* FBI still can’t share terror data…
* …So they’re spending time chasing a dead reporter
* Bubonic plague in L.A.
* Return of the mounties
* Jihadists get into online privacy
* Eight drones, one picture
* U.S. to world: we control space tourism
* “New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for Mars Missions“
* Ex-fighter jocks: F-22 not so slick
* 18 years ago yesterday, the U.S. briefly fought Iran; check out pics and videos from the clash
(Big ups: Drudge, RC)
That article on the F-22 was unbelievably ignorant of the plane’s capabilities.
1. The Raptor doesn’t need to turn on its own radar to locat the enemy: it can link with other radars like AWACs to fix and close with teh enemy without ever radiating.
2. If the another sensor isn’t available, only one raptor in a flight needs to go active, as the rest will be data-linked. That one splane can act as stand-in AWACs while the rest do the dirty work.
3. The Raptor’s AESA Radar is low probability of Intercept, it uses advnaced frequency hopping and other control technology to make it incredibly hard for a reciever to detect, Identify, and track.
4. In mock-combat flight tests, the F-22 has repeatedly taken the F-15C to the woodshed. Thats at range, up close, and in dogfights.
5. In the first Persian Gulf War, the American fighter with the highest losses was the F-16, all ground fire. That was against Saddam’s 1991 tech. Care to put them against Iran or god forbid China?
Next topic: if we have to wait for antimatter to go to MARS, what the hell are we doing? We can reach Mars on chemical boosters, Ion and plasma engines, or even NERVA-style nukes, TODAY. All it takes is will and money. Let antimatter mature for a couple decades, then we’ll talk.
I’m no fighter jock, but I pretend to know a little bit about air combat nonetheless. I find the Sprey/Stevenson piece to be snarky and, forgive me, ignorant. They do make one valid point– that there aren’t enough to go around– but leave out important qualifiers on the rest. It simply doesn’t follow that the F-22 is dead in the water because it uses radar; good luck hitting a target manuevering at transonic speeds with passive radar guidance. (Word is that the Russians looked into it for attacking AWACS, and there’s a difference between an E-3 and an F-22.)
I’m with Moose on both his main points. Why must we dither about with antimatter when nuclear rocket technology has a good head start? Oh, that’s right, the entire Baby Boom turns white and starts picketing when you use The Original N Word.
Apologies for the outburst.
Yeah, the big, bad F-22 needs an AWACS “Nanny”. Those pansy fighter jocks and their beyond threat range radars. If you’re gonna make arguments make good ones, you make it sound like the E3s are flying in formation with the raptors into enemy airspace. AWACS stays out of threat range and provides direction to the Raptor. Without putting out emmissions of its own and avoiding enemy radar thanks to its reduced RCS, the F-22 then closes and destroys the enemy. That’s the ideal execution of an air-air mission.
Yes, it IS ignorant to say the F-22’s radar is of limited utlility, becuase doing so supposes that it can only be used for one role. Like I said, it can become a stand-in for AWACS on penetration missions or if the E3 has to shut down. It can be used to track targets AWACS has problems with, like Cruise Missiles and low-level strike craft, and feed into the greater information network. And its powerful enough to be useful as a jammer, sending all its RF down a single line of bearing would clog up most search radars pretty well, and even burn them out at close range.
IF you get a track on his emissions, you still have to deal with his radar shutting down or hopping freqs right out of your tracking range. A smart crew would probably rotate their emissiones throughout the flight, so each plane was only radiating for a few seconds and not allowing a track to form. And evenburning through all that, you still have to get a missile to hold lock long enough for it to hit.
We know the realism of those tests is modified to portray the F-15 pilots as experienced Su-33 pilots, the top-line adversary from possible threats like China. Su-33s, I would note, are considered better at close range than F-15s, and their infared missiles are all-aspect, meaning they can in theory target any F-22 they see, without having to have their nose on it. Most F-15 pilots I’ve heard talk about these encounters never even see the raptors that shred their formations.
No,the issue isn’t about the F-16 at all. Mr. Spey was the one that put them up as the holy of holies for the Fighter community, postulating that would should axe the F-22 and simply buy more –16s. I would point out to him that the Falcons have a less-than perfect record themselves, and that the F-22 is in fact a F-15 Eagle replacement, not intended for the F-16’s role. Yet for all that i’d still take the Raptor, becuase it’s as nimble as the Falcon but even more lethal than the Eagle.
Moose has it right with his comments on the F22. Sprey, and the others who have managed to convince themselves that the future of “major-war” air combat lies in WW2-like dogfighting, with it’s emphasis on manueverability and visual range missiles, have themselves failed to understand the real lessons of WW2 air combat.
