JIMC5499,
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Fans of the F-22 Raptor need to wake up and face reality. While the F-22 is a technological wonder, it has it's flaws. The article below examines
some of these.
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So does the article, let's look at some of ITS SHORTCOMINGS, shall we?
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Q. Can the Raptor see the enemy first, outnumber it, outmaneuver it, and kill it quickly?
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See the enemy first. Yes. Because it will be using offboard sources to not only sorte the force but increasingly to /morte/ it as well. With remote
tethers tied to radars BEHIND the shooter. Including other Raptors.
Outnumber them. Yes. Because it's the weapons bay load that determines who wins and how they die. As an F-14 driver once said "It's 'cause I
have six little kamikaze wingmen hanging under my butt!". And Slammer works. Whereas Phoenix did not.
This is a key determinator because few podunk air forces can afford wall to wall MRAAM (half a million each) let alone LRAAM (1 mil apop) in any
significant numbers. Yet digital systems design and particularly strapdown nav ability to shorten the A-Pole is getting to the point where individual
jam techniques don't work against all comers.
So that if you have a 1,000 AMRAAM and he has 40 R-77 and you BOTH have decently updated GCS tapes on your missiles ECCM. Them's as can see to shoot
will do so. And thems as cannot will not.
'Numbers' of airframes then simply add to the tallyboard on the side of the jet. Whereas 'numbers' of shots count more.
Outmaneuver? Who thee hell wants to maneuver? Janes has an article... HERE-
>
"I never had a tally on any of the bad guys. I rarely saw our wingman. We never put more than 3g on the airplane and we never got inverted. There
were missiles and people dying everywhere."
>
www.janes.com...
Maneuvering bleeds E all over the place, especially supersonic at altitude (where most fighting is now practiced). It also planforms your airframe if
you are at all 'serious' about making the move mean something. And is handgrenade-in-fishbowl if you are not.
Kill quickly? Let's talk REAL PHYSICS people. At Mach 3.5 sustained (an almost impossible to achieve figure over longer ranges) you are moving at
roughly 30 miles PER MINUTE. Where some weapons have outer engagement zones on the order of 80-100km, Missile Warfare is not Top Gun.
And it never will be Maverick.
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Q. How does the Raptor stack up against the F-16?
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WHICH F-16? The original F-16 was a maintenance /nightmare/. Systems were not well organized on the jet and, according to one old USAFE crew dawg I
used to know 'the reason it had so many body access panels was so they could replace everything at once' when it broke.
30 years on and the F-16 is a very much KNOWN QUANTITY.
But it is not and NEVER WILL BE a Raptor. Whose principal design advantages are that it doesn't /need/ to stress the airframe with constant G
excursions and throttle slams. It ghosts by like a phantom airliner.
It is very likely that, if they treat these airframes as precious-gem assets (as they should) that they will quickly settle down to become very
reliable as experience with the M&R issues stabilizes into an instititutional knowledge base.
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Q. Why did Congress cap production of the Raptor at half the number sought by the Air Force?
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That's simple. This country is in the midst of the worst (largely because it is unacknowledged) budget crises ever known to us. We failed, utterly,
to downsize our military and our 'mission' in the post Cold War era (itself a period of massive debt gain only slightly better managed than
Russia's) and now we have another Trillion Dollar Debt looking us in the face for giving a handup to a bunch of wolves-bite-feeders.
The F-22 _should never_ be exported. The JSF (supposedly) can be. /At best/ there would be 276-383 F-22. At -worst- there will be more than a 1,000
JSF.
Congressmen are pigs. Where they smell money, they root it out. For their districts. To leverage the national debt with exports. For their own
personal, political, gain.
That couldn't happen if an alternative fighter was around to challenge the INCREDIBLE performance@cost issues that beset the F-35 (as many predicted
they would) under a 'one name, three planes' level of shared R&D and diverse basing modes.
Let's keep going, I always enjoy kicking the snot out of 'old pros'.
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One British pilot called it “the most formidable fighter” that the world had seen to date. Its pilots said it was a delight to fly.
