F-22 Fighter Loses $79 Billion Advantage in Dogfights: Report

reply to post by RSF77


Funny, they said that in Vietnam too.

The f22 has never been used in any combat situation....draw your own conclusions

Being the most advanced and the most expensive doesn't automatically make you the best. Stuff like this makes me chuckle.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by RSF77

 

Funny, they said that in Vietnam too.

There is a big difference between the Vietnam war and the 21st century, no matter how funny it is. The F22 is not the F4 and it has guns anyways. So what's your point?

I'm now curious. I'd like to see how the F-22($150 million) compares to the F-15SE ($100 mil). Is that extra $50 million worth it for the full on stealth features? If the gains are not that great for what kind of combat we expect, I'd say go for the lower cost one and buy more of them. Keep the F-22's around for special missions.

reply to post by edog11


not sure if been said already as im late to tht e thread.. but isnt most air conflicts won 9 times out of 10 from BVR?

reply to post by Zaphod58


Thanks.. that actually clears a lot of it up.

If a sniper finds himself in CQ then generally something was went snafu somewhere along the way. Of course, it can happen, but yeah - if you can pop your enemies before they even know you are there from a long distance and then vanish it usually negates the need for CQ.

Originally posted by RSF77

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by RSF77

 

Funny, they said that in Vietnam too.

There is a big difference between the Vietnam war and the 21st century, no matter how funny it is. The F22 is not the F4 and it has guns anyways. So what's your point?

The really funny thing is that they said it before WW2 as well. The RAF's fighter plans with all their complex formations had been worked out specifically because it was believed that 8 gun fighters approaching a target at over 350mph would not be able to engage in dogfights. These were seen as an anachronism that the move away from slower but more agile biplanes during the 1930's had made redundant. The Germans knew that was nonsense becausethey had real life experience in Spain and the RAF threw out all it's assumptions in the first few weeks of the Battle of Britain, fortunately.

The F-4 was no Spitfire and it STILL needed to be able to mix it. The point should be obvious. BVR are far from infallible and even without following artificial ROE the potential for a ogfight will always persist and is likely to be far more common than anyone envisaged.

Would somebody PLEASE answer my question if the raptor is that great why the f*** have they never used it in any war. iran? afghanistan? nope just sits in its hanger and does the odd airshow (oh wasnt it in some Arnie film
:lol

reply to post by dashdespatch


Because they have about ten times as many teen series fighters which are cheaper to operate and easily good enough against the opponents faced. You don't just go in with all you've got, you manage your assets in the most appropriate way.

reply to post by RSF77


Have you ever looked at BVR kills? Really looked? Israel, which has probably the most combat experience of anyone has roughly a 6% BVR kill percentage. The US has almost a zero percent. BVR is great to talk about, but in reality, it's much harder than just pointing at another aircraft and saying it's a bad guy, and shooting.

reply to post by choos


Far from it. BVR combat is seriously overhyped. I don't think there's any country out there that has engaged in combat that has even a 10% kill rate in BVR.

reply to post by Zaphod58


wiki says aim-120's have about a 46% strike rate (aim-120c's supposedly has no performance decrease).. and doesnt the f-22 have pretty decent radars?? cant they fire and run? wasnt there something about fire and forget missiles?

reply to post by choos


Yeah, it has a 46% pk in exercises, and in simulated combat missions against drones.

The problem isn't the missile. It's target identification at BVR ranges, as well as new countermeasures, etc. During Desert Storm I believe there were one or two BVR kills by Allied forces. I'm not sure of the exact number off the top of my head, but it was very very low. Unless you are in a situation where you KNOW that the plane coming at you is an enemy combat aircraft, you don't dare take the shot. Almost every kill scored by the US military (all branches) since Vietnam have been WVR kills.

The F-22 has outstanding sensors, especially when working in a pack. But again, unless you can know for sure that your target is an enemy target, you don't shoot at BVR ranges. There are only a couple of ways to tell, and they can be fooled. The most common way is IFF, but if you have an allied aircraft with an IFF problem, which happened when an RAF Tornado flew towards a Patriot battery, and was shot down, then you could be killing a friendly.

reply to post by waynos


By the time they get round to using them they will be obsolete..might as well give em a go

Originally posted by edog11
The Raptor's advantage has never been WVR dogfights, that's not what it was primarily designed to do and that's not how it is being used (Although it is still an extremely maneuverable jet that will give most, if not all 4th generation jets a run for their money in the WVR arena).

It's advantage is that it flies high and fast without being detected and if you combine that with the most advanced and powerful radar in it's class and a state-of-the-art avionics suite then you've got yourself a group of fighters that can see where you are, what you are doing and take a shot at you if they choose to do so before you even know they are out there. It's like being hunted down by invisible ghosts that are hundreds of kilometers away.

