You named it now. I am free to believe what I want. Exactly. Funny that free thinking instead of brainlessly swallowing whatever BS I am being fed with is still considered a herecy here.

I am not sure whether it occured to you but Raptors were so far not able to repeat the fantastic scores achieved at domestic exercises. While they haven’t lost, it didn’t look anywhere near 200:0.

If you want to know what I think about Raptor’s capabilities, read this hypothetical phone call between a Carl (a Congress member) and Pete (Organizer of White Flag domestic exercise). As you have said, my opinion doesn’t matter, neither does yours or anyone else’s here but this is the way how it all works, in my opinion. Given the fact that it works like that in every aspect of everyday life, I cannot see why exactly in military aviation where billions of dollars of turnover are in the game, it should be different.

C: Hey, this is Carl, long time no see. I heard you’re having the White Flag exercise next month, me and several other Congressmen would like to ask you to do us a favor
P: Hey, Carl, I am all ear.
C: You know, we’re now battling for every damn dollar to have the Raptors built and those pesky liberals are cutting us like hell with their health reform. The Raptors were cut to 180+, in order to bring the number back to 220 we need the F-22 co come out as a clear winner, is that possible?
P: Well, what do you mean? The plane surely is good, better than Eagles and Vipers. It will win even without help even if good pilots certainly could give the Raptors a hard day, despite stealth and other stuff.
C: See, that is what we need to avoid that this time. Raptors were made to score so let us show them what they’re best at. Make them Blue Force so that they can attack strike packages which means lotsa kills.
P: We can easily do that. But there’s still fighter escort to deal with.
C: Yeah, I know. Choose the xx FS for that, they ended pretty bad last year. Plus we could set them some strict altitude limits, as well as define strict conditions to fire. Let us say upon visual id?
P: Hey, that’s not quite fair. Everyone knows that you won’t get a Raptor on visual id before you are dead.
C: I know, that is exactly why we should adapt the ROE like that. If it works ok, no Raptors will be downed.
P: I don’t like it. It ruins the whole purpose of the exercise. On top of that, if that leaks out to the press, then it could actually cause more damage than good.
C: Come on, son. You are doing that for a greater good. It serves our country and helps to protect it from the cuts made by liberal scum. You know that the country needs more F-22, don’t you?
P: Yes.. but…
C: Don’t worry about it. You will help us and we don’t forget. I will take care of the press, we choose few jocks and they will be instructed on what to say to reporters. Just do your part and be sure you are doing the right thing, we’re the good guys.

Now, can you call the results achieved by F-22s under these circumstances as lie? Nope, they are genuine. Can you now automatically assume that Raptors are so much superior as the score says? Hardly, scores like that can only be achieved under special circumstances, something no pilot will tell you.

I am expecting few dedicated fanboys to jump on me because of this but that alone is hardly enough to persuade me on the contrary.

When has the Raptor flown similar scenarios against anyone else, in order to demonstrate those types of numbers though? It’s only flown WVR against foreign aircraft, and according to the USAF was dominant even then. Even against domestic aircraft in WVR, where the domestic aircraft had the advantage of superior numbers, JHMCS, and HOBS missiles, the Raptor still dominated.

F-35 isn’t about faith. I don’t need to believe anything, LM simply needs to demonstrate cruising at >Mach 1.0 without AB and then the case is closed. Until then, the aircraft is NOT able to supercruise. Your almost-religious beliefs about what it allegedly can do and talks about “intellectual dishonesty” won’t change a thing about it.

If LM defines supercruise as M1.5 or better, and then says that the F-35 doesn’t supercruise, the only thing that you can infer by that is that it doesn’t cruise at M1.5 or better. Even an F-18 with less wing sweep and thrust can exceed M1 clean, without afterburners.

He asked if someone could come up with one explanation. That’s mine, and I’d say it’s all the more likely as there hasn’t had any technical evaluation yet. Feel free to think the Rafale is utter crap though.

Nic

I’ve never said that it was. The Kuwaits didn’t say that it was crap either. They just said that it wasn’t their preferred choice.

Ok…so how does that classify as a SIMULTANEOUS capability, then??

If we’re going to argue semantics, then the only fighter that can currently engage A2A, and self designate A2G targets of opportunity simultaneously is the Blk 2 SH.

Because someone has been paid to say so?

Well that must be the only possible explanation.;)

Think of this from another aspect too: imagine a “friendly” , “normal” Iran , or imagine the israelis settling the territory disputes and make peace with palestinians ,syrians etc , all those juicy tens( even hunders over the years) of BILLIONS of $ in defence spending in the region and in the states to counter those ” threats ” will go down the drain…someone is making a helluva load of cash on the back of those “threats”.

Food for thought.

It’s hard to make peace with folks that won’t accept any compromises, and expect that only one side make all the concessions. Israel was willing to discuss terms with the Palestinians on many occasions, but they’d only accept 100% solutions. 50/50 was never acceptable.

Off topic and baseless.

more off topic than-

I’m sure Iran was glad to hear all the technical problems have been solved…

?

How many countries has Iran attacked in that last 60 years? How many has Israel? How many nuclear warheads does Iran have? How many does Israel have?

The more important question is- how many countries has Iran meddled in the affairs of, or sponsored terrorists in? You don’t have to do the dirty work yourself, to be fully culpable.

How many times has Israel been attacked in the last 60yrs, and since you brought it up- how many warheads does Israel have? At least if they’ve got them, they’ve demonstrated a great deal of restraint. Do you think Iran, Syria, or groups that they support would act nearly as sensibly?

Anyone not blinded by brainwashing or who has any semblance of objective opinion would be able to see the shameless doubt standards and arrogance of the west at play here.

Any sensible person, western or not should be able to see that a nuclear armed Iran, doesn’t make the middle east or the World a more safe and secure place.

and to seek a credible deterrence against Israeli aggression.

When’s the last time Israel and Iran fought? What Israeli aggression is Iran trying to counter?

I’m sure Iran was glad to hear all the technical problems have been solved… :rolleyes:

Selling those to Iran is an irresponsible thing to do anyhow.