The F-14’s rear seater and its long range lens probably gave it an edge under the rules that they played under. The F-15 probably held the edge when you removed the political baggage. You never know what rope binds their hands when the inter-services play friendly games like that.

Are you insinuating the F-15 would be a better long range missileer than the F-14?

:confused:

Ok, I will try to type a bit slower so that my point can be understood-

Type as slow as you want. Even a totally pissed out my skull (drunk) me understands the real problem; the USAF could not afford the IRST.

The price of that sacrifice will, or will not, be made clear in the future (dependant on who the F-22 faces or does not face off against).

the USAF decided that IRST WAS NOT as IMPORTANT as the APG-77/ALR-94,

As I said; swapping a 360 deg passive sensor for a limited field passive sensor… good move? Not a chance. The ALR-94 was never gonna be ditched.

when certain features were being cut do to the budget constraints. IRST was considered a nice to have feature, whereas the other 2 systems were NEED to have, considering their confidence in both the passive abilities of the ESM, and the LPI capabilities of the radar.

When was the last fighter that took to the air without a radar? The F-86? How would the F-22 perform its role as an interceptor without radar? Solely by using IRST?

Be that as it may, each aircraft can do things the other can’t, but….the importance of the F-22 allowing the F-15E to do its mission successfully is much greater, than the other way around.

No. No, it really isn’t. Your fanboism is clouding your thinking.

If the F-22 cannot defend against advancing armies, what airfield has it to go back to?

Aerial combat is all about supporting the ground war. The F-15E is much much more important in the scheme of war than the F-22.

Put it like this, a war fought by a force supported exclusively by F-15Es will work out much better than a war fought by a force supported exclusively by F-22s.

For their respective times- Vietnam and Desert Storm.

Desert Storm?

Are you treating this discussion seriously?

For starters, the F-22 was never intended to replace the F-15Es, so that’s not a relevant critique.

Nor was the F-14 ever designed to replace the A-6. Yet, it did, and did the job well.

Of course if you have to clear a path through airspace protected by S-300/400, the benefits of the F-22(and subsequently the F-35), become more apparent.

Theoretical benefits. But that line of argument is gonna de-rail the thread so I will go no further.

The whole point, is that there’s no guarantee that all air wars over the next 30-40yrs will be analogous to Afghanistan.

Yet, every air war of the last 30-40 years the USAF have been involved in has been analogous to Afghanistan.

When did the USAF last face off against an enemy with state of the art front line and support equipment?

If you base your acquisitions/strategies around this model, then you may be very disappointed if and when you face a well equipped adversary.

If. If. If.

As the saying goes; if your auntie had balls….

So anyway, back to the generation game. The mighty “5th generation” fighter is as useful to the USAF as a chocolate teapot right now.

That’s not a very good analogy. It’s akin to saying, what’s better an F-14 or an A-6?

Erm. LANTIRN equipped F-14s eventually replaced the A-6 when it was retired.

The F-22 right now is not fit to replace the F-15E as it simply cannot operate in a dynamic A2G environment where targets change and need to be designated from the aircraft.

(Unless you want to start fitting external pods to the F-22… which sacrifices your precious stealthiness… does that make it still 5th gen? :confused: :rolleyes: )

I’ll bet the USAF could make good use of 50 A-6s in Afghanistan right now. They’d be no better off if they’d 500 extra F-22s in service. :diablo:

Its a bit ironic that the fanbois keep beating the 5th gen drum… when at the moment the precious “5th generation” fighter is the most useless tool in the USAF’s arsenal.

Just satisfy yourself that the “generation” argument is a load of marketing bullsh!t.

Used by marketing types, fanbois and idiots to try and make one aircraft appear superior to another, when often, its simply not the case.

Meeting needs and being useable actually are what matter. Not meeting someone’s list of what constitutes a certain generation fighter on here, or in someones PR book in Lockheed.

For instance, what is more useful (and valuable) to the USAF right now; its F-22s or its F-15Es? Which meets the fanboi spec of 5th gen fighter?

Most tight, dogfighting breaking turns occur well below sonic speeds, where ustable wing-tails are lift-lift, and unstable canard-deltas are downforce-lift.

That is incorrect.

The whole point behind an unstable canard is that it is lift-lift in dogfight conditions, and also retains better pitch response.

For reference, the static margin of the F-22 is approx -12.5% and the eurofighter is about -25%.

For the F-16A, the static margin was -5% or under (which then became positive for later models which only had relaxed static stability)

Adding an inlet blocker is never a more viable solution than one without a blocker. Inlet blockers degrade inlet pressure recovery (key to overall propulsion system efficiency) which degrades engine thrust and increases fuel consumption.

Plus, inlet blockers introduce a source of FOD during icing conditions. Blocker de-icing technologies add maintenance complexity and can add parasitic loss to engine performance depending on the de-icing technology that is used.

Yip, yip and yip.

Makes me wonder what they’ve got in mind.

No way are they gonna repeat the “mistake” (as it wasn’t really a mistake at time of design) of the Fulcrum or Flanker – as they’ve talked indepth about the fan face problem with regards frontal RCS.