if F-117 Nighthawk as the ultimate air fighter back in the 90's....

if F-117 Nighthawk was the ultimate air fighter back in the 90's, now 20 years later, I wonder what could be the ultimate airplane the USAF have.

Once I heard in a documentary, that in the area 51 there is technology 50 years in advance of what we see today...and I believe it.

When the USAF disclose a technology is because is almost obsolete for them...but amazing for many of us that has never heard if it before.

I still remember when I saw the if F-117 Nighthawk for the first time back in the 1992 I think...it was unbelievable at the time.

what new toy could they have today? any idea?

reply to post by metalpr


The F-22 is their new pet.

Granted that is what we get to see, and I will tell you....watching them taxi by me on my way to work when I was in the USAF was a marvelous site. Hearing them take off, watching them go super-sonic without after burners was just amazing.

But the question remain, what is hidden that is even more advanced than the awesome and powerful machinery that is the F-22?

I know they probably have something even more advanced than this, [pilot-less?] but the F-22a Raptor is the baddest-tail plane thats ever been admitted to... If they DO have more advanced stuff, holy smoly! I wanta see!

The US Air Force claims that the Raptor cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter types,[2] and Lockheed Martin claims that, "the F-22 is the only aircraft that blends supercruise speed, super-agility, stealth and sensor fusion into a single air dominance platform." From wiki-link below...

Wiki-Raptor

The F-22 possesses a highly stealthy signature that greatly reduces the enemy’s ability to find, track and target — permits access to defended areas that cannot be accessed by nonstealth platforms First look/first kill in all environments: A combination of improved sensor capability, improved situational awareness and improved weapons provides first-kill opportunity against the threat

F-22 Official? link

ownbestenemy beat me to the punch! bravo!

reply to post by rbnhd76


You know its funny cause I worked on fixing the ground radars for the base. The damn controllers there would always ask why they cannot pick up the signatures of the F-117's (prior to their decommissioning and retirement) and then the F-22s that we had stationed there.

My answer...."Well sir, they are designed to not be seen by radar."

Not only is it one of the most advanced pieces of technology, it is a great looking plane. Blending the airframes of F-18s and F-15s makes it look purrrrty.

reply to post by metalpr


On another note....I would say the F-15E was the greatest fighter through the 90's, with a flawless kill record. The F-117 was not a fighter at all, but rather a bomber.

The story goes that it got the "F" designation because no respectable fighter pilot would fly something with a "B" designation.

The other reason is it handles like a fighter, but has no air-to-air capability (that is known of course).

could a F117A escape from a dogfight?
since F117A is stealth, can a real Fighter lock on it and shot?

Originally posted by ownbestenemy
reply to post by metalpr

 

On another note....I would say the F-15E was the greatest fighter through the 90's, with a flawless kill record. The F-117 was not a fighter at all, but rather a bomber.

The story goes that it got the "F" designation because no respectable fighter pilot would fly something with a "B" designation.

The other reason is it handles like a fighter, but has no air-to-air capability (that is known of course).

BINGO.
It was never used as a "Fighter"

reply to post by metalpr


It was given many design capabilities that would make it nearly improbable to be "locked" onto. The venting and design of its thrust was designed to masks its heat signature. An onboard radar of another aircraft would probably not even pick it up or if it did, it would have the signature of something much smaller and be discounted as either noise or a flock of birds.

Visually, if engaged, it would be a sitting duck minus any counter measures (which I believe are still classified, but I haven't kept up on that) as it has sub-par sub-sonic speeds.

Its handling and flight capabilities, along with advanced avionic systems allowed it to fly as if it were a fighter. Although pulling high-G turns I think it might struggle a bit because of the design of the airframe.

No cannon. No guns. No air-air missiles.
And they put an "F" in front of it? What the hell were they supposed to do? Say "boo"?
I kinda liked the Flanker myself.

i agree with ownbestenemy the F-15E was the best fighter during the 90's the F-22 is nice but yet to be tested by a real enemy in the air But will probably be the best fighter this decade. as for what the new toys are. I could only imagine.

It's kind of funny actually i was just thinking about this lastnight. I live Southwest of Whiteman AFB and seeing the B-2's even to this day is pretty amazing but last night i ran out for a smoke and saw something headed towards Whiteman's direction from me and it wasn't a B-2, A-10 or T-38 all of which are based at Whiteman. But from the lights on it, it almost looked like a F-117 but traveling a helluva lot faster than an f-117. and the moon wasn't up yet so no silhouette maybe it'll make another appearance some night and i can get a better look at it

reply to post by metalpr


The F-117 is a fighter bomber. It was never intended for dogfighting. Nighthawk is a mission-specific tool.

