By the way, I am not surprised about the limited number of F-22 procured or the purchase of B-2s cut short. The F-35 will supersed the F-22, despite some advantages of flying performances between both. For the missions in mind that does not matter really.

Just to interject for a moment, the F-22’s flight performance advantage over the F-35 and other fighters is intended to allow it to virtually dictate the initial physical parameters of an engagement, as well as refuse engagement. Additionally, the F-35 may or may not have the same level of passive situational awareness made possible by the F-22’s ALR-94 (its most expensive and complex subsystem), and it may or may not have the costly and heavy internal radar-absorbent structure that helps hide the F-22 from radars operating at frequencies below the full effectiveness of stealth shaping and RAM. This certainly seems to be a case of a larger fighter designed for stealth and performance at almost any cost versus a smaller fighter designed for more internal payload and as much internal fuel as possible within more stringent cost limits. Another way to look at this is that in comparison to the F-22, the F-35 may depend a lot more on stealth that may turn out to be inferior to begin with. This is mere speculation, although it seems to make some sense to me. We may not know the truth for a long time, if ever.

http://www.airbusmilitary.com/specifications.html

You mistook CAS with TAS.

Oops! 😮 You’re absolutely right. Looking up some numbers real quick–trying to be more careful this time ;)–it seems that there is not much difference in their published cruising speeds (if anything, the A400M is slightly faster). And although their engines are of different types, the two implementations seem to end up being quite equivalent in many respects, despite the theoretical tradeoffs.

But wait…there’s more!

Now A400M equiped with less advanced turboprop engines and lesser take off weight have 7000km range with 20t, while An-70 reported to make 6600km with 20t.

Airbus’ A400M product page lists its range while carrying a 20-t payload as 3450 nm, which is actually 6389 km rather than 7000 km–slightly shorter than the An-70’s 6600 km range with the same payload weight. The main difference between these aircraft appears to be that the An-70 is a somewhat larger/heavier aircraft–maximum payload of 47 t versus 37 t for the A400M–with a slightly longer range. The An-70 apparently doesn’t gain any speed from using propfans, nor does it appear to lose or gain much efficiency–both of their engines are optimized or “tuned” to similar parameters, whatever you want to call them. 🙂

Today came news that russians decided to pick up An-70 project which is reported to require 300 mln $.

Now A400M equiped with less advanced turboprop engines and lesser take off weight have 7000km range with 20t, while An-70 reported to make 6600km with 20t. Why is that? Ain’t Antonov’s state of the art propfans supposed to be more fuel efficient?

The fundamental difference between these technologies, including turbofans, is bypass ratio, putting aside implementation details for the moment. This has nothing to do with how “advanced” they might be (probably more or less equally advanced in this case). While propfans are generally more fuel-efficient than turbofans, they sacrifice top speed in the process, and the same comparison could generally be made between turboprops and propfans (i.e. turboprops are more efficient but slower than propfans). It’s quite possible, even likely, that the selection was based partly on maximum speed, which is 420 knots for the An-70 versus 300 knots for the A400M.

A lot of bombs implies a lot of attacking planes. A single S-400 SAM site could easily deal with the dozen or so bombs a single F-22 could carry at the most assuming SDBs are really small and compact and can be carried in such numbers. Of course reality is that many planes will actually be used

Nobody claimed otherwise, at least in this thread. Of course, there would be teams that are specially trained for SEAD/DEAD missions, possibly involving more than one type of aircraft.

but the reality you are ignoring is tactics

No, I just wasn’t going to go over all of the possibilities I could think of in a single post. It’s not as though we as a group often discuss more than simple one-on-one engagements. 😉 I’ve had a hard enough time trying to explain–to myself nearly as much as others–why it is possible that the F-22’s stealth has any significant effect at all, let alone creating tactics for realistic scenarios that utilize a capability that none of us fully understand for lack of hard data (and those who know can’t say much).

and the fact that other SAM sites will also be operational around the place. Equally the airdefence network will include long wave radars that shaping and materials coatings are not effective against. Add to that passive sensors like IIR and EO and Russia would not be a particularly safe place for any hostile aircraft to operate stealthy or not.

If you’re talking about a place like Russia–Moscow in particular–then I agree without a doubt. Stealth is a tool like any other capability, and it is up to people and their tactics to make the best use of it or find ways to counter it. That said, I’m pretty sure that the USAF has always been aware of all of these aspects of air defense, and while it would not be possible even for the F-22 to simply fly into heavily-defended airspace with impunity (no matter what impression the USAF may create), I can only presume that they have a good idea of how they can use the F-22 most effectively. Related to this was one big point of controversy during the F-22’s development: that tactics were being developed using the few available airframes long before testing was completed. They’ve had a lot of time to think about what they expect the F-22 to be able to do, and they made sure that the F-22 could do these things before it would be acquired at such a huge cost.

wow dork u really have lot of free time to make such huge post…..

