wrightwingWhat kind of high value targets does there exist in Afghanistan? The targets there are small groups of soldiers that seldom stay in one place and can hide quickly.
For those you need good direct communications with the soldiers on the ground and the ability to quickly assign targets with good precision on the go. Something the F-22 is not well suited for
Important Taliban or Al Qaeda leaders would be pretty high value, if you had a small window to hit them.
wrightwingWhat a BS.
If USAF want to learn about how to exploit the F-22 correctly, then they will intentionally put them to hardest tests you can imagine where sole survival is already a success. In that case, the few mentioned F-22 kills are just top of the iceberg.And I truly think that the US top brass has enough brains to recognize that. Scores of 150:0 on exercises can only mean one thing – no lessons learned, the whole exercise was useless.
Not necessarily- the lessons learned are that the systems work well, and how to use the F-22s as force multipliers.
wrightwingPentagon have chosen their path of concentrating on high performance/value assets which are very useful in symmetrical conflicts but next to useless in today’s smaller-scale guerilla conflicts. Time will tell who was right, but if I was a guerilla fighter, I would be glad to hear that I will have enemy F-35s over my head and soldiers with M4s in not-armored Humvees against me. It sounds so much more comfortable than F-16Es + FFW-ed soldiers on the ground equipped with ENVGs, MR-C rifles, CornerShots, MR-fluid armor or XOS exoskeletons.
What soldier is riding around in unarmored vehicles these days? The US Army and Marine Corps only use armored vehicles these days, and if you hadn’t noticed, all sorts of new gear is coming out-(these are just a few examples)
http://defensetech.org/2007/10/30/aberdeen-outtakes-the-m110-sniper-rifle/
http://defense-update.com/products/s/scar.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/mrap.htm
wrightwingI’m sure it is indeed a big deal to get a Raptor kill, i’m also sure that you have no idea whether the USAF allows it’s pilots to talk about them publically or not.
How do you know what I know/don’t know?
As for the comment re the briefing supplied to the F22 pilots, well whoopy do, wouldn’t it be just great if all fighter pilots were briefed like that…oh hang on a minute…they are…:rolleyes:
Can you explain the point of that comment?:confused:
It would appear that it’s not my comprehension skills that are in question. I said-
You can bet the chaps flying against the Raptor get briefed up pretty well, as you have to know with a good degree of certainty, what your opponent’s capability is, if you’re going to develop tactics to try and mitigate advantages/minimize disadvantages.
wrightwingUnfortunately, the F-22 isn’t by far the fastest aircraft USAF has. If you already have a situation where you REALLY NEED to take out some very important target very fast, then launching an F-15 roaring at full speed with AB on brings you comparable/better results than doing the same with F-22. I really don’t think you would regret the higher fuel consumption or increased IR signature 🙂
The F-22 could get further, faster, than the F-15 which would be out of gas pretty quickly in full A/B.
For the second role, I think that besides all the specialized ISR system US Armed forces already field (AngelFire, Constant Hawk AWAPSS, E/A-18G, ScanEagle, P-3C BMUP/LSRS, EP-3E, S-70B LR-100, RC-135U/V/W, RC-12P, RQ-4A/B or MQ-1C) using the F-22 in this role would be the most exclusive money-throwing operation I can think of and a total waste of those relatively few aircraft you got available.
But if you insist, feel free to send a bunch of Raptors there. Just be aware of the harsh environment taking its toll on service life of the equipment in use.
I didn’t say that’s how I’d employ them. I just said that’s a way to employ them where some of their abilities would be useful.
wrightwingIt depends. Large surfaces like wings, belly or fins will reflect quite a lot.
Sure, if the Raptor pilot gives the sensor a 90 degree angle view, but when flying level, those surfaces won’t be exposed in the manner that you’re describing.
That is a very cheap statement which doesn’t disprove my claims in any way. The lack of these systems doesn’t mean they have been overlooked rather than thought to be too expensive as a start.
I say it clearly once more: in present from, the Raptor lacks vital systems required to exploit the design to what it was intended for. That would be:
1. IRST
2. AMRAAM coupled with AIM-9X seeker
3. HMDBut it’s clear that today’s need to use Raptors is very limited and that it won’t be easy to push any upgrades like that to their fruition anytime, soon.
Well going by your standard, the F-16 should’ve gone straight to the Block 50/52 configuration, since that’s far more capable than the less well equipped variants. The Raptor’s only been in service for 5yrs, and will receive upgraded over its career. Right now the more vulnerable platforms are getting the upgrades first, as the Raptor still has considerable overmatch vs. any opponent.
wrightwingTaken in isolation these are all factual statements. But they don’t tell the full story.
We know of a couple of occasions where Navy aircraft have claimed “kills,” we know of a T38 “kill” but we do not know of any other occasions where USAF aircraft have claimed “kills”.
That’s not accurate- there was a mutual kill by an F-16, where both planes had fired simulated Sidewinders at one another. The T-38 is also a USAF aircraft. You can bet that if a F-15 pilot won an engagement, there’d be some talk about it too.
Your post appears to suggest that as we do not know of any others there are no others; convenient reasoning for your viewpoint there, but rather flawed.