Geez, i havent posted in ages. Anyways, hello there all.

----

The F-117 being the ultimate fighter in the 90's? Are you joking? It doesnt even have radar to fight in BVR combat nor has it an IRST module to track down other fighters. That dis-allows useage of AMRAAM and AIM-9. And when considering the fact it doesnt have heavy machineguns/automatic cannons, this "ultimate" fighter cant fight at all.

The F-117 is nothing more then a light tactical bomber with the unique capabillity at that time of having high amounts of stealth at the time.

The best fighter in the 90's that was in service would be the SU-27.

Definitely not the Nighthawk. I'd say it's a toss-up between the F-15 Eagle and the SU-27 Flanker. (heck, they both even almost look the same)

KEY WORD never USED as an air to air fighter...

Do you guys honestly think we invest BILLIONS in AWACS and NETWORK CENTRIC and AEGIS type technology and don't incorporate FDDM (fire direction and data management) modules into our Wunder weapons?

If you read the original White papers and industry chatter at the time of the development of the F 16 and in fact by the man whose vision guided the program said that the ideal mainline fighter of tomorrow will need to be

1. All composite! or as close to it as possible with IR suppression and radar invisibility acquired in any and EVERY way possible!! In his original white paper he even specced out a lack of an onboard radar in said next gen fighter... saying that it's minimal emf and emitting metallic componentry would be better put towards PHAT pipe data links and MFD system s that would allow his next gen fighter to accept data from other emitting sources and use it to launch it's weapons and maintain it's situational awareness!!! (Gee sound familiaar now?)

2. Said it didn't necessarilly need to be supersonic but needed to be able to launch missiles guided through data acquired from other assets and RUN LIKE HELL

3. No gun on it as his future fighter was to be light CHEAP limitted payload extremely low emissions etc... He knew that air superiority in the launch platform is maintained by it not being seen and it launching sophisticated and very deadly MISSILES while not having a radar of it's own to be pin pointed by.

the f 117 came in at about 50 million each!! My personal theory goes like this though....

we never saw the f 117 used as a fighter not because it wasn't ABLE to be used in that role but because the EGO of the FIGHTER MAFIA refused to be put back into a system that was a cog in the overall machine of a miitary campaign rather than the PLATFORM CENTRIC make the strategy fit the newest coolest zoom zoom wham wham swiss army TOY high profile Small Man JUNK PENIS WITH A TURBOFAN

Because quite frankly we built the 200 million each f 22 and honestly the f35 is headed for dissolution and we all know it.... and the generation after next is unmanned purpose built UAV type craft that are MUCH MORE LIKE the 117 than the f22...

WHY would they be like something that supposedly couldn't even do said job if they weren't capable of it the whole time?


Now One factor besides EGO and the fighter mafia that doomed the wobblin goblin is the fact that in 2008 a ukranian university professor admitted that using the radiation from a well established cellular network and some basic interferometry software 1st gen stealth aircraft could be tracked with utter reliability...

Now if you ask me the russians quite probably knew how to do this the whole time which is why they released a "DUAL USE" theoretical physics white paper yet we won't sell most of the world play station 3's or the newest mac books!!

But that's just my two cents combined with Thousands of hours spent studying white papers on defense reform submitted and screamed about by veterans and concerned PATRIOTS who are not part of the Military Industrial Complex that cares nothing for lives and instead manipulates the acquisitions system by playing to each branch and further each sub faction within each branches VANITY EGO and Desire to get not just their share of the FUNDS but their share of the PROMOTIONS AND PUBLICITY which is the difference between Up and OUT in an increasingly patronage and politics based military bureaucracy.

These contractors have CONNED the various services and sub branches into bigger and bigger platform CENTRIC buys that increasingly work less and less well together and are in fact on a daily basis forcing the boots on the ground to WORK AROUND and find ways to win IN SPITE of their equipment and command structure not because of it.

reply to post by roguetechie


I agree with much you have said, however the idea of an aircraft packed with missiles and no guns/no radar raises the pessimist in me. When the enemy has a counter measure, and those sophisticated missiles wont lock, wont hit, or even worse, wont leave the god damned rails because some fool on the ground has botched the load, you want those guns, you NEED those guns. They may save the life of the pilot, they may be the difference between failure and success for the mission.

Lets not also forget that in some situations, AWACS man not be available or may be forced to retire due to any number of hazards or problems. In this case, the fighters should have on board radar to protect themselves and continue the mission.

Such an elegant sophisticated model only works if NOTHING GOES WRONG. You can almost always be guaranteed that something will.

Redundancy may not be cool, but it is very very practical.

