Supercruise

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A supercruising aircraft is able to cruise at supersonic speeds efficiently without the use of afterburners. The first turbine-powered aircraft to exceed Mach 1 in level flight without afterburners was the P.1 prototype of the English Electric Lightning, on August 4, 1954.

Aircraft with supercruise include:

SR-71 Blackbird
Concorde
Tupolev Tu-144
English Electric Lightning
F-104 Starfighter
BAC TSR-2
Eurofighter Typhoon
F-16XL
F-14A+
F-22 Raptor
YF-23 Black Widow II
XB-70 Valkyrie
Dassault Rafale
F-4 Phantom II (Israeli "Super Phantom" variant)
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25

Afterburners, which most military aircraft use to travel at supersonic speeds, are very inefficient compared to conventional jet engine operation. Therefore, in general, an aircraft which can supercruise has greater endurance at supersonic speeds than one which cannot. Furthermore, without a requirement to carry such a large quantity of fuel, a supercruise-capable aircraft can have a more favourable fuel fraction, the proportion of the plane's overall mass which is devoted to fuel.

Note that of these aircraft, only the civilian Concorde and Tupolev actually spend most of their cruising time at supersonic speeds, and that many of the fighters listed can only marginally exceed the speed of sound without afterburner and may only be able to do so without an external weapons load. The F-22 Raptor and Eurofighter Typhoon's supercruise capabilities, by contrast, are touted as a major performance advantage over other fighters. Even so, supercruising uses much more fuel to travel the same distance: [The Air Force Association] estimates that use of supercruise for a 100 nautical mile dash as part of a mission would cut the F-22's combat radius from about 600 to about 400 nautical miles. However, this is still unconfirmed as the altitude and flight profile are classified (as are most of the F-22A's capabilities). There is no way to compare this with other aircraft; however, most aircraft using afterburner to fly at supersonic speeds will have exhausted their fuel supplies very rapidly.

Another special case is the SR-71 spyplane. This aircraft's engines were designed for sustained and efficient operation at supersonic speeds using afterburners.

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