Forget the F-22 upgrade the F-15

orca71

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The F-15 is a great fighter, but In my opinion it isn't so maneuverable...
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I'm not sure who told you this but they are lying. The F-22 and Russian fighters are probably more maneuverable but the disparity in numbers is so large that its really meaningless. The first and most important factor in any battle is numbers. With the F-15 we can have a massive advantage against just about any likely enemy. Overwhelming force is the operative phrase.
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Careful sir. If the notion of being able to lose more and still win is all that is valid, then the AAW UCAV which combines simple LO (to lower the pole) and say 2-4 MRM to chase down the support systems and any conventional signature followons comes to the fore very quickly.

As a lemming vs. lemming system of exchange by which 'training' of adversary air pilots (who would be insane not to run screaming in their QRA 2's and 4's when launched against 50-70+ strike packages) is outmoded as an element in the skillset equation, the numeric imbalance issue tends to be very quickly addressable, at relatively little cost.

At the same time, overwhelming force which requires time to mass at fixed points, invites denial by counter-coalition politic or strike preemption via counterforce targeting with systems to whom 'all stealth is visible as a 10,000ft line in the sand'.

COE requires you to not to _have to_ engage the threat, conventionally, to secure their airspace from them. Right now that means being LO and fast enough that you can engage simply avoid their best efforts to hit the SOC/IOC and radar targets which control them.

I frankly don't know of a certainty that the F-22 is 'all that' but it comes a lot closer to being a physical baseline solution than the F-15 does.

Indeed, relative 'maneuverability' is probably best defined by FMF as being not the aircraft vs. aircraft but the aircraft vs. /SAM/.

And in this, assuming the F-22 was conventionally signatured, it would be no more 'capable' than the Eagle. But it's not. And that is (at least so far as I know) not a function of electronic wizardry in the ALR-94 so much as basic improvement in the /physical/ design and manufacturing processes of the airframe.

i.e. A Constant by which others must measure their own technologic efforts to not simply become invisible themselves but to network sensors and kill vehicles sufficiently as to catch a supercruise ghost.

Is it possible? Sure. Does it invalidate the F-22 as an avionics cripple which 'can never be stripped and upgraded' with a new nervous system? IMO, no.

Yet giving that same hyper-fast avionics architecture to an F-15 only makes a /physically/ crippled airframe more able to see it's death coming.


KPl.

besides, it doesn't matter if we haven't got as many airplanes, if they can't see us the first night and loose all thier own aircraft. Half of which get bombed on the ground, while the other half fall into large holes where they were expecting thier runway to be.

The tactics to be employed with the F-22 are probrably quite different from those of an F-15. Instead of brave knights battling it out in thier aluminum mounts, The F-22 would probrably fall closer to special operations forces sneaking around making sure the enemy is completely unable to fight. Destroying your enemies ability to fight back, or forcing them to use disproportionally larger forces to do so is force multiplication. 4-6 Raptors, properly used, can have a greater effect than 20 F-15s.

Travellar,

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Besides, it doesn't matter if we haven't got as many airplanes, if they can't see us the first night and loose all thier own aircraft. Half of which get bombed on the ground, while the other half fall into large holes where they were expecting their runway to be.
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Myself, if I put forth the effort to kill an airbase, it's going to be their underground tank farms, HAS and HAS ramp 'driveway' interconnects.

Maybe their BOQ and Command Condos if they have such.

The question then comes down to whether I can do all this with X8 GBU-39 with approximately 1.6m of roof overpenetration. Or if I need to go to CM and use submunitions and popup/dive attacks with BROACH type warheads.

I don't see value in using one airframe to drop two bombs (GBU-32 or 35) if that same airframe can carry EIGHT weapons which can hit exposed surface targets with equal effect.

i.e. I don't want to play Colonel Warden's five rings 'inmost out' game. I want to kill the principal IADS elements in the field. And then be able to /choose/ whatever battlespace operating doctrine I follow on with.

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

And 'paralysis' may not be not necessary or even possible with distributed cellular C2 and IADS networking. If so, why spend energy (hollowing uninhabited buildings) to cut the spine when two amputated arms makes the opponent unable to fight back anyway?