It doesn’t take much time to actually write, and then I just don’t edit out much.

search radar + IR/active radar head….job done

I doubt it would be quite that easy, although this may be the biggest threat. While the F-22’s shaping and RAM are optimized for the X and Ku bands typically used by tracking and targeting radars, it has a large amount of RAS in areas that matter to lower frequency radars (for which shaping details matter less and less). You can accomplish a lot more with RAS than just RAM, particularly with regard to lower frequencies, and this combination of features intentionally gives the F-22’s low observability broad coverage from the C to Ku bands (and yes, it has been tested successfully against the E-3). The F-22 sacrifices some internal volume and performance (in terms of empty weight–the RAS is said to be rather heavy) for this capability; then again, it has some volume and performance to spare.

Most SAM search radars–including those normally operated as part of an S-300 or S-400 system–operate in the C band, which provides poor range resolution; this is why other radars operating at higher radio frequencies are used for midcourse and terminal guidance. It should not be difficult for the F-22 to detect and evade such an attack before the terminal phase, if it occurs. You can get more precise ranging and better clutter rejection if you significantly shorten the pulse width, but then the detection range would be drastically reduced, particularly against the F-22 and B-2. And finally, once you get far enough into the VHF range, the F-22’s low observability will no longer have any meaning because of basic physics, but neither will the tactics you’re implying, even with large antennas. This class of radar is used for early warning only, and for good reasons: they have barely any target discrimination and tracking capability, and are easily spoofed from long range. Perhaps the F-22 could borrow a technique from the Rafale (assuming that the rumors are true), and try to do some active cancellation, which may be practical at such low frequencies. 😎

Well, I am not so sure the F-35 won’t be able to “supercruise”.

I wasn’t trying to bag on the F-35, by the way–I was just feeling a bit cynical about how some people view things and try to pigeonhole everything, that’s all. For what it’s worth, given the level of performance we’ve seen from the F-35 thus far, there is no reason to believe that it couldn’t “supercruise” in the sense of exceeding Mach 1.0 on dry thrust–if I had to guess, it could probably do so fairly easily.

That is not to say it would cruise at the speeds near the F-22.

Right, and I don’t want people setting or perceiving unrealistic expectations, and then being either disappointed or overly critical if the F-35 does not live up to them. In this case, according to its requirements, it doesn’t have to.

How many times have we’ve heard the F-35 can’t do this or that!

There’s no need to get defensive. 😉 I was merely disputing somebody’s arbitrary definition of what a “fifth generation” fighter is, and why some other fighter is being compared to the F-22 and F-35 just because it can exceed Mach 1.0 on dry thrust like even many older fighters can. That’s marketing for you. :rolleyes:

dont understand why when the russians want to get some fun with carriers, then one of u guys jumap sayin “putin trolling again!”…lol, like if the evil puting is driving the tu-95 or telling his generals to do that, pretty sure isnt the case

Whether it’s the case or not, somebody is playing a potentially dangerous game. I thought that everybody else in the world considered Americans a bit trigger-happy…guess not…. :rolleyes:

russians just want some fun, carriers are the weakest defensive plataform, let them to have some fun

They might feel differently if they are mistaken for an Iranian F-14 (extended range variant :p) and accidentally get an SM-2 rammed up their…tailpipes…. 😉

And they can’t simply retask an SSBN or two to take out Western Europe because…?

It’s really just a contest of wills at this point–one that Putin is not going to win.

Anyway, people getting worked up because a BEAR-H happens to find a carrier or flys close to the USA or Japan is amusing. This happened all the time in the Cold War with zero problems.

I’m still trying to figure out why everybody seems to think that the Cold War ever ended. 🙂

In short, the F-22’s stealth is both more advanced and superior to that of the F-117 in the context of actual combat.

I think I simply wait up for more data than we have now. I personally am rather skeptical to most what it’s being said about the F-22.

I don’t blame you–just about every weapon system has been hyped and exaggerated to ridiculous levels, especially using ad hoc examples of very specific capabilities without regard to their practical use. There’s often a good amount of truth to be found out there, but it’s hard to tell what to believe.

You know, the fascinating 0.0001 sqm RCS figures,

Theoretically, I don’t have a problem believing this, but creating an actual machine with this small an RCS would be fairly incredible. Every single detail has to be taken into account, including apertures, antennas, surface details, and so forth–it is pretty hard to believe. Nobody was more skeptical than the pilots who were going to fly the F-22 and be forced to trust their lives to its claimed capabilities, so I’ve been told, but if we can believe them now, it seems that they’ve been convinced. We don’t have to believe them, but it could also be true that radars don’t work as well as advertised. 🙂

IR suppression measures no one has seriously explained yet and similar..

