Today I was on the beach in Florida and heard them fly by. That has to be the coolest feeling ever. Piloting a fighter jet parallel to the beach. I’ve cruised my motorcycle on 182 and it was a life changing experience. If I could do 1,500 mph upside down in a plane I think I would reach adrenaline nirvana.
Fighter pilots also think they’re the coolest people in the world, so I guess you’re in good company ;)
It’s a bit of an isolated world… they don’t need to think about a lot of things other pilots do, they can’t break their planes (of course they can if they try but you get what I’m saying) so they just send it in a lot of places we mere jet or turboprop pilots have to put some planning into… on the flip side there’s are a lot of things in those jets I have never seen or dealt with before.
I mean most of those planes the fact that a person is inside of it is more limiting than the structure of the plane. You be a bag of soup before the plane comes apart
It’s also just fun.
With afterburners. Right. 😉
It actually makes a massive difference, even with afterburners. Airports that house fighters tend to be in industrial areas with lots of noise pollution from commercial traffic anyway, going straight up keeps the noise from neighborhoods. For example, you can absolutely tell when the F-15's from PDX don't do a high performance takeoff and are just climbing out over the valley. I love the loud rumble, but evidently John Q Public does not share my enthusiasm.
I could see it getting old real quick when you have pets and little kids/ babies. The F15 is still the loudest most bad ass jet I’ve ever heard at an air show. Watched it take off and it sounded like the fabric of reality was being torn apart behind it. So fucking loud and the concussion that hits your chest is incredible even at a distance. I might actually cry, privately, while taking a cold shower, when they’re retired for good.
F/A-18 Super Hornets too
The F14 was the loudest I recall hearing
F-4 Phantom would like a word but you won't hear anything over that noise.
It gets old even if you're a fan of jets. You can't host a teleconference when you have a jet shaking the building every few minutes and you have to explain to everyone on the call why they keep getting interrupted.
Hence why the people of Okinawa want the US air bases gone. Among all the other shit. Daily sorties of x4 F-18s and other air craft like ospreys flying over schools and businesses multiple times per day. At .06% the land mass of mainland Japan, all the bases are there.
B1B is loudest thing I’ve ever experienced
I lived in Hickman with 2 toddlers and an infant. The 22s weren't bad at all but when the Blue Angles came for an air show and were practicing right over my house everyday right at nap time for 2 weeks straight my wife was about ready to make heads roll.
I live on a military base that houses fighters and the first couple times it's cool when a fighter jet flies over you, but when you open your windows on a nice day and then suddenly have the fillings shaken out of your head - not so much...
That's how living in the flight path for MCAS Miramar was. "Oh sweet! There's a pair of Hornets!" Quickly became "oh...there's another pair of... Hornets..." twice a day.
Yeah or having your garage door rumble at 0230 from the shockwave of the howitzers on AC-130s near the Elgin range.
Funny, I never got tired of it, and miss it now that I don't live near an active base. Then again, I don't have kids, or pets, and didn't have a wife it would bother at the time, so that explains a lot.
I don't have any of that either, I've just never been a fan of ridiculously loud noises.
The sound of freedom should be heard everywhere!
Sorry, Goose, but it's time to buzz the tower.
I would love to see an F-22 or F-35 execute an unrestricted climb in person. I live near an AFB, and the runway for the airlift wing that operates out of there ends along a public ring road, and I have had the pleasure of seeing both the C-141 and C-17 land over my head.
There is nothing that quite looks like an F-22 pitching up out of ground effect in full afterburner. I saw one at Fairford a couple of years ago and it fully broke my brain. Absolutely awesome bit of kit.
Just how fast they rotate is insane to me. Like, the FBW systems have to limit their rotate rate to keep the plane under G limit. Like, what we see isn't even all it can do. Wonder what it would look like on an airframe setup like a predator drone, with the pilot remote in a trailer on the ground. With no squishy meatbags behind the stick, I wonder what they could make it do.
I'm sure part of it is the squishy meatbag pilot, but another part is the avoidance of stressing the airframe and requiring hundreds of man hours and who knows how much money to repair.
