TAC want more fighters and strike aircraft, etc… the latest toy in town is the F-22 so they’ll do whatever they can to get as much as any aother.. and if you believe they’ll all only think about “what’s good for the service”, you must be living in wonderland

So you’re saying that these folks(i.e. Air Force Generals) don’t care how well the F-22 works? It’s not like the ones that had wanted the 243-381 Raptor fleet, were getting a cut of LM’s profits. I’m not saying that everyone involved in lobbying for new toys is completely scrupulous, but I have a lot more faith in the folks that actually have to use the equipment, than those who have nothing at stake but $$$. Those who fly it seem to be pretty impressed.

AS I said slightly lower, you can go for a costly solution in developing a new fighter, or take a shorter way by creating a missile with long range. No fighter can outrun a missile flying at mach 4+ in its direction.. avoid maybe, but is you start manouvering to get out of the way, you’re on the defensive… not easy to counterattack

The missile’s effective range is only as far as its target can be detected/tracked/fired upon. It doesn’t matter if the missile can fly 500km, if your sensors can only detect the target <50km. Then you have an inefficient missile that’s heavier than it needs to be.

Why do you want them to emit anything? if they know they face fighters with very low RCS, they’ll use IR search (Rafale, Sukhois from thirty years, and probably the typhoon as well, all have integrated front sector IR detectors… no need for radar to see an overheated nose and leading edges of an aicraft flying supersonically in the freezing cold of teh background at FL600)

Their IRSTs will need to be cued by something, or they’ll be spending a lot of time scanning with a narrow field of view sensor, hoping to find a target. They have to not only know that there’s a target, but have a general idea of where to start looking. There is no wide field of view, long range IR scanning.
Even if they do detect something, they’ll have to get much closer before they can tell what it is, what its range is, etc…

and, what’s more, they can also rely on ground based radars or awacs working with lower frequency radars which will “see” the more or less stealthy designs more easily to locate for them, even approximatively the threats.

AWACS are going to have the same problem as fighters, as they’re not using bistatic or VLF radars. They have more transmission power, but that’ll just tip the F-22 off sooner as to its location, so it can circumvent it. As for ground based radars, it is true that there are radars that at some range and conditions, can detect the F-22. There are several things to keep in mind though.

A-How many of these large radar sites are available?
B-The F-22 will spot their emissions too, giving it the option to change headings.
C-Anything that actively emits(ground or air based), will be detected by the ALR-94, before the F-22 is able to be detected. The only way to surprise the Raptor is if it is detected passively, and radar sites wait until the last minute to emit, so that it’s already in range, rather than having the ability to avoid them.
D-you still have to be able to track the F-22 to get a firing solution, and that’s a much harder problem than detection.
E-There’ll be more than one F-22 flying, so you aren’t guaranteed to see the rest of the flight.
F-Any ground based early warning site that isn’t mobile isn’t going to have a long life expectancy, and the mobile sites are far less effective in their detection abilities. As these sites are attritted, there are going to be even wider gaps in coverage.

You talk about the F-22 firing without locking with its own radar.. but that can work both ways, and in the end, the one that has missiles with greater range has the advantage.

The one that sees first and shoots first has the advantage. I’ve already discussed the limitations of long range missile shots, when you’re limited to relatively short range detection. It doesn’t matter if the F-22 has shorter ranged missiles, if it can fire them first, and once the AIM-120D comes online this year, missile range differences will be pretty negligible. When will the Meteor come online? 2015?

Lots of ifs? there’s only one that quote: does spectra perform as it is expected to do… and that data is classified. You expect the raptor to operate in a zone it has complete control over… yet, it is not just a homeland defence fighter. it’s meant to go out and clean the skies from enemy aircraft in an offensive… meaning, operate above enemy territory.

Ask yourself this question- what happens to the Rafale if the Spectra doesn’t perform as expected? The Raptor was designed to survive, and provide air dominance in hostile, as well as friendly air space. It’s far less reliant on electronic systems to survive against threats. I’m not trying to say that the Raptor is invulnerable by any means, but if it is flown smartly, it is a very challenging target for a defender.

Anyway, anything we may say for now is that the raptor is supposed to dominate in that area… but it remains just that, a supposition. Based on various data and claims we all hear, but the ony way to know (as opposed to believe) is to see results (if they ever become public) of confrontations in years to come.

We know how well the Raptor has performed against US fighters(including AESA equipped Super Hornets and F-15Cs) using datalinks, etc…
We also know that it defeated a Rafale, and didn’t take any losses to Rafales(or any other European aircraft for that matter), in recent exercises.

There’s no such thing as an absolute and invincible weapon… never has been and certainly never will… there’s only constant progress, and never on one side only

Again, the F-22 isn’t invincible, but it is currently the most challenging fighter aircraft to defend against.

I’ll probably going to get flamed for this, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway, stealth means absolutely nothing. RCS reduction in a strike aircraft simply means that IADS will become more saturated and high value targets will be blanketed, and even if you manage to get all aircraft emmisions (Radar, heat, sound et al) down to a minimum, you can still be dropped by the modernised version of an old classic, an airbursting flak curtain.

