F-22 Pilot Scores NINE "Kills" On a Single Mission

Originally posted by WestPoint23
To say nothing of your other points, as I don't need the aggravation... Indeed, deploying twelve birds and 174 support personnel 3,200 miles cross county to a new base and environment and fly ten sorties the next day while maintaining a 97 percent sortie generation rating for six weeks says nothing of "rapidly deploying a 'deescalation' capability". While flying fourteen missions everyday mind you...

I have been thinking about this. Someone must have planned every detail down to the last button and shoe lace to get an outfit moved and on line ready to go the next day. It would take careful planning and staging of people and equipment ..spares and such...as I said ..down to the last button and shoelace. YOu would have to know where you are going what facilities are available and not available...etc etc. A thousand little details having to come together at the right place ..the right quantitys, the right time to get it all to work. Still it is a remarkable process. YOu know those guys in WW2? It probably took them a week or two to get airborne after arriving.

I was also thinking about that buisness of using a gun. I would imagine that the guns today would be capable of some type of computer aided leading of a target. Also at the rate these gatling guns shoot...a hundred rounds would be expended in a second or two.

I go to pick up the woman I am seeing to take her to lunch once in awhile at the apartment complex where she works. I see and hear those F22's taking off from Langley AFB. I dont know what they have done to the engines that is different from the F15s but it is a noticably louder engine on take off power. And I mean very noticable!! It almost hurts ..the roar and noise level by comparison to the F15s. Lots of people hang by the end of the runway just up the road from her apartments to watch them come in and take off. It was the same with the F15's.

This woman loved the looks of those Nighthawks..the F117's. Now she loves the F22's. Ever seen those bumper stickers..." I love jet noise" Yup ..she has one on her bumper.

Thanks,
Orangetom

Originally posted by orangetom1999
I was also thinking about that buisness of using a gun. I would imagine that the guns today would be capable of some type of computer aided leading of a target. Also at the rate these gatling guns shoot...a hundred rounds would be expended in a second or two.

Yeah they do, at a rate of ~100 rounds per second the F-22 has about 4.5 seconds worth of ammo (480 rounds), sufficient for about three kills, maybe four if things go right.

Originally posted by orangetom1999
I see and hear those F22's taking off from Langley AFB. I dont know what they have done to the engines that is different from the F15s but it is a noticably louder engine on take off power. And I mean very noticable!!

That's easy, they increased the thrust output by several thousand pounds so that it is even more powerful than the engines used on the F-15's.

[edit on 30-12-2006 by WestPoint23]

Originally posted by orangetom1999
...
I was also thinking about that buisness of using a gun. I would imagine that the guns today would be capable of some type of computer aided leading of a target. Also at the rate these gatling guns shoot...a hundred rounds would be expended in a second or two.
...

As I understand it, there are actually several different means to improve gun aim. The pilot can shoot it manually as is common, but the HUD also shows him a "hold point", a point where he needs to aim the gun relative to the enemy aircraft to hit it at a certain distance (I recall 2/3s of the gun´s effective range). Then he can either shoot manually again, or he switches on a compter aid and depresses the trigger, but the gun will only fire once the computer expects the hit probability to be high.

There are also so called "Assign and forget" gun fire control systems available like for the Mauser RMK30. That means the gun fires automatically once the target is in sight. I don´t know if these are fitted to aircraft, though, as the aircraft guns are not independently directable.

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies

The Eurofighter under a combat load IMO would not be able to out-manuever an F-22A under combat load and with thrust vectoring. The margain is small mind you, but I do believe the F-22A to be more manueverable than the EF-2000.


Shattered OUT...

depends what you mean by combat load, if you mean its normal full load for A2A of four AMRAAM under the belly and two ASRAAM under the wingtips then it possibly could, if you mean also with two big Hindenburger fuel tanks under the wings for extended CAP then I agree with you.

Hello everybody, I have had a hard time to log in here but I finally managed to get myself a new password.

Anyhow I read this article, and first I must say that the web-site with the article is very good and I look forward reading more extracts from it.