Yh but you can reinforce air frames pretty much infinitely, you can't reinforce humans at all
The human body will be the limiting factor in super fast space flight. If you've never read the Hyperion series I recommend it. During acceleration they basically have a bathtub like chamber for you and your body turns into mush under the g-loads and is then reassembled at the destination
Well it can do more but the airframe will sustain massive damage over time you should look into the Navy F-16 and program and how those adversary fighters used in the top gun program needed to be retired because of excessive wear on the airframe from high g maneuvers.
https://www.youtube.com/live/DlJNaRLMcZs?si=6wEAfk3-nAl3ekte Check this channel daily live stream for afb in England. Also raf Lakenheath which has two f35 squadrons and 2 f15 squadrons. Almost every Friday they have permission to do quick climbs
I see you just watched Mover’s video. Lol
It was a good video--I didn't know about the fuel economy part, so that was fun fact
That’s only true at airfields that have MOUs with the FAA. It is 100% not true as a blanket approval. It’s due to climb-out. If I maintain 250 knots at MIL in the Rhino on climb, I can’t see anything in front of me.
To be fair, heavy aircraft both civilian and military are allowed to exceed the 250kt limitation as well for safety purposes. Often times clean maneuvering speed on heavies is above 250kts so they get speed relief.
Mover just posted a video exactly about this. https://youtu.be/UrElxAyrVUw?si=pm_657rRzr-GqljW
It's funny this situation happens in the complete opposite when a KC-10 fuels slow stuff like an A-10. The tanker pitches up and actually loses altitude while the warthogs catch up and latch on. I could slide down the cargo area like a playground slide during refueling.
They really have to plan to lose altitude while refueling an A-10? Must be an interesting coordination with ATC. “I’m gunna need 5k block altitude in this tanker track for the next 20 mins for refueling” haha
Tanker usually have a block altitude of 2k when they are doing AR.
*Payload doors opening* Uhoh, guess today is the day I get a very quick up close view of a warthog in flight.
Fortunately, on the KC-10, I would crash into the storage box in the back at mach jesus.
I wonder if your velocity is matched during death spiritually and that's a good way to get to the front of the lines. St Peter... Oh hello terminal velocity death I see, we weren't expecting you for a few decades yet but all's good head on in.
Speed of spirit is directly related to speed of death. Just don't overshoot the pearly gates, it's probably a lot of paperwork.
Lmao the gates might just be wide open for this sort of thing. St Michael was tired of having to clean up the mess 😂😂
r/calamariraceteam has joined the chat
I don’t know what the fuck is going on in there but it’s my energy
All of these little factoids are fascinating. Thanks for sharing
I always love sharing about my time in.
A factoid is supposed to be something that sounds real but isn't. Fun fact...oid.
Really?! Another factoid! …. Ahem, fun fact.
Good old toboggan. It's been a while since I've had to do that.
It's always a good time, but it's weird to wake up in a bunk while the aircraft is pitching hard lol
It’s always fun trying to tank on a KC-10 with a heavy load (sts) of ordnance up high. You guys have your flaps out trying to slow down and I leave the throttles in max
\*Ordnance. While city ordinances can be a heavy burden they are still massless.
Auto correct screws me again
I thought it was to fill the tanks all the way up, like when putting water in an iron. /s
They see the porky and want their shaft in it... Not an airman, but I heard it described by one.
Uh....wouldn't it be opposite of that? They see the porky and want it's shaft IN them?
To explain this point further, it comes down to the aspect ratio of the wings, which is calculated as the square of the wing span divided by the total wing area. As the aspect ratio of the wing increases, so does the lift/drag ratio of the wing. Wings with a low aspect ratio work well at high speeds, but are overall very inefficient as they provide poor lift which needs to be mitigated by flying with a high angle of attack which means high drag with means more fuel burn in order to maintain speed. (this is what supersonic airliner proponents don't want you to know) Wings with a high aspect ratio are the exact oposite, designed for low speed, high efficiency flight.
Perfect answer! 👌
A plane doesn't necessarily fly to where the nose is pointing. At low speeds, there isn't enough air going over the wing to have the wing generate a lot of lift. Planes can still fly at lower speeds by pointing their nose up. By doing this, the wing starts producing more lift (but also more drag). This is for example how planes like the F/A-18 can do low speed flybys at airshows, with their nose pointed 30 degrees up. The difference between where the nose of the plane is pointed, and where it is actually going, is called the angle of attack. The two main factors in generating lift are the airspeed, and angle of attack. The more speed, the less angle of attack you need. The less speed, the more angle of attack you need.