Yet military historians today say the German Messerschmidt 262 fighter had little effect on the air war over Europe during World War II, and two
military aviation experts last week warned that the U.S. Air Force has likely set itself up to repeat the harsh lesson of the Me-262 “Stormbird”
in a future conflict against an adversary with a modern air force.
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First off, the Schturmvoegel or Storm Bird (Petrel) was the bomber version. And if they KNEW THAT then they also knew that failure to capitalize on
the projected A2A capabilities of the airframe /in late 1943 early 1944/ as the _Schwalbe_ (Swallow) was what ran the 262 out of time. Not budgetary
or threat related problems but bureacratic stupidity.
Second, there is a helluva difference between fighting DCA with overwhelming numbers of threat aircraft overhead from Dawn til Dusk as the enemy
invades your homeland and taking the airwar TO THEM, at a time and place of your own choosing _over their dirt_, as an OCA platform does. Which is
what the F-22 as an 'expeditionary' fighter is designed to do. I might worry if those Rafale, Euroflubber, MiG-29's and Su-27's were flying the
upwards of 1,000nm that a Raptor can reach in a couple hours to bomb it's bases. But not much. Because DCA is won by ARH SAM like the ERINT or
SLAMRAA. Not by fighters.
Lastly, let's be clear here dears. The 262 SUCKED as a fighter. Especially at altitude where the combination of the engine nacelle design
sensitivities (the 262 did not like high AOA rakes angles in turns and if not 'coordinated' in all maneuvers, could easily stall one or both engines
in the resulting yaw state) and compressibility effects made it very hard to handle when chasing agile recip fighters that could maneuver out of plane
with rather less sedate (say heavy) controls and next to no performance limitations.
The 262 was, in it's 'fighter' form. A 1PHA _Interceptor_ optimized to kill virtually non maneuvering Dicke Auto Bus targets. The F-22 /can/
function that way, largely because missiles are the true dogfighers today and nobody knows they've been shot.
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(For Tyndall Air Force Base, where the Raptor pilot training program is located, this has meant a reduction in training squadrons from two to one,
with 29 of the sleek fighters to be used in preparing pilots for combat units.)
But to Sprey, a founding member of the so-called “fighter mafia” group that during the 1960s and 1970s ramrodded the F-15, F-16 and A-10 programs
into being despite fierce internal opposition, and military author Stevenson, who has written extensively on the Navy’s F/A-18 and A-12 fighters,
the Air Force has created a major crisis in its future combat capability by sticking to the Raptor program.
>>
The Fighter Mafia introduced an airframe that was so incapable as to require _for much of the next decade_ the previous generation F-4 to continue to
stand tall as America's ONLY PGM PLUS BVR CAPABLE 'fighter' platform. The AMRAAM was largely ruined by the requirement for the F-16 to carry it
and certainly delayed so long that a war with the Soviets in Europe would have been lost based on the need for few-vs.-many offset to limited air
superiority presence, in theater. The F-16 /approach/ is the wrong one for what it requires of multiple tankers to serve multiple airframes on a
minidrag to the target area. Increasing risk-at-cost in a time when the only way to keep from having the 'top air superiority fighter' be a T-72
running over the pilots Nike's was to launch out of England, France or Spain.
The F-16 'raised the bar' on followon competition but look how much good that did us. Now, instead of facing a MiG-21 baseline threat with Archer
and Atol and Aphid, or a MiG-23 with paired Apex, we see a Mir-2K or Rafale with MICA and a JAS-39 with Darter or IRIS-T. i.e. By designing around a
heavyweight airframe that could /burn off/ the gas needed to get to X 'with agility remaining', and weapons fit to kill, dominantly, once it got
there (MRM as a 500lb standard instead of a 350lb one) the powers that be could have forced everyone to follow the same standards and thus limited the
_total count_ of threat aircraft in each air force. Instead, purely for DOTC profit, they have escalated the threat technology base AND
numbers-of-shooters level to the point where ONLY the combination of stealth and SSC boosted missile poles will save us. MORONS.