However about this thread. What new does this bring to the table. We all already know that the F-22 is a killing machine and that it's unbeatable. Hadn't it had a victory rate that good, or scored that many kills during the mission, we would all have been confused. "Why didn't it win". Now however, when I read it, I can only see propaganda (posting it here in ATS)


[edit on 30-12-2006 by Figher Master FIN]

Originally posted by waynos

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies

The Eurofighter under a combat load IMO would not be able to out-manuever an F-22A under combat load and with thrust vectoring. The margain is small mind you, but I do believe the F-22A to be more manueverable than the EF-2000.


Shattered OUT...

depends what you mean by combat load, if you mean its normal full load for A2A of four AMRAAM under the belly and two ASRAAM under the wingtips then it possibly could, if you mean also with two big Hindenburger fuel tanks under the wings for extended CAP then I agree with you.

He was referring just to the missile load. Once the Typhoon is no longer flying clean, the thrust to weight ratio and aerodynamics are significantly in the F-22s favor.

www.ausairpower.net...

[edit on 30-12-2006 by GT100FV]

WP23,

>>
To say nothing of your other points, as I don't need the aggravation... Indeed, deploying twelve birds and 174 support personnel 3,200 miles cross county to a new base and environment and fly ten sorties the next day while maintaining a 97 percent sortie generation rating for six weeks says nothing of "rapidly deploying a 'deescalation' capability". While flying fourteen missions everyday mind you...
>>

The thing is, rapid deployment is more about having preassigned airlift and AAR for ready-to-go pallet loads than it is anything related to the jet itself. And this capability has been endemic to the 1st FW since the days of the CENTCOM-as-RDF, given it is the equivalent of a 'First Responder' unit. Since you can't fight any war, anywhere, until your A/B/C class expectation of deployment duration and intensity arrives in theater and is setup, flying jets to an 'already USAF' base infrastructure with ground crews likely already present and stoodup for days beforehand is itself no big deal, if only because it is only 1/4th the distance to get to SWA.

However; the range of the F-22 itself still is important because it was a major selling point differentiation between the Raptor and the F-35 that the latter could 'only' do 350-400nm plus 150nm in and out as a supercruiser (which, as Riccioni states, an F-15 can also manage). While the F-35 could do 600-700nm as a marathon runner.

If the F-22 has a 'nonstop' UNREFUELED RANGE of 3200nm, it has to have /at least/ 25,000lbs of internal fuel plus probably another 8,000lbs or so in the twinned 610s. i.e. F-111 class gas. With that kind of fuel, it can almost certainly make a course segmented 600nm radius in intermediate high-fast mode, hit the tanker for a full drink (with no competition for fuel) and then do /another/ 400-600nm (200-300nm in and out) at a full lope.

Which means that the USAF has been and continues to LIE about it's true capabilities, just to guarantee themselves the JSF on a cake-and-eat-it-too basis. Even as they also render _completely false_ the notion of 'defending the tanker' because the KC-whatever should not be /anywhere's close/ to a high density air threat. Not with the BVR MRM capabilities now ubiquitous.

>>
Indeed, being a third of your strike force while destroying more than half of the enemy; even elevating and increasing the capability of older systems by just staying in the same airspace says nothing of 'allowing prosaic systems to do their missions more effectively', etc... Ah, why even bother.
>>

Such is the difference between going into the Gulf in 1991 and flying CAP missions because, despite nominally being trained with bombracks, the FF-15s were really not suitable for multirole tasking until 'the rest of the AF got there' (especially at the operating radii given south of Saudi is a 500nm trip to the border, at least).

And going in with the F-22 and _getting to_ the far fight quickly with enough bombs onboard to make a standoff-IAM difference LONG BEFORE the 'Legacy Fighters Can Flow In'.

You fight the war you brung but only if you bring the FULL capabilities of the asset to the fight can you decide /how/ you will choose to block as much as butcher your enemy.