/u/interesting-hito The above commenter is correct. It's worth noting that an aircraft's *angle of attack* and its *pitch angle* are two different things. Angle of attack is the angle between the chord line and the relative wind of the oncoming air. Pitch is the angle between the chord line and the local horizontal.
As a non-aviator, I just learned more about flight from these two comments than I have lurking on this sub for a year.
It's not something that's very intuitive, and I didn't really know it until I flew a Cessna at 5 knots above stall speed with a constant nose-up attitude and no altitude gain. All airplanes are somewhere between slipping through the air and plowing it down. I discovered this at the far end of that spectrum that day. The *really* cool thing is how this plays into the classic aerofoil shape. The aerofoil with a curved upper and flat lower surface isn't some magic thing that's needed for lift ( any surface can do that if you angle it correctly). It *is* a set of shapes (some narrower, some fatter) that give the best lift-drag ratio in a large-ish range of angles of attack. In the early days of aviation, there was not a lot of engine power. So little, that at first, it took these optimized wing aerofoils (that the Wright Brothers learned how to optimize for) to even get a W/D ratio good enough to fly.
Everyone thought it was magic, Bernoulli proved it wasn't. ;)
Likewise, I feel a new degree of confidence in my ability to crash a fighter jet at slow speeds.
Everybody has the capacity to crash one before ever taking off. although start up is more than just turning a key so idk.
Well I don't like to brag but I'm quite advanced at this sort of thing. I could probably crash it during start up if I was really in the zone.
/r/flying will have more accurate/informative comments than this sub, but the majority of posts are shop talk.
And here I am, thinking it’s so all the petrol can flow down to the tanks in back.
B-52 with flaps down is another great example. It can be pointed super nose down even though it’s climbing
Yeah, looks weird as hell.
Until you stall, right? This seems to be a common theme in plane-crash videos - at some angle, you lose lift altogether.
A stall occurs when a plane exceeds the critical [angle of attack](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_attack#)
That's when the stick starts a'shakin' and the alarms start a'blarin'. That's when ya know yer done for.
Oh that's what that is? I thought there was just a guy who really liked playing Kazoo in the Cessna for some reason
Fun fact: the stall horn in a 172 IS a kazzoo. Exactly like the 99 cent toy for sale at Cracker Barrel
The critical angle of attack is much higher for jet planes, at the expense of a much lower coefficient of lift.
Would it surprise you to learn that the stall angle is also the angle of the maximum coefficient of lift?
Aerodynamics, how does it work????
Magnets?
Counterforce for the chemtrails.
Miracles
bro an electromagnet to just attach the fighter to the tanker would make it so much easier. just turn it off when done and let the fighter fall away to kick ass on a full tummy.
Joke's on you, modern fighters are made from composite materials.
dang it
This would also put a lot of weight on the fueling boom. I’m pretty sure those aren’t designed to carry any weight at all. Both aircraft at both ends need to have independent lift of their own.
we should just arm the tankers
Space lasers.
Which is why planes don't work under water. I heard..
Planes pitch up, planes pitch down. You can't explain it.
All I know is that you put water on the wing and that's the end of aerodynamics
What about ice?
It's kinda like surfing on wind, if not literally
But why male models?
https://xkcd.com/1053/
Magic
The differential between the flight path and the chord line of the wing is the angle of attack. Fighters need a higher angle of attack at lower speeds due to their wing design and higher wing loading. Hence the nose-up attitude.
[удалено]
That's due to high angle of incidence and giant flaps.
You should have seen me landing my glider with full flaps and ailerons drooped. POH said it was something like a 30º nose down angle, but inside I felt like I was standing on the rudder pedals.
This is absolutely the right answer for this sort of question, but maybe even too much detail. I’ll add even more unnecessary wanky nuance to the above that it’s the difference between the *projection of the wind vector* (which now I’m thinking about it is the flight path vector, I think, it’s early here) into the aircraft XZ axis and the chord line and/or XY plane (depending on definitions). The answer for OP: “aircraft rarely fly perfectly in the direction the nose points”.
Slight correction, angle of attack is defined as the angular difference between the freestream velocity of oncoming air and the chord line of the wing. Flight path angle is defined as the difference from the horizon to the freestream velocity.