The only indication you will have that there are Raptors out there (If you are lucky) would be your RWR, warning you that you are being "painted" by a radar for a missile lock. If you are unlucky and the Raptor's radar "paints" your jet without you even knowing then you will only know when that AMRAAM activates its own radar when it is already at it's last stage of its flight which means it's already only seconds away.

This basically means that you won't know there are Raptors stalking you and your flight until you and your buddies all have an AMRAAM up your tailpipe, and even then, you won't know where they are and how many there are.

Surviving those missiles will require some very hard maneuvering... Maneuvering that will demand a lot from your aircraft and will test even the best pilot's skills.
Even if you and a few of your flight survives the first wave of AMRAAM's, you will have lost so much kinetic energy that the second wave of missiles will be nearly impossible to survive.
And you still don't know how many Raptors there are and from exactly where you are being engaged.
It is because of this that a flight of 2 to 3 Raptors can successfully engage and eliminate 2 to 6 times as many opponents than there are F-22's (4 Raptors vs 8-24 Tiffy's/Eagles/Vipers for example).


Furthermore, A Raptor "supercruiseing" at Mach 1.5+ at an altitude of around 60.000ft will dramatically increase it's missiles' flight envelope and thus deadliness. Combine that with the new AMRAAM-D that has a higher velocity and range and you will have a very, very bad day as the OpFor.

It is beyond me why they state that the Raptor has lost it's "advantage". No Raptor will ever get into the WVR arena if the pilot doesn't mess up badly and I really mean BADLY.

All of this and we haven't even touched upon the F-22's state of the art EW capabilities.

In my opinion, It is worth every single penny that you Americans spend on it. Why? Because I would rather put 3-4 pilots in much more survivable jets like the F-22 up against an overwhelming force of foes than to put 5 times as many of those pilots in much less survivable jets like the F-15 or 16.

WVR: Within Visual Range (Farther than 20nm/36km).
BVR: Beyond Visual Range (Within 20nm/36km).
RWR: Radar Warning Receiver (Constantly checks to see if anyone is focusing their radar emissions on your jet which is needed for radar guided missiles for example).
Supercruise: Flying faster than Mach 1 without the usage of afterburners (Faster than roughly 1200km/h).
EW: Electronic Warfare (Like ECM/ECCM/Jamming for example)
OpFor: Opposing Force (Enemy).
AMRAAM: Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile. (Mach 4+ Normal launch: 110+Km range, F-22 launched: 140+km range for the C variant. The D variant will increase this with around 40%).
Tiffy: Slang for Eurofighter "Typhoon".
Viper: F-16 Fighting Falcon.
Eagle: F-15 Eagle.

I'll end my post with a quote

I talked to an F-14D pilot a month or two ago about this (instructor in a Goshawk at the time). He was in the last squadron of F-14D's. He said "They (Langley)would call us on the phone (Oceana) since we were so close and ask if we wanted to fight, SURE we said. Well at first they only wanted to do BVR stuff, well, forget about it, two minutes after we start we're dead, but after a while they finally agreed to mix it up with us WVR" "How did you do I" asked? His only response, somewhat dejected, somewhat admiring in tone "the F-22 is an impressive plane"

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edit on 31-7-2012 by edog11 because: (no reason given)

That's all absolutely lovely, really, a very beautiful piece of writing. Unfortunately, the people who know what they are talking about, and who gain their understanding of these matters through experience and internal knowledge say this:

"We expected to perform less with the Eurofighter but we didn't," German air officer Marc Grune said, according to Combat Aircraft Monthly. "We were evenly matched. They didn't expect us to turn so aggressively."

In the dogfight the Eurofighter is at least as capable as the F-22, with advantages in some aspects."

The F22 isn't the superplane you americans think it is

Originally posted by jhn7537
Imagine how much good that wasted $80 billion could do in this country right now... Imagine the shelter, food, and clothing that money could help or the good charities out there it could help out. But instead we have a wasted military fighter jet because its creators didnt do their due-diligence in planning and designing this aircraft...smh

$80 billion...well the F-35 HAS consumed nearly that much already and it does not even work...it is a flying turd with poor range/load and poor thin skin.

reply to post by binkman


Thank you for your reply.

The quotes you have in your post are about dogfights (WVR) and yes, the Typhoon is an amazingly robust and manoeuvrable jet that can compete very well with the F-22 in the visual range arena, but were this engagement real, they (the F-22's) would have started taking down those Eurofighters minutes (and in air to air combat, minutes are a lifetime) before coming close enough to be detected.

Why they even merged to the dogfight in this particular exercise was that the Rules Of Engagement prevented the Raptors from engaging the Typhoons before they were within visual range and already detected because the goal of this exercise was to see how the Raptor would fair against another supermaneuverable jet that was built with maneuverability in mind, not stealth.

Again, in reality, the Raptors would have started firing AMRAAMs at 70nm or so instead of coming in for the chaotic and dangerous merge.


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