Well ... If you dig around you will see that several groups including some naval aviation types advocated highly Upgrading the Phoenix Long Range A2A missile and mounting 4 to 16 on pylons of hawkeye and other AWACs aircraft... just like the marine hercules armament package.

On top of this if you also look into certain things there were several development efforts at 1 to 5kw chemical and or solid state fighter mounted lasers and beyond this several plasma weapons projects in the 80's to 90's based around ball lighting and certain types of plasma which very well could have been integrated into the airframe at a later date...

And as far as no radar that doesn't mean NO onboard detection capabilities ... if you look at what I refer to as celldar type darpa projects which could use an enemies own battlefield radiation profile against them.

as well as being able to use interferometry and etc of background EM and etc as well as up and downlink from real time space assets and AEGIS systems as well as ground based phased arrays....

More or less they would Not be anywhere close to blind or depending on the mark one Eyeball just sipping from a veritable Punch bowl of available data pools as needed in a robust and self rerouting adaptive network running most likely over a quantum commo rig if I had to guess... All of this routed back state side to be heavilly crunched at a Fort meade server farm through DARPA's panopticon type data merge programs that they are working towards then beamed or quantum entangled back to the black box that sends information to those big giant multi function displays in the cockpit of the 117.

While I agree with you that redundancy is indeed a key tenet of any good MIL Spec system the fallacious argument that it all needs to be in one concentrated system is not just stupid but counter productive as the basic argument of quantity having a quality all it's own is EVEN MORE TRUE IN THE DIGITAL AGE....

With the state of the art in data management literally Orders of magnitude more useful and faster than Human data merge environments every 6 months Quantity is no longer a force multiplier but a true Multi dimensional FORCE EXPONENT...

Put simply the more individual data points you have and the more sensor and etc platforms that you can run comparative data analysis off of gives you MASSIVE amounts more ability to turn even jammed frequencies etc into useable tactical data. Especially if you were to oh I don't integrate a multi mode switch and router in EVERY SINGLE EVERYTHING YOU DEPLOY to a front creating a MASSIVELY redundant and Hyper robust data environment. Especially if you i don't know put the guys that make the robot vacuum and the guys that build ditch witches together and start sending out optical fiber running digger bots with your engineering battallions.

So by focusing our resources into FEWER but HIGHLY complex and not very justifiable to lose assets we are HANDING our enemy the FUTURE Initiative.

Originally posted by roguetechie
Well ... If you dig around you will see that several groups including some naval aviation types advocated highly Upgrading the Phoenix Long Range A2A missile and mounting 4 to 16 on pylons of hawkeye and other AWACs aircraft... just like the marine hercules armament package.

AWACS armament is one thing, however it doesn't render them immune to inclement weather, mechanical failure, electrical failure, sabotage, jamming, lightning strike, bad fuel or a hundred other factors that can bring a bird down or force it to retire.

On top of this if you also look into certain things there were several development efforts at 1 to 5kw chemical and or solid state fighter mounted lasers and beyond this several plasma weapons projects in the 80's to 90's based around ball lighting and certain types of plasma which very well could have been integrated into the airframe at a later date...

Ignoring a basic rugged fall back weapons system like the gattling gun in favour of an even more sophisticated and non battle proven system is fraught with risk. The more complexity you in build into any system, the greater the chance of failure.

And as far as no radar that doesn't mean NO onboard detection capabilities ... if you look at what I refer to as celldar type darpa projects which could use an enemies own battlefield radiation profile against them.


as well as being able to use interferometry and etc of background EM and etc as well as up and downlink from real time space assets and AEGIS systems as well as ground based phased arrays....

Aslong as your enemy is radiating continually
Aslong as the satellite is available and isnt over the horizon or taken out
Aslong as the ground based phased array is within range
Aslong as you are operating near a friendly naval force that can uplink
Battlefields dont always occur when you have assets in play, the enemy can and will attack where you are the least capable using methods that plays to his own strengths.

More or less they would Not be anywhere close to blind or depending on the mark one Eyeball just sipping from a veritable Punch bowl of available data pools as needed in a robust and self rerouting adaptive network running most likely over a quantum commo rig if I had to guess... All of this routed back state side to be heavilly crunched at a Fort meade server farm through DARPA's panopticon type data merge programs that they are working towards then beamed or quantum entangled back to the black box that sends information to those big giant multi function displays in the cockpit of the 117.

Quantum computing is still many years away, and without it, you are stuck with good old RF. Good old RF restricted to the speed of light, vulnerable to jamming, interference, atmospherics, santa and reindeer, you name it. You cant manage a real time war from Fort Meade and certainly NOT a real time engagement. Seconds count in air combat, and the pilot must have live real time data on the spot, not 3 seconds later when he has a Mig in his nostril.