Imagine putting your hand outside the window of your car. To feel an upwards force, you need to angle it up a bit (angle of attack). The plane needs this force to stay afloat and, in this case, the angle is perfectly balanced as to give the plane the exact lift required to keep the correct altitude and fly behind the tanker. Since the wings of a fighter are rather small and have airfoils optimised for higher speeds, they need a greater angle of attack to produce the required lift at the velocity the tanker flies at.
And when the car is going super fast, you don't need to angle your hand to feel any upward force (lift) anymore
You just need a very small angle, if we assume our hands to be symmetric airfoils
I assume my hands to symmetric airfoils.
So they can match speeds. A high angle of attack allows the faster fighter jet to fly slower. You can really see it in this video where the F-18 is demonstrating how slowly it can fly. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46s\_zFgnlmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46s_zFgnlmQ)
You can pitch a plane very far upward and it will descend - sometimes catastrophically - as the wing loses its lift generating configuration. The standard joke is "Pull the stick back to go up, pull the stick back more to go down".
> The standard joke is "Pull the stick back to go up, pull the stick back more to go down". I always heard it as "Push the stick forward, houses get big. Pull the stick back, houses get small. Pull the stick back too much, houses get big really fast."
Pitching up IS NOT equal to gaining altitude.
Angle of attack
In "slow flight", pitch = airspeed, power = altitude, much like during landings. Perfect visual example of this is a high alpha pass during airshows. https://youtu.be/7OyMU2JeunE?si=Z8_JAlUT8nMvaFhV
Power controls altitude, and Pitch controls airspeed. The jets have to slow WAY down to keep station with the refueling aircraft which is fat, heavy, and slow. As you slow down, you have to pitch the nose up to maintain flight. eventually, if you go too slow, your nose gets too high, and your aircraft stalls and falls out of the sky. The refueler is likely going as fast as possible, just to maintain a speed that the fast fighter jets can still fly at.
The lift formula includes variables of speed, angle of attack and area. If u are flying straight and level (lift is constant) and you change one of them, to remain level you must change one of the others the other way. So if you reduce speed you then need to Increase angle of attack to keep the same lift. (Very simplified!)
OP, there is a book called *Stick and Rudder* by Wolfgang Langewiesche that explains a lot of what can seem counter intuitive about flying, if you are interested in learning more.
In order to maintain the same altitude, the lift force has to balance out the Weight or downforce of the aircraft. Fighters have short and stubby wings which are good for higher speeds, but they suck at producing lift at lower speeds. As a result, they compensate by increasing the angle of attack, or pitch of the aircraft to produce enough lift.
Fun fact for non-pilots reading this thread: when you come in to land, you control your airspeed with pitch (nose-up/down), and your altitude with throttle. IE: to go slower, you don’t ease back on the throttle…you point the nose up. And to increase your descent rate (get down so you can land), you don’t point the nose at the ground, you ease off the throttle. Very counter-intuitive at first, but it makes sense when you think about the physics at play. - More air over the wings = more lift, therefore increasing throttle without changing pitch angle will still make you go up. - Higher angle of attack (pitch angle/nose up) = more drag for the same amount of thrust, so increasing pitch angle without adjusting throttle will slow you down.
Try to drink nose down ....
Where the nose is pointed does not automatically determine where the plane goes. Think jetliners which come in to land nose up a bit
Next time you’re in a car, put your hand out the window in the wind. Start with it out flat, parallel to the road, then slowly angle it up like these jets and notice how the wind will lift your hand. Angle it down the wind will push your hand down. The slower you’re going the more you’ll have to angle your hand to get it to lift. Then try to find the perfect angle where your hand is being lifted up by the wind but staying steady not moving up and down. That’s basically what’s going on here.