Despite the article’s claims, the Me262 was not a “failure,” at least not as fighter design, which can be the only relevant comparison here. It was rather a failure first of use — it did not do well nor was needed as a ground attack aircraft, and later of events — despite it’s superior speed, the Me 262 was vulnerable in combat when faced by dozens or more enemy aircraft.
Here is the only bit of the “Stormbird” comparison that seems to offer substantiantion to Sprey’s claims, but even here the comparison in inapt. While numerical superiority allowed Allied aircraft to down technically superior aircraft, this was only feasible in the late stages of the war when the Allies had achieved air superiority throughout much of Europe. Moreover, many of the 262s were downed before they could employ their superior speed — on the ground before take off.
Indeed, to take the comparison seriously one would have to conclude that the post-war governments were mistaken in pursuing jet technology at all! Obviously, the 262 was a victim of being too little too late. Historians all know this, which is why the writer carefully parsed his description of the “harsh lesson” of the 262 as a failure to impact the war.
While this has nothing whatever to do with the supposed ineffectiveness of the F22, it does make for entertaining, if only superficial, reading. It is perhaps an illuminating example of how Mr. Sprey “ramrodded the F-15, F-16 and A-10 programs into being despite fierce internal opposition.”
re: F-22
I think Sprey has his own biases that are coloring his opinions towards the F-22 Raptor. However, seeing as those biases led to the F-16 and the A-10 in the first place, I’m inclined to give his opinions a bit more weight. Everything I’ve seen about the development process of the F-22 reminds me more of the F-111, not the F-15 or F-16.
My major beef with the F-22 is that a plane that’s, say, 10 times more effective than an F-16 is still not equivalent to 10 F-16s. One F-22 Raptor getting jumped by 10 lower-tech jets is not the same as 10 F-16’s facing the same scenario. Even if the Raptor is capable of taking down 10 threats, can one pilot handle a furball that size? If you’ve organized your squadrons to have 1 F-22 replace 10 F-16’s, then that also means you lose the equivalent of 10 planes when an F-22 gets shot down.
BTW, as far as “highest losses” in the Persian Gulf War goes, how does that compare to # of plane types in theatre and # of sorties flown? I can say “Windows has the higest crash rate of any operating system in the world,” but that’s a meaningless statement unless I account for its overwhelming market share.
I am confused. If the 22 sucks so much and needs to give itself away just to be worth while, then why do the F16 and F15 pilots that have gone up against it talk about how they just don’t even stand a chance. I have heard one f15 pilot say that fighting the 22 is no fun cause we never see it and it kills us every single time no matter want we do. Keep in mind that lots of the f15 and f16 pilots that the 22 is facing are guys training on the 22 so they ‘know’ the weaknesses of the system and they still totally fail.
“Sustainability and the number of aircraft available to fight on any given day, he added, are vastly more important than the quality of the F-22. You have to have numerical superiority to win.“
Except we’ll never have numerical superiority. Since the wall went down everything gets smaller and smaller, and will continue to downsize. Not only do we need to do “more with less,” we need to figure out how to be superior with less.
Hard times,
Kalroy
Some (experts) assert that in the next air war, all of the radars will be off and the air war will merge to air combat maneuvering, Stevenson observed.
The Raptors performance in that mode will be disastrous, Sprey added.
What tha heck is this guy thinking? Even “if” this were to happen, the F22 with its supurb maneuverability via its thrust vectering, would prove to be quite capable compared to other aircraft. Just about everything else he said in the article is just wishfull thinking or half truths. These ignorant articles are pointless.
Sprey is an idiot. No, he’s not actually an idiot. He’s a has-been who is trying to stay relevant. This is a man who desperately wants the ‘70s to return. “We shouldn’t buy these new DVDs. MP3s are a waste. 8 track tapes are where it’s at.“
Yes, stealth is not invisibility. It’s only low-observability. However, when your F22 flies at Mach 2 and has the most sophisticated electronics in the world guiding it, low-observability is still incredibly effective. I would point out that the only time we lost an F-117 was when we got lazy and flew it along the same flight path over and over. How many got shot down over Baghdad, against a fully functional anti-aircraft system? That’s right, zero.
The F22 radar doesn’t work like he thinks it works. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t give away the Raptor’s position, and it has a longer range than the radar of any enemy fighter.
We are not moving to a future of dogfighting. No respectable aviation expert predicts that.
We do not need to outnumber the enemy. Two F22s defeated 12 F15s in mock combat, tearing them apart without a hitch. F22s will never be ambushed by enemy aircraft. It’s too fast, too stealthy, and has too good an electronics array.
Air warfare is moving away from what it was in the old days. Some people cannot accept that.