It is a big deal in fighter communities, if one can get a Raptor kill, and there’s no gag order preventing pilots from mentioning it. It’s kind of like dog bites man isn’t news, but man biting dog is.
As for pilots morale, i suspect the point wasn’t too much about the chaps flying the F22 but rather mainly about those who might have to fly against it. But i also suspect you know that…;)
You can bet the chaps flying against the Raptor get briefed up pretty well, as you have to know with a good degree of certainty, what your opponent’s capability is, if you’re going to develop tactics to try and mitigate advantages/minimize disadvantages.
wrightwingIf Raptor kills are so well hidden from public view, then we can speculate there are more of them. Just information didn’t come into public domain.
No F-22 painted on other fighters doesn’t mean that no more kills were achived.
Just LM sales people didn’t allow kills to be painted 🙂
LM doesn’t tell the USAF/USMC/USN what to do. Fighter pilots like to talk about their successes, so it’s awfully hard to keep that sort of information quiet. It’s not secret information, so there’s no gag order that would prevent them. Obviously there are limits to what they could discuss if the information does cross over into sensitive techniques/tactics/procedures.
wrightwingEven with no TVC, Euro-Typhoon still obtained somewhat supeority to F-22. This is the most important keypoint.
Where are the stats for purposes of comparison?
wrightwingThe tactics is by far not unreasonable as even today the skills and morale of the pilots do matter a lot. Raptor’s claimed superiority is a tool which aids the morale of your pilots while undermines the morale of the opponent fighting them, IMHO, at least as important as the actual technical superiority the F-22 brings.
Morale of pilots isn’t helped by telling them what they want to hear, and then them finding out what they’ve been told isn’t accurate.
The pfcem’s claim about *big deal* being made when ONE F-22 gets ‘shot down’ during an exercise is a load of BS. Quite on the contrary, if there was not a kill mark applied on the EA-18G, we would probably never learn about the incident. All media attention to this kill appeared only AFTER someone has posted the picture and journos started to wonder what it meant.
How do you suppose the journalists found out? They just happened to be walking the flight line, spotted the marking on the Growler, and inquired about it?
wrightwingI’d like you to explain me a single role where a dedicated air-superiority aircraft like F-22 could prove itself over Afghanistan or Iraq.. Exactly what would USAF want to do with them there?
2 roles that the F-22 could perform are short notice interdiction against a high value target, where the F-22’s speed would be of use, and in the ISR/ELINT role, using its ALR-94 to locate enemy electronic emissions on the ground(and then attacking with SDBs).
wrightwingCan you construct a reason that explains why the USAF, which may have fought the F22 with full systems up and running, or may not…, would wish to publicise any “victory” of a legacy platform? Or do you think that your average USAF jet jockey gets to go out to the meejaa (media) and say what he likes…:rolleyes:
The few occasions where a legacy aircraft has beaten a Raptor have been mentioned. On some of the occasions, the victory was due to ROE violations, on others, it was a mutual WVR kill, in the case of the Growler, the circumstances weren’t discussed.
wrightwingRaptor, just like every other stealth fighter, is optimized for frontal aspect RCS. Even if called all-aspect stealth, the RCS from other angles is still just a compromise. A SAM site will likely see a high-flying Raptor from a different angle with less favorable RCS values. I would rather not depend on the almost nothing to fear claim too much.
Optimized yes, but that doesn’t mean that every other angle will betray it’s location, from significant ranges. You seem to be under the impression that long range SAMs blanket potential target nations, and that there are a multitude of OTH/VHF, etc… radars, IR sensors, etc.. just waiting for an overconfident pilot of a stealth aircraft to fly towards. Not even Russia is blanketed with coverage, much less, less militarily capable nations.
If the ROE dictate no radar use, then Raptor’s stealth is pointless and the resulting advantage is gone. Only higher SC remains. Moreover, other designs start to gain edge by having IRST and HMD, or even medium range heat seeking missiles like R-27ET or MICA. All of this the F-22 lacks which is quite a shame for such a fine fighter.
It’s a shame that the USAF and LM didn’t consult with you before designing the F-22, and the weapons with which it would be armed, as they seem to have overlooked all of these limitations.:rolleyes:
Or maybe they know more about its capabilities than you do, and have a higher degree of confidence.
wrightwingAerodynamically the Eagle could handle it, but the question is whether or not structurally it could handle prolonged M2+ flight.
wrightwingAWAC’s and EW won’t be able to support “deep over enemy territory” with S-400 around,
Signal int. still works tho, since it always outranges radars.
The S-400s won’t provide a very dense layer of protection at their current levels.
http://rt.com/prime-time/2010-05-13/russian-air-defense-outdated.html
The criticism comes from a former chief of Russia’s air force, Anatoly Kornukov, who sees the root of the problem in the meltdown of the defense industries in Russia,
In Soviet times, Kornukov said, it was widely known that Russian air defense systems were capable of shooting down 98% of intruding enemy planes. Now the figure has shrunk to 20%. Therefore, if North Korea or Iran launch an attack on Russia with short-range missiles, Russia will not be capable of shooting them down.
Kornukov countered this by saying that the armed forces have only two S400 systems, while they are supposed to have at least 15. Therefore, they are behind schedule. Also, Kornukov said that S400 systems that were on display are outdated as they were made during the Soviet times and their lifetime is not indefinite.
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