Lightweight fighters exist to employ and otherwise socially worthless knight-class. A cruise missile or UCAV could do a better job as a bomber. Yet
because industry builds whatever the military wants. And the military sells itself to Congress, not based on capability but on PROFIT, district by
district, in select committees; where fighter pilots are the Samurai of the current era. UCAVs are Admiral Perry threatening to blow up Tokyo Bay.
And they ain't havin' none of that.
To which I would only add that Riccioni, Sprey and Boyd sabotaged the F-15 at every turn to get what they wanted and what they got was a roughly 250nm
sphere of influence around the boat or base. Compared to the 500nm for the prior generation and the 650nm that the 'bombers before that' (F-111,
A-3/5/67) had brought to the table.
IMO, they blew it completely and ARE NOT the heros of anyone but overage children whose concept of operations comes down to 'kick the tires, light
the fires, I gotta be back in an hour to play golf!' airpower.
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Sprey said his briefing focused on the time-tested factors that define an effective fighter plane: (1) See the enemy first; (2) outnumber the enemy;
(3) outmaneuver the enemy to fire, and (4) kill the enemy quickly.
“The Raptor is a horrible failure on almost every one of those criteria,” Sprey said.
The stellar attribute of the F-22 — its invisibility on enemy radar due to a computer-aided stealth design — is a “myth,” Sprey said. That is
because in order to locate the enemy beyond visual range, the Raptor (like every other fighter) must turn on its own radar, immediately betraying its
location.
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Such utter /bilge/. The reasons driving the VID selection are many and complex but among them are:
1. DETECTION RANGE.
On the fighter, especially in the mid-60s, even a 27-30" array was lucky to see aircraft at more than 35nm. On jets like the F-8 and indeed naval
F-4s this could be further cut by both the nose size and the naval landing requirement's effect on tube and discrete transistorized electronics based
technology. Now throw in mixed fighter forces on a joint services ops plan whose day to day ATO effects were virtually /unknown/ and things get
REALLY UGLY because you have no damn idea if the promised (USAF for a USN strike) CAP of the fighter fields north of your target is 'on, off or just
late'. And you won't be SEEING those targets until they themselves are long past being a separate entity from where you know the threat baselane
empties out from. Include another variable inherent to compromised IFF (and strangled parrot factor) and there is nothing left to trust BUT your
eyeballs.
Obviously, with ranges upwards of 100nm and secure-voice + datalinking to AEW&C, this no longer applies. AND IT HASN'T FOR AT LEAST TWENTY FIVE
YEARS!
2. LDSD.
Simply put, if you can only see to about 20db mixed clutter or 5,000ft below your airframe (which ever comes first) anyone who comes out to play based
on the HUGE ruckus you're making (tankers and jammers and radio and music) only has to play rugburner and he's safe. But shift to an APX-80/C-Tree
or QRC-248 element. Plus a hotwired enemy radio/landline communications system. And things get a helluva lot easier.
Take this forward another 'notch' into PD AWACS and LDSD Fighters and things become almost passing fair.
Throw in a decent moving map (base locations as a certainty) SAD and AESA and taking life in lookdown is almost acceptable.
Because now you can have a historical trackfile which leads right back to the airbase in question and which seldom, if ever, 'gets lost in the
press' of other tracks as there are fewer and fewer direct approaches to airbases anyway.
Under positive track, almost immediately, wheels-in-well, threats tend to die early and badly. And stealth just helps this along.
3. STANDOFF.
With todays nominally /ballistic/ weapons having ranges upwards of 12-15nm and glide weapons taking this out to 40+, the need to fly right up to ANY
target is GREATLY minimized. If they have to come to your BRL not you to their runway centerline, things become a heckuva lot harder for them, if
only because you can continually run decoy tease (full court press and run away!) ops until they are (GAI reaction time) utterly 'mapped' if not
depleted of sortie options, long before the actual attack.