NAPFAG in the Raptor means that you get to fight the next Kuwait battle all over again, tossing another trillion dollars and ten years of commitment away rather than ENDING THE FIGHT SOONEST. With a concentrated airlift and a capable, _Multirole_, force on arrival in theater.

Ignoring this obvious reality, the USAF brass are determined to prove the F-22 is a 'team player' in the least used as much as useful of mission taskings when in point of truth such a needlessly specialized effort simply continues the same'ol same'ol practice of delaying the onset of U.S. stabilizing force into a region while /multiplying/ the risk to both the Raptors and the rest of the package.

ARGUMENT:
Threat Air simply does not show up in numbers anymore. It being unusual to see a fourship operating together. BUT IF THE POTENTIAL FOR IT TO DO SO IS PRESENT, you do not want to be overly commited to defending conventional signature, slow, and high fuel use airframes simply because they have a few extra missiles onboard.

Instead, you want to operate in small units with maximum discretionary ability to refuse as much as accept the engagement _to the limits of LO only_ shot count. Because that discourages the enemy from /making the attempt/ at 'getting lucky' in a target rich environment. Even as it keeps the BVR shot lanes open.

Indeed, everytime a Raptor comes home with _two kills_ and a runaway-from-threat frustrated enemy condition, it can go out again with the certainty that those are two of perhaps twenty enemy airframes that will never be a threat to it again.

And two kills are much more likely when you have a bomb bay full of GBU-39 because the IAMs suck away four AIM-120s and without those added LRM shots to shock the bad guys and break up their formation discipline, you DO NOT go wading into the survivors just to prove 'the gun still has a purpose'.

As such, IMO, A2G is 'what it's all about' when you are the First Responder. Because today as always, the majority of the threat is _ground based_ to both you and the in-theater forces you are actively supporting.

Air threats should be dealt with as they present themselves within a maximum contempt of engagement doctrine relative to putting mud munitions on target in a manner which frustrates the /campaign objectives/ of your enemy. Rather than becoming embroiled in his war, his way, as a function of letting him continue to prosecute a landwar while you deny him use of the air 'because that's what you've indoctrinated yourself to do', you have to reach beyond the immediate threat and kill the schwerpunkt one.

CONCLUSION:
'Supposedly' the F-22 schoolhouse down in Florida and the tactics folks up with the FWW at Nellis include both former F-16 and F-15 drivers as a kind of balanced approach to warfightering, giving both A2A and A2G capabilities even weighting as a function of developing the Raptor playbook.

In light of which, given Northern Edge's predominant air emphasis, one can only say "Where's the beef?"

Indeed, all's I see is a 'look how good we are!' repeat of the USAF's 1974-76 'AWACS Defense Tests' (separate from the AIMVAL/ACEVAL demos) in which typical odds were 9:1 against and the threats were allowed to use all manner of deceptive maneuver and EW. The then-new F-15s won 38 of 39 of those missions as well. Blue Air in that case also at least _stated_ what the residual onboard weapon reserves were after each fight. As an honest yardstick assessment of how overextended they were in dealing with different tactics.

The difference being that the Big Bad Russkians are no longer a part of the opfor threat picture and the notional value of LO + SSC is to take the fight BEYOND the in your face level of direct confrontation which makes force massing practical for the target values.

As such, it would have been interesting to see the USAF roll out more than a repeat scenario from 30 years ago and simply up the odds. It would have been nifty to see them PROVE the Raptor as an entirely new battlespace dominance machine with 'look how -smart- we are' using multiple alternate (real world appropriate) scenario models.

Support an SOF effort to destroy 2-3 Nuke TELs in a threat globe dominated by enemy _S2A_ threats being one. Destroy a multiprong ground maneuver force from extended raidus with unreduced (mixed) air and surface threats before they reach objective-X another. Decapitation strike on a deep political target with 'unknown' supporting AAR on the return trip (emphasizig fuel economies) a third.

NE as a jet powered Marianas Turkey Shoot exercise designed to 'pump up' the already overstated abilities of the Raptor was just a waste of time on the taxpayer dime.


KPl