While I agree with you that redundancy is indeed a key tenet of any good MIL Spec system the fallacious argument that it all needs to be in one concentrated system is not just stupid but counter productive as the basic argument of quantity having a quality all it's own is EVEN MORE TRUE IN THE DIGITAL AGE....

I disagree to a degree. For some things the best package is custom built. You wouldn't use an A-10 to hunt Fulcrums, but if you are hunting tanks at low altitude or need close air support, its the weapon of choice. And the reverse is also true, for the ability to loiter for close air support, you wouldn't use an F-22, you would go for the Specter or Warthog. Warfare is multi-faceted, and thus the solutions must also be adaptive BUT capable of their role in the best possible sense.

Now there is argument for more capable single platforms to standardize air superiority & strike capability, but for some things, its the Right Tool For the Right Job.

With the state of the art in data management literally Orders of magnitude more useful and faster than Human data merge environments every 6 months Quantity is no longer a force multiplier but a true Multi dimensional FORCE EXPONENT...

Put simply the more individual data points you have and the more sensor and etc platforms that you can run comparative data analysis off of gives you MASSIVE amounts more ability to turn even jammed frequencies etc into useable tactical data. Especially if you were to oh I don't integrate a multi mode switch and router in EVERY SINGLE EVERYTHING YOU DEPLOY to a front creating a MASSIVELY redundant and Hyper robust data environment. Especially if you i don't know put the guys that make the robot vacuum and the guys that build ditch witches together and start sending out optical fiber running digger bots with your engineering battallions.

Interesting but all those routers would require massive management and with every one you add, you add latency overhead. Data is worthless if its minutes old. Routers(real routers not adsl crud boxes) must act as central points and data concentrators, the more you have, the more overhead and complexity you have, once again, the higher the failure rate. Regardless you wouldn't need one in every asset to create a robust network. You built a client focused network with no back end to slow down processing. Each node must share and process its own raw data, this is TRUE redundancy because it requires no central point of processing. This would include AWACS which would just be another node but with better vision, feeding raw data to each of the other nodes. This is essentially distributed computing at its best. Central Processing is a single choke point of failure. Kill it or slow it and your massive deployment becomes spare parts floating through the air.

Please don't forget, aircraft do not always fly or fight in large wings, the lone aircraft buzzing tree tops deep inside enemy territory has the same requirements to process threats/targets and defend itself actively. Defence in depth deployments demand just this sort of mission.

There are new solutions on the ground for battlefield data, but I cant talk about that at all.

So by focusing our resources into FEWER but HIGHLY complex and not very justifiable to lose assets we are HANDING our enemy the FUTURE Initiative.

And by creating a system so dependent on technology and complex that it introduces more vulnerabilities than it fixes, would be to do the same.

Has anyone actually seen an f-22 in flight? They are amazing! I should post some video. I see them fly almost everyday. The things sound crazy, and pull insane moves. But I know what they sound like, and at night and when it is cloudy out I hear something even more earthshaking fly over. Not sure if it is from the cloud cover or what, but the sound is even more deafening, body piercing. I just think it is weird that I always hear these flybys on bad visibility days. Im in the north Mat-Su valley of AK btw.

I thought the F-117 only received it's F designation as a dodge to receive funding after the debacle of over-runs, delays and cost increases in the B-2 programme? The USAF felt that Congress wouldn't approve another high cost bomber programme based on (then) as yet unproven (in combat) technologies, especially in a political climate where the need for a high penetration bomber was seen as redundant. I don't even recall ever seeing that the F-117 internal bays were able to mount Air to Air munitions.

For my money, the preeminent air to air platform of the 90's wasn't in the US inventory, it was the Flanker, and I believe that US pilots were disagreeably surprised by the competence of the aircraft (and it's pilots) during the Cope-India '04 exercise.

In any case, to paraphrase, it's not what you have, but what you do with it. Use an F-117 to beat the snot out of a Flanker, on the ground with a fast, deep strike early in the conflict and any Air to Air capability becomes a theoretical point. Good doctrine enhances mediocre equipment and bad doctrine mitigates any advantages good equipment might have.

The original intent behind the F-117 was radar supression. It was designed to get close enough to both ground radar sites and AWACS aircraft to destroy them, hence the Fighter designation. It didn't need an internal radar, because the missiles, it was to use, were designed to be guided by their target's emissions. Standard practice at the time was for a radar station or AWACS to shut down it's radar, when it was under attack. The F-117 was designed to get close enough to it's target so that it wouldn't have time to shut down. This would open holes in the enemy's air defences to allow non-stealthy aircraft to reach their targets. In Tom Clancy's book "Red Storm Rising" he gives an accurate portrayal of this type of an attack.