4. IFF as a JEM+ISAR OPTION.
Typically, if you have intraflight datalinks and secure Mode IV/V options; you can ping-to-see and AIFF certainly helps here. But the real game is
going to remain 'image the airframe and resonate for a harmonic' (EPulse and ISAR) while it is already acknowledged that Jet Engine Modulation has
been an element of the game for nie on 15 years. And if EID fails you go to _EOID_ as it is now admited that targeting pods have had 'secondary AAW
capabilities' in for a similar period. Whether you believe in IFF or NCTR or not, if you _fail to mention them_ as a function of intelligent
discourse, nothing you say in their deliberate ignorance has validity.
LASTLY. AA-ARM are NOT wonder weapons. They actually have very low accuracies unless supplemented by secondary guidance modes and are particularly
apt to starvation or RMAX problems where the-
TARGET..........SHOOTER...........ILLUMINATOR
0.....................20-40nm..............80-100nm
Are so widely spaced in range and azimuth. Not least because, even a fairly conventional fighter with Have Glass type treatments becomes pretty darn
hard to see, nose-on, above 50nm. And a stealth jet should be well night completely invisible to both IR and X-Band at anything over 30.
The only REAL (not test range) operational success I'm familiar with on a like anti-radiation system basis is the use of the external CG uplink
antenna dipole array on the SA-2 as a primitive home-on-jam system againt latewar B-52 ALT type jammers whose strobe pattern and technique generation
(as well as flight path and formation celling predictability) were all VERY primitive.
Lobbing AA-ARM /from range/ against an F-22 is about as likely to work as chucking horseshoes at a shark in the ocean. From Kansas.
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Nor is the aircraft design effective simply because its advocates insist so, Sprey said. The 1980s-era F-117 stealth fighter was supposed to be
invisible too, but post-Gulf War studies showed that the aircraft had been spotted by Iraq’s ground-based radars, he said.
And in the 77-day aerial campaign against Serbia in 1999, the adversary’s “1950s-era radar” managed to locate and shoot down two F-117s,
Stevenson pointed out in his presentation. The situation is actually worse today, he said, because many nations have acquired advanced missiles that
can home in on radar emissions.
“Who do you want in a dark alley?” Stevenson asked. “The cop with the flashlight, or the crook with a gun that fires light-homing bullets?”
>>
Morons. ONE F-117 was lost. It was lost, supposedly, because it flew a route three nights in a row and a French officer decided to 'do his part'
by mentioning this. The F-117 itself is compromised, not by it's signature but it's weapon delivery capabilities which (at the time) included next
to no IAM or thru-cloud options.
OTOH, the typical 'Low Band' (2GHz) radar is surmounted by a sail shaped parabola about the size of a truck and about as easy to move about as a
statue.
While the TRUE 'Low Band' (750-950MHz) systems are closer akin to the backstop on a baseball diamond or the giant 'golf ball' domes of yore and
are more or less there til the concrete fails.
They have VERY poor volume definition and so the best you can hope for is to send a weapon platform to the general area to sweep it down with high
band as an alternative to lobbing missiles into their own search-cone proximity. Both are VERY expensive, the former not least because it the Raptor
will be hunting the target back.
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Because the Raptor ultimately ballooned into a weapon that costs $361 million per copy, even Congress could not stomach the total program cost
exceeding $65 billion, Sprey said. As a result, the Air Force is now committed to fielding a fighter program that lacks sufficient numbers to prevail
in a major conflict, however effective the individual aircraft may be.
>>
The USAF, 'as a gift' to Lunchmeat, added ONE extra Airframe purchase to the FY2003 funding. At 117 million dollars. Congress, embarrassed and
angry at having this 'over expensive' asset purchased so cheap, immediately closed the loophole designed SPECIFICALLY to reward production line
(economics) savings. And 'no more was heard' about real costs of the airframe.
In any case, the JSF is about 70% through it's own 45 billion dollar R&D program while the total number of purchased airframes as gone down from
2,968 airframes to about 1,423. And 'total program acquisition costs' have skyrocked from 191 BILLION to 257 BILLION. And /that money/ ladies and
gents, we have not even -begun- to spend yet.