The limitation is how large one’s defense budget happens to be, what percentage of spending is going to air defense, how long it takes to field the systems, and whether you have the manpower to operate all of these systems. In theory it sounds great, but in practice, it costs money(and in the case of S-300/400/Patriot type systems), a lot of money.

Oh, and the F117 did posess a greater degree of all aspect steath than the F-22, not to mention a far smaller heat sig, however I have no doubt that the F-22 will have it beat from some angles, and of course would fly rings around it

The F-117 possessed the best stealth technology that 70s engineers could manage, with the computers they had at their disposal. The RAM materials, and knowledge on shaping in current times is far beyond that generation. You can bet that the F-22 not only has a lower avg. RCS, but smaller peaks too.

First, where do you get it that F-16 has RCS of ~1m2? That is absolute rubbish unless you talk about discrete values at chosen angles. But then you are talking apples and oranges together.

I find it very difficult to argue with fanboys who only can take some stupid value posted in USAF journal and got no clue about what it means but they will stick to this one meaningless value at all cost. Such behavior is several levels below anything Carlo Kopp has ever written.

I wasn’t comparing the average RCS of the F-16 vs. F-22. The frontal RCS that has generally been given with regards to the F-16 is ~1m2. From the sound of Over G’s statement, it sounded like he was saying that the F-22’s frontal RCS was only .5m2. I’ve never claimed that the average RCS for the F-22 is .0001m2, but I suspect you won’t find too many “barn door” angles on the F-22(especially 5m2), but for the sake of argument, let’s say that there are. The problem for a foe, is that unless they can maintain a constant FOV on that angle, they’re only going to get a return for a brief period before they lose detection/tracking. My”fanboy” talk is not based upon LM claiming all aspect VLO performance. It’s based upon the fact that F-15,F-16, F-18 pilots(and not strictly in 1 vs. 1) with JHMCS, Link 16, AESA, etc… have gotten their butts handed to them time after time, coming from numerous angles and altitudes. It would seem to me, that if there were huge vulnerabilities, they would’ve shown up, and the exchange ratios would start improving for the legacy aircraft.

It all depends on Raptor’s pilot training. He surely is well aware of angles that result in his tactical advantage and tries hard to exploit aircraft’s full stealth potential.

That being said, a well flown Raptor will most likely kill his opponent in 1vs1 scenario, all it needs to do is to maintain a good angle of intercept and approach closer undetected. The more complex the furball is and the more other emitters are in the area (especially SAM), the less likely is the F-22 going to stay undetected because sooner or later someone will have hit a “good” angle for detection and firing solution.

This is exactly how stealth works, now you can resort to fanboy talk, I don’t care.

These “good” anglesonly work for brief periods where the F-22 is in the FOV of the radar, and seeing as how the F-22 is a moving target, the radar isn’t going to have the same relative angle presented to it constantly. Secondly, if that radar is emitting, then the F-22’s ESM will know about it long before the Raptor is within detection range, so the likelihood of the Raptor pilot presenting his least advantageous aspects is greatly lessened.
Thirdly, considering the speed and altitude of the Raptor, the window for the SAM site achieving a firing solution, and engaging is very narrow.

I personally prefer unbiased sources.. USAF is NOT an unbiased source when it comes to F-22. Neither is LM.

Well considering it’s their hardware, money, and pilots, one would hope that they care how well their gadgets work, rather than putting out unrealistically optimistic info. They’re getting ready to buy almost 2000 new gadgets, and they feel pretty confident in the abilities vs. marketing claims.

Why the most stealthier aircraft (on IR, radar, etc), the 117 was phased out?

The F-22 is several orders of magnitude stealthier than the F-117, and has a much greater sensor suite. That’s why the F-117 was phased out.

And who said is not effective?

But is not in the way you think

70 planes w/o RCS reduction against a SAM fortress would lead to 50 downed, and a unsuccessful mission

70 planes with RCS reduction would lead to 25 downed and a somewhat successful mission

Stealth offers other adantages, like the reduction of ECM planes, and all the logistic issues behind that.

Also, systems like the s300/400/1million…won’t be popular, they are too expensive, too complex, but many other sams are simpler, so the ECM coverage would work better for the stealthy planes against these systems

they are wasting money in the Pakfa (which is good, since would be stupid to lost all that fighter market)

So are they wasting money, or aren’t they? The point is that stealthy targets greatly increase the complexity for the defender, while greatly increasing the survivability of the attacker. To dismiss the challenge an air defense system(or fighter aircraft for that matter) has against these targets is not particularly prudent, if one is serious and honest. That doesn’t mean stealthy aircraft are invincible- the pilot still has to use good tactics to fight to his strengths, but it allows him to spend much more time on offense.

“Opening holes” in an AD network could mean nothing.

Most priority targets would have the SAM right on top of it.

You still need to fly to a target to attack it.

Whether you’re coming from the back, front, or the sides means little to an S-300/400 system.

The S-300/400 systems aren’t point defense, but part of layered defenses(i.e. defense in depth). There’d be holes in the long and short ranges systems coverage(detection), allowing multiple simultaneous attacks from varying azimuths(and more importantly, from outside of the WEZ of the IADs).