rjmaz1 said:
Thats incorrect.
Supersonic is when the entire aircraft is infront of that shock wave.
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary/sound_barrier/DI94.htm
There are many other sources that state this. Just type "supersonic subsonic, transonic mach" into google
Again Mach 1.2 and 0.8 are only estimates as if the aircraft is larger or smaller it may require more or less speed to become supersonic.
I know my voice will probably be fairly meaningless considering all the politics surrounding what "supercruise" means. However, as an aeronautical engineer specialising in applied aerodynamics I feel obliged to state what is accepted standard in the industry (note - I am referring to the technical side of the industry, not what those involved with marketing want to call it). When the true airspeed of an aircraft is lower than the local speed of sound, it is subsonic. When it is faster than the local speed of sound, it is supersonic. It is as simple as that. The terms "transonic" and "hypersonic" are terms that engineers and physicists came up with to describe certain characteristics of the flow. Transonic refers to a flow condition where there is a "significant" (note the vague term) amount of mixed flow - i.e., there are considerable amounts of subsonic airflow as well as considerable amounts of supersonic airflow. Because of the mixed nature of the flow, it is a very tricky area in which to do flow analysis, and therefore the separate term "transonic". "Hypersonic", on the other hand, refers to flows where the speed is high enough so that several terms that we usually ignore in the lower supersonic speed range become significant, and therefore a separate term was chosen to refer to those types of flows. Both the terms "transonic" and "hypersonic" are defined in a fairly vague way, and no self-respecting aerodynamicist will try to say transonic starts at "exactly" Mach 0.7 and ends at "exactly" Mach 1.4, or whatever. In fact, almost all supersonic flows around aircraft have areas where the flow will be subsonic (for instance directly behind fairings), and sometimes local flows can be supersonic even though the aircraft is flying very slowly (for instance near propeller tips). Even for a given airplane "transonic" is not well defined - the point at which you can say that the amount of subsonic flow is insignificant depends completely on the point of view. An aerodynamicist working on the wing design may say it is fully supersonic at Mach 1.2, while another working on the refueling probe will say it is still well within the transonic regime (you can't make the assumption the flow is fully supersonic for the purpose of analysis) even up to Mach 1.5.
In contrast, the terms "subsonic" and "supersonic" are defined exactly, as explained in the beginning of this post. If the free-stream Mach number (TAS divided by local speed of sound) is 1.01, you are going supersonic. If it is 0.99, you are going subsonic. Yes, in both cases the flow around the aircraft is in the mixed subsonic/supersonic regime and when I do an analysis on the flow I will say it is transonic, but according to the definitions of subsonic and supersonic and based on its free-stream Mach number, the aircraft is supersonic in case 1 and subsonic in case 2.
The word "supercruise" is a marketing term. If you want to use correct aerodynamic nomenclature and describe the aircrafts Mach number based on the free-stream speed as has been done throughout the history of flight, then an aircraft that can "cruise" at Mach 1.01 without afterburner will be supercruising. (Even the afterburner part is a bit misleading - what if an aircraft and its engine was actually designed to cruise with afterburner? Anyway, I'll ignore that ambiguity for now). Since the term is used by aircraft marketers, however, I guess they can give it any meaning they want and you can argue until you are blue in the face over what the term really means without getting anywhere. What is irritating, though, is that they are now using the word "transonic" in a way it was never meant to be used, and say "look, aircraft X is not supercruising - it is transocruising"... Yes, and Chuck Yeager didn't go supersonic in the X-1 on October 14, 1947, he merely attained a high transonic Mach number