Even as export customers are threatening to jump ship if the 104 million dollar asking price (in CRS Budget documents) is not 'stabilized' back
towards the promised 48-55 million that they signed up for.\
i.e. Whether we ourselves get fewer jets, we are going to end up subsidizing the FMS 'for profit' sales, regardless. Get ready to BOHICA
Taxpayers, it's once more spring time in Texas.
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“Hitler had 70 Me-262s in combat,” Sprey said. “They were crushed by the force of 2,000 inferior P-51s that the United States had in the
air.”
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BWUAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHH!
Hitler had what, 1,200 airframes in various subcomponent centers?
Hitler _Had No_:
Gas.
BMC2/Early Warning.
Pilot Training System.
The reality being that he HAD NOT had such a system since October, 1943 when Black Thursday TAUGHT THE WRONG LESSONS TO THE LUFTWAFFE.
Namely that a lack of OCA wouldn't come to haunt them. That the USAAF would not implement a system of effective (ranged) OCA themselves and that
they didn't need to think beyond the 400mph boundary in avoiding what they could not numerically match. Or numerically (by radius) what they could
not on-the-ground protect.
OTOH, the Me-262 _Swallow_, as I have stated before, was a ONE PASS HAUL A$$ DEFENSIVE COUNTER AIR PLATFORM with all of **one** built in 'guaranteed
kill'. Be it rockets or guns.
Try for anything more than that and you would be dogpiled in wide turns by 470mph P-47M or P-51H anyway.
This argument MIGHT make sense if the 'great and wise' Senor Sprey had said that the Nazis were fools for investing in the Me-262 instead of
Wasserfall and Rheindochter SAMs. But then again, that would require comparison with the materials and subsystems buildup going on in the equally
wasteful offensive ballistic weapons program (without nuclear tips) and so either way your deep into fuzzy logic territory.
What the F-22 is entirely different yet again.
It is NOT an OCA platform. Indeed, I would not call it a 'fighter' because it doesn't need to kill enemy fighters to survive or have principal
mission relevance. It is certainly NOT an escort platform because then it's initiative and freedom of ops is compromised on a guilt-by-association
basis with the sheep. It is NOT a 'bomber' perse because it doesn't lose any fighter like capabilities by virtue of carrying four or eight
GBU-39.
I would call it a battlespace dominance or 'COE' mission system because it really wins by NOT succumbing to the 'must kill X' threat-as-role
definition of combattive function.
It can glide by one. Zap another and come home. It can KILL FROM BVR an entire formation. And then go home as if nothing at all has happened.
And it can do ALL of this, supersonically, at range. Using supercruise as a _transit_ multiplier to speed sortie generation. Which is as if (in
comparison with the Me-262), Hitler could pick up Germany and move it 1,000nm in any direction, in 3hrs. THAT is what may ultimately be determinative
on the F-22's achieved vs. promisary performance. In that the less we are liked (by friends and enemies alike) the farther we may have to come to
shoot stuff down and blow stuff up. And while this will not only save us from the 'DCA = SAM vs. TBM' likely progression towards a future, missile
based, warfare system. It will only work if we do not spend HOURS inbetween target and base.
Something which, in any case, the Schwalbe never could achieve because it had neither the gas nor the engine life to manage multiple sorties per
day.
The F-22 is the ghost in the machine of whatever operational paradigm shakes out of the fraud that is Iraq and the JSF program. It is almost certain
to reduce U.S. tacair dependence on multiple support sortie (tanker and EA at least) capabilities in any future war over a 1,000nm from base. And
depending on the progression of ABL and UCAV technology beds, it may well be the preferred long range BD (strike) system in a world where AAW is a
function, not of 15 mile per minute supercruise. But 186,000mps followon DEWS. While 'CAS' is performed, not by assets that can reach the target
area quickly. But rather ones which, once there, can REMAIN ON STATION for several hours.
I myself think it likely that it is the combination of the latter two factors which will spell the ultimate doom of most military airframes and all
manned ones. Probably starting no later than 2015.
KPl.