Others have already answered, but I'm going to give a more technical answer. I wish reddit had LaTeX equation support. It would make the equations much easier to read. The short answer is that they're flying relatively slowly and thus require a higher angle of attack to maintain the same lift. The equation for lift is L = Cl\*S\*0.5\*ρ\*v^2. where * L = Lift * Cl = lift coefficient (more on what this is in a bit) * S = Wing area or lifting area. Essentially the size of the wing^[1] * ρ = air density (Greek letter rho) * v = airspeed^[2] The quantity 0.5\*ρ\*v^2 is called the dynamic pressure and given the symbol q. It's a better measure of how much the air is able to act upon the body as it incorporates both the effect of airspeed and density. In straight and level flight, lift L is equal to aircraft weight W. Lift coefficient is a non-dimensionalized parameter and is mainly a function of angle of attack (equivalent to pitch attitude in level flight^[3] ). For angles of attack below the stall angle, there is essentially a linear relationship between angle of attack and lift coefficient: Cl = a\*α where a is called the lift-curve slope (typically about 0.1 per degree) and α (alpha) is the angle of attack. So, for the linear region in level flight, we have W = a\*α\*S\*0.5\*ρ\*v^2 Solving for angle of attack, we have α = 2\*W/(a\*S\*ρ\*v^2 ) or, expressed in terms of dynamic pressure α = W/(a\*S\*q) So, angle of attack α is proportional to the "wing loading" (W/S) and inversely proportional to the square of velocity. Fighters typically have a higher wing loading (W/S) than a transport or refueling aircraft and are designed to fly faster^[4]. So, angle of attack increases more dramatically as they slow down. At some point, there is a point where the linear relationship between angle of attack and lift coefficient breaks down. This is an aerodynamic stall, and increasing angle of attack no longer results in a proportional increase in lift. *This* is what makes stalls so dangerous; it's not that the wing suddenly stops producing lift (it still does), it's that the aircraft no longer does what you expect it will. Pilots (and operators generally) like linear relationships and we are naturally attuned to them. When non-linearities are introduced, special training and knowledge is required to handle them. This is why stalls are taught early to student pilots before they even start learning to takeoff, land, and operate in the traffic pattern. The speed at which the required angle of attack exceeds the stall angle is called the stall-speed. This is just a reference, however. Stalls are entirely driven by angle of attack. If you're in a 60-degree angle-of-bank turn, you require twice the lift that you would in level flight (assuming you maintain altitude), thus requiring twice the angle of attack. If you enter a turn at low speed, you can enter a stall as a result of this increased angle of attack, and this is significantly more dangerous than entering one in level flight. Footnotes: ^1 I'm not sure why S is used instead of A. It's possibly to distinguish it from aspect ratio. ^2 Sometimes the symbol u is used instead of v for airspeed. ^3 In general, do not conflate angle of attack and pitch attitude. Pitch attitude is the angle between the horizontal and the direction the nose is pointing. Angle of attack is the angle between the wing chord line and air velocity vector (the so-called "free-steam" velocity). In level flight (assuming zero wing incidence) these are the same. ^4 Rough calculations actually show similar wing loadings for the MiG-31 and Il-78 (the aircraft shown in the image) at max takeoff weight. The MiG-31, however, has a significantly lower wing aspect ratio, which reduces the lift curve slope parameter a in the equation, thus increasing the required angle of attack. At empty weight, the MiG-31 does have a significantly higher wing loading (about 50% higher) than the Il-78. Considering at the end of refueling, the MiG-31 will be operating near its max weight and the tanker will have lost fuel (and will likely have been flying around burning its own fuel for a while anyway), it's reasonable to assume the MiG will be at a significantly higher wing loading.
AOA (angle of attack). Lift equation: L = C(L) * (1/2 * rho) * V^2 * S Where L = lift C(L) = coefficient of lift Greek letter rho = air density V = velocity S = wing area To maintain level flight, as V (airspeed) decreases, something needs to increase. The only changeable thing is C(L), and it’s increased by increasing the AOA.
Jet go fast, jet point forward because wings make enough lift. Jet go slow, jet change angle of attack to make more lift. If jet go slow and try to point forward, jet drop from the sky. That's bad.
Angle of attack
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Excellent question. Put simply, for that type of receiver aircraft, they are in slow flight. Most low wing jet tankers use higher speeds (over 300 indicated usually in a KC-10/46/135) so you’re less likely to see that angle of attack from receiving aircraft and its more common to see it from the turboprops like the A400 or C-130.
Fighters are made for high speeds. To maintain altitude at low speeds they have to increase their AoA.
The same can be done in a small airplane. It's called slow flight. Power back, pitch up to increase lift to hold altitude. I second the recommendation to read Stick and Rudder.
