At Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, 27th Fighter Squadron pilot Captain Phil Colomy opened his presentation on the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor with a video of inert bomb impacts set to a rock soundtrack. Clip after clip showed 1,000-pound Boeing GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions slamming into derelict trucks and digging craters in sand.
The footage was from the squadron’s recent weapons camp at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, where Raptors climbed to higher than 50,000 feet, accelerated to faster than Mach 1 then dropped JDAMs 20 miles or more from targets. According to 1st Fighter Wing commander Brigadier General Burton Field, all 22 drops resulted in direct hits at greater accuracy than any other aircraft has ever achieved with JDAM.
From 2002 to 2005, the F-22 was known as the F/A-22, emphasizing its ground-attack capability hauling two internal JDAMs or (in the future) eight 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs. “We were trying to tell a story, trying to say that the F-22 is not just a better [Boeing] F-15C,” Field explained.
Wing spokeswoman Captain Elizabeth Kreft pointed out that, during the period of the “F/A” designation, James Roche, a former sailor, was Air Force secretary. The dual designation has been standard in Navy tactical air since the early 1980s with the Boeing F/A-18A Hornet.
But with the major fights over Raptor funding over and with Roche having stepped down, this year the Air Force switched the Raptor’s designation back to the traditional F-22. But lest anyone take this to mean that the Raptor is once again just a fighter, Field pointed out that the Raptor’s only truly unique capabilities lie in the ground attack realm. “Shooting down other aircraft is not what the F-22 is best at.” (Though it is pretty good at this — check back for Part Four.)
Where the Raptor truly excels is in the high-energy, long-range delivery of smart bombs in a high-threat environment. The weapons camp was a basic demonstration of that capability.
Colomy brought up a schematic of Iran’s integrated air defense network featuring overlapping radar coverage and the latest Russian-made surface-to-air missiles. The systems’ detection and engagement ranges were plotted with circles based on their performance against legacy Air Force aircraft such as the Lockheed Martin F-16C and F-15E. Next Colomy brought up a slide that showed the effect of the F-22’s superior speed and stealth on the performance of the same air defenses. Their ranges were halved, leaving huge gaps in the network.
“There’s no shortage of bomb droppers in the Air Force,” Colomy said. “But can they get close enough?“
With its front-aspect stealth and its ability to supercruise faster than Mach 1 at high altitude over long ranges (contingent on adequate tanking), the Raptor can sneak up on enemy defenses then release a pair of JDAMs with far greater energy than other aircraft can manage. That means more destructive weapons effects and fewer sorties to roll back air defenses. “We use the F-22 to clear a path for other aircraft,” Colomy said.
Thus has evolved the Raptor’s new niche. In light of the tiny production run of just 183 jets, Raptors will equip only seven squadrons — effectively a “silver-bullet” force. Rather than replacing F-15s wholesale, the Raptor will complement modernized F-15s and work alongside legacy aircraft to enhance their capabilities. While Raptor-Eagle teams clear the skies, ground-attack Raptors will poke holes in integrated air defenses so F-16s, F-15Es, Lockheed Martin F-117s and strategic bombers can bring their firepower to bear.
Some background here.
–David Axe
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Raptor … or Turkey? (Part Three)
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This is crap. We can buy the F-22A now for $120 million a piece.
Its a logical purchase and as a tax payer, I demand it.
Modernizing our vastly outdated F-15 fleet is a bandaid solution whose lifespan is not as long as a brand new F-22A.
Shove 8 SDBs into the F-22As internal bay, and put it on patrol over Afghanistan, and you’ve replaced 4~5 USAF bomb trucks since it can be places faster, and deploy weapons farther.
We need to replace them unit per unit with the F-15C/D.
Since when were the Raptors just 120mil a bang…last I heard was 350mil or so…I wonder if something that expensive would warrant a HAVCAP escort…
David,
A new Raptor costs just $115 million. That’s the price tage on the contract for one jet. But development has cost around $25 billion. So if you add up the development plus cost of procurement, each of the projected 183 Raptors costs $350 million.
Think of it this way: if Japan bought the Raptor, as it is considering doing, it will not pay for development, which is complete. So it its birds would cost around $115 million.
If the real point is “Where the Raptor truly excels is in the high-energy, long-range delivery of smart bombs in a high-threat environment.” thats the biggest argument for “Turkey” yet.
The long range only applies if you have tankers or drop tanks, the combat range is probably pretty dismal (one of the few things about the F22 that google doesn’t find!, but I would worry that low fuel fraction, supercruise burns fuel, and no external stores -> no drop tanks).