The lack of options in _independently_ being able to target SDB for this mission is what really PO's me on the Raptor. It's NOT an 'Air Dominance Fighter'. Or an 'Air Supremacy Fighter'. It's a COE asset whose ability to penetrate /should/ be concomittent with it's ability to hit _whatever it bloody well wants_.

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The tactics to be employed with the F-22 are probrably quite different from those of an F-15. Instead of brave knights battling it out in thier aluminum mounts, The F-22 would probrably fall closer to special operations forces sneaking around making sure the enemy is completely unable to fight. Destroying your enemies ability to fight back, or forcing them to use disproportionally larger forces to do so is force multiplication. 4-6 Raptors, properly used, can have a greater effect than 20 F-15s.
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Agreed. My question then being the logistics of /how/. How many first night vs. how many pallet loads to support their mixed-mission capabilities. And how many tankers to gas them on perhaps 3-5 rather than 1-2 missions, all under darkness.

Once you get that part down, along with any residual SOJAM and longrange DEAD (which could be done from a P-8 or similar BBJ conversion as much as an aging EA-6B) to prick the balloon as they go in.

You can start to make REAL choices as to 'what happens in the morning'.

_In theory_, this is when I want the threat air to come up. Knowing they are half blind. But also knowing that they are facing (at least until 2012 or so) a conventional signature force itself capable of dropping as many as 20 GBU-39 per asset (F-15E) and never less than 8 (F-16/18). But which may also have HDBT ordnance like the GBU-31 or 24.

Because it is in fact 'better' to KNOW that threat-X is dead as a function of a descending smoke trail. And at that point the Raptors can fulfill their orignal mission spec as AAW assets until the Teeners obliterate the remaining threat air, 'as it sits'.

Which is where, IMO, the real supremacy of the S2A threat and how long it takes you to track down and nail a reasonable percentage of it defines what the Raptor does. Because no matter how good it is alone or against threat air, it truly cannot protect a gaggle of (conventional signature) strike aircraft from a Favorit or Triumf sudden-salvo.

And I don't think F-16CJ.50 will do much better.

Yet so long as those threats exist, unreduced, first-night, it may not be practical to use JSTARS and Rivet Joint or 'like' (U-2/RQ-4) assets if you are truly facing a 160nm or better threat bubble.

WHERE then does the targeting come from? Predators? You gotta be kidding me.


KPl.

Originally posted by ch1466

Careful sir. If the notion of being able to lose more and still win is all that is valid, then the AAW UCAV which combines simple LO (to lower the pole) and say 2-4 MRM to chase down the support systems and any conventional signature followons comes to the fore very quickly.

Well there you go then. Problem solved.

orca71,

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Careful sir. If the notion of being able to lose more and still win is all that is valid, then the AAW UCAV which combines simple LO (to lower the pole) and say 2-4 MRM to chase down the support systems and any conventional signature followons comes to the fore very quickly.
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Well there you go then. Problem solved.
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_THEIR_ UCAV. Their cheap and ugly. That is why I am leery of all this talk about further upgrades to the Eagle, especially as an 'economical' alternative to the F-15.

Because /someone/ is going to be holding the hands of these little killers. And that isn't going to be a conventional signature airframe. Not over an Aster/S-400 'or better' S2A threat.

Nor is it going to be a single seat JSF. It /might/ be an F-22B. Which was at least originally designed to have the second seat as an option.

But what nobody will allow is the notion that these UCAVs be on their own. Or controlled via satellite or relay aircraft. Not in the first generation. Not with -our- manned airframes in the mix.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But that's the way it is.

We are driving our enemy to beat us by failing to realize that the more you 'evolve' a plateau'd system of systems (which is to say the total bulk of all the dependence assets as well as the 'fighter' in question) the more it behooves them not to play a game we've long since mastered.

But to lie, steal and cheat.

AAW UCAVs are that no-fair-no-foul option. It's only how you scale them and the numbers you inventory that is determinative as to how, where and which asset you target to destroy a conventional airpower modis.


KPl.