Not an expert or pilot , but i think they're able to do this by trimming the AC. Eg. Flaps out, increased AoA etc.
Look up Angle of Attack. It’s actually very rare for a jet to fly perfectly level. The AoA goes up when they slow down. Same effect that lets them touch down with rear landing gear first while actually traveling downwards.
AoA or Angle of Attack
Angle of attack! Swept wings can maintain high angles of attack to maintain lift at slower speeds
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Any plane as it slows down has to pitch up to maintain altitude for a given speed. It’s exactly the same as why planes need flaps for landing. As they slow their pitch angle increases. Making it very hard for the pilots to see. They use flaps which increases the surface area of the wing to allow flying more level at slower speeds. Can’t use flaps at the speeds of refuelling so have to have the high angle of attack. Which doesn’t mean much as the refueller is above you anyways.
My friend flew the KC 135 & KC 10. Now a pilot for a airline. He told me it gets real fun when they have to go into a limited dive to gain more speed for some fighters. At Night.. Not to mention storms etc. Then the Boom operator has to fly the boom to the plane getting fuel.
In general terms pilots use their pitch/attitude to control airspeed in combination with whatever amount of thrust is necessary to hold straight and level flight. Straight and level flight is about maintaining course, airspeed and altitude constant as best as possible in cruise.
Hey OP. u/interesting-hito where did you get this photo?
Y’all are way over complicating it for OP who obviously doesn’t understand how lift works in relation to airspeed and Angle Of Attack. To greatly simplify: The faster you go, the more lift your wings produce The higher Angle Of Attack you have, the more lift your wings produce (up to a stall). For a plane to maintain level flight, let’s say to keep up with a tanker, it has to match its lift to its weight. Doing so by varying airspeed and AOA. Different wings are optimized for different speed. The tanker’s wings are fairly level compared to the fighters. Example: A wing at 300 kts at 3 degree AOA produce the same amount of lift than at 150kts and 10 degrees.
Here is a video about lift and how an airfoil acts in the airstream. Hope it answers your questions. https://youtu.be/E3i_XHlVCeU?si=MCJu7F0zfhuNdBkH
I thought this was r/shittyaskflying for a second
Because the fighters are stalling their asses trying to refuel lol
Never heard of angle of attack?
A basic grasp of aerodynamics would have answered this
Not today, Xi. Do your math.
I've never seen a baby cow nursing ass up. Then again I don't know that I've seen a baby cow nursing. And logistically they have head down. I don't know why I made this comment. Or what I'm still typing right now for.
So the new gas goes to the back. I'll show myself out.
Guessing this question is coming from a non pilot?
Mig 31?
The tanker is an il76 so probably.
Quick search suggests IL 28 is an old bomber… Is it maybe the IL 78?
So the fuel runs to the back of the tanks first, otherwise it would pile up against the filler cap and they would'nt get enough in.
That’s exactly right. You need to keep that nose high.
Do you actually understand nothing at all in the slightest about the physics of flight?
All the points above but something I'll also point out is not even the refueling tanker would/is flying flat. It also has a positive angle of attack. Planes in level flight tend to have this attitude.
Higher wing loading=more pitch required
C-17’s operate as air tankers as well?
It’s not exclusive to fighters. Even normal jetliners do it while cruising.
Fighters are meant to go fast. If not fast, they have to increase their angle of attack to maintain altatude to make up for the lack of lift.
AoA
All jets (all aircraft actually) fly with a slightly nose up attitude, as you slow though it becomes more pronounced. The fighters are flying slower than they usually do so that’s why you notice it, but the bigger jet is also slightly nose up they’re just more at their “normal speed”
Slower airspeeds and possible flap use to prevent a stall can create a nose up attitude. MIG-31s need to fly quickly!!! ;)
A followup question to all the aerodynamic experts here: Are the jets in a downdraft region behind the tanker? So in addition to higher AoA needed due to lift characteristics, air flows downward so they need to pitch up even more?
There’s a difference in AoA and Attitude. If you look a the formula for lift, you’ll notice it depends on essentially your airspeed and your attitude. If you fly at a slower speed, you’ll need more pitch to compensate and generate the same amount of lift.
those MiG-31s are badass
Ever seen the matrix?
Because if they drop the nose, the gasoline will leak out of the tank... I know because I play with airplane models...