So how does this compare to the deep, penatrating power of say, the 400–600 tactical tomahawks you can buy for the price of one F22?
Or a next-gen, 1-4M a pop ramjet powered stealth cruise missile?
Ah, the unit vs sunk cost.
Even at “per unit”, thats 200 tomahawks.
The recent conflict with the terrorists in Lebanon proved the limits of airpower. Important, yes, but hardly a war winner, if it ever was.
I think Nicholas W. on this one, the F-22’s cost is still out of proportion with the threat it is designed to counter. It might be smarter to cut 20–30 Raptors out of the current program to refurbish our fleet of F-15Cs.
I still don’t see why USAF rushing to replace its older assets in the middle of large missions in the Middle East and Asia. What would be the harm of putting some of their purchases off by 5–10 years?
As I have said before, USAF needs to balance its spending on future capabilities with its current operational needs around the world. The Army is making the same mistakes with its FCS and Land Warrior programs.
“The long range only applies if you have tankers or drop tanks, the combat range is probably pretty dismal (one of the few things about the F22 that google doesn’t find!, but I would worry that low fuel fraction, supercruise burns fuel, and no external stores -> no drop tanks).“
F-22A’s unrefueled range with an internal weapons load, is far longer than the F-15’s ever could be with drop tanks.
The F-22A is the world’s longest ranged fighter aircraft on internal fuel alone.
Omitting development costs from per unit costs is absurd. Development costs of any product are amortized over the total production run.
Selling them to Israel or some other country and $120 ea. is only a good and profitaable business because taxpayers footed the development bill.
The question of the need for a(nother) global air superiorty weapon when the annual US military budget is 9 times more than China and more than the next 25 top spenders combined has a simple answer: no. There is no bomber gap, missile gap, fighter gap, etc.: the only real gap is between humanity and reality.
dammit…when are they going to stop playing games and bring out the billion dollar flying saucers with optical stealth, electrogravitistic generators and deathrays…sheeeesh. for 250,000,000 dollars i’d like to believe we have something better than freakin JDAM’s…
Finally, I have SOME google-based suggestion that combat radius is 1400km. (But what speed?) Awfully impressive, however, and says a lot for clean design aircraft, regardless of whether the stealth will work a year from now. [1]
This is 60km more than an F16 which is dragging twice as much tonnage in bombs and using the large drop tanks. (again, what speed?)
I would hope than for >10x the cost of an F16, you’d get a longer increase in range than my commute to work, however.
[1] China will undoubtedly remember this lesson as they build their inevitable UCAVs.
Ach! So many cynics and nay-sayers and crypto-Islamo-fasco-terro-mongers! Look at these disloyal comments:
“The question of the need for a(nother) global air superiorty weapon when the annual US military budget is 9 times more than China and more than the next 25 top spenders combined has a simple answer: no. There is no bomber gap, missile gap, fighter gap, etc.: the only real gap is between humanity and reality.“
“Selling them to Israel or some other country and $120 ea. is only a good and profitaable business because taxpayers footed the development bill.“
“The recent conflict with the terrorists in Lebanon proved the limits of airpower. Important, yes, but hardly a war winner, if it ever was.“
Don’t any of you realize that the F-22 is just, like, a neat thing to have? Why do you insist on muddying the waters with a lot of esoteric concepts like “cost” and “effectiveness”?!?
UCAVs might be lots cheaper and stealthier, but pilots run the Air Force and they don’t want a situation where video-gamer players rule the roost.
Oh please. $120 mil is nothing. A brand new F-15C costs roughly $80 mil. How many times more effective is the F-22A than the F-15?
My point is: Its cheaper to unify to two or three airframes and have lower maintenence costs. So the fleet is: F-35A, F-22A, and F-15E+.
With all three tac roles falling onto those three airframe types.
Upgrading current F-15Cs is a bandaid solution. The F-15 cannot be upgraded anymore. Its airframe lacks the growth space.
The F-22A has alot of growth space for a century’s worth of growth.
Its stealth will still be a major advantage even with improvements in radar.
UCAVs have nowhere to go, but to be self deployed weapons systems. Not having a pilot is a major disadvantage in many cases.
This is a total repeat of the USAF/US Army arguments of the 1950s. They basically stated: we dont need carriers or even fighters because we can win through long range missiles and nuclear weapons.
Oops.
This looks great for fighting the war before last (or do I mean the one before).
Not sure what future war it would be good for, but while the UCAVs are doing the real work this one will look terrific at air shows.
This thing was designed about 20 years ago, development cycles for unmanned craft are a fraction of that. Is anyone really fooled?