The only explanation I’ve heard is that far more limited measures were required to balance the F-22’s vulnerability to IR detection against that of radar. It doesn’t seem that much was done with the exhaust, since that aspect is the least important anyway. The only actual, confirmed measure I know of is the special topcoat that limits emissivity in the most exploitable IR regions. While such treatment could be applied to any fighter and would typically be of limited usefulness, it theoretically keeps the F-22 approximately as safe from IR detection as its far more sophisticated stealth technology keeps it from radar detection in terms of absolute range.

I think only after the 22 gets phased out we will learn about many things having been a bit different from what was claimed (remember stories about F-14 and AIM-54?).

Your point is valid and should always be kept in mind, but still it seems these days that a lot more is known about the differences between reality and marketing hype if one cares to look. While I’m sure that many people did believe that the F-14 could routinely shoot down six enemy fighters simultaneously at a range of 200 miles, if they had cared to dig into the already known facts at the time, it should have been apparent that the system was designed to be used against bombers and cruise missiles, and that the F-14 rarely carried more than two AIM-54s (if any).

Similarly with the F-22, the more knowledgeable and pragmatic among us should have long realized that its much-touted supercruise capability was mostly hype; I’m not saying that it’s useless, but it’s not nearly what people imagined it would be. The F-22 is very likely the most scrutinized fighter program (at such an early stage) in history, and there haven’t been that many outright lies being told about it, as far as I can tell. For what it’s worth, the USAF seems extremely keen on getting more of them, too, even if they have to denigrate the F-15 in front of the world to do it.

The F-22 had a heavy time to pass thru Congress which, IMO, required rather heavy ‘colorization’ of its true capabilities, which is understandable..

While I’m sure there were some embellished descriptions given by the USAF, as for raw capabilities versus the real specifications, reporting from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is where a lot of the ugly truth had been revealed to those of us who closely monitored the F-22’s difficult development process with a healthy dose of skepticism regarding achievable goals. At the very least, the result of all of this scrutiny is a much more believable set of specifications, although some numbers are still classified. A lot of fans were disappointed, and there was much criticism, but it gives me a sense that more is known about the F-22 without having to wait until it’s phased out.

But I am closely watching any news about this piece of kit, maybe I’ll get surprised.

I’m trying to keep an open mind about the latest Russian and European designs, as well, and the more I learn about them, the more impressed I become.

Point taken, but it would change nothing–in an otherwise identical scenario, the F-22 would likewise detect the S-400 searching for it, and either report its location and evade it, or attack the S-400 site itself if hunting SAMs is of a higher priority than its primary target.

Frankly, I don’t know. Probably nobody does..

Well, that’s true enough–as far as I know, neither system has seen combat, let alone against each other. At some point, however, we may want to just use the published specifications to see what would hypothetically happen. For instance, the latest projected detection range for future S-400 radars is 600 km, and if we assume that this is against a 3 m² target (the typical standard), then it would theoretically be able to detect an F-22 at a distance of about 46 km. While this is impressive and an eye-opener, it’s still well within the standoff range of the GBU-39.

F-22 has nothing to kill a SAM with.

While it’s true that some of the capabilities I’ve been talking about are currently under development, they should be entering service over the next several years. The F-22 already has the GBU-32, GBU-35, and GBU-39 (SDB), and it will receive an APG-77 software update to give it a much more complete (and independent) air-to-ground capability in 2010 (testing to commence in 2009). The GBU-40 (SDB II with image recognition) will take longer to develop.

And even when the JDAM comes one day, I would not bet on this being the best answer to S-300/400 series.

As long as the F-22 can launch first (theoretically), it’ll do. The greatest advantages of the SDB in this role are relative unit cost and the number that can be carried internally. Even if the S-400 can defend itself against any weapon, it only has so many missiles, even the smaller missiles cost a lot more than these bombs, and the F-22 can call in some of its buddies more quickly than the S-400 can pack up and get away.

State of the art, no–that would have been the still-in-development F-22

State of the art needs to be in service, otherwise it is vapourware.

Oh, very well, but the F-117 was still the *early* state of the art. 😉 The B-2 would actually have been the current state of the art at the time, then.

Why are you relating the retirement of the F-117 with the shootdown of one of them?

It was really in response to someone else’s suggestion–that can happen when answering several related issues in a public forum all at once. 😮

As I thought I clearly stated after they had decided to use B-2s in the role where before they had had to use the F-117 the F-117 suddenly became the second choice for the mission. Once that happened they were doomed to retirement. It had nothing to do with the Serbian shootdown.

Admittedly, I’m not as knowledgeable about the B-2 as I am about many other aircraft, but somehow I doubt that the USAF would use the B-2 in the same manner as the F-117. They don’t take many chances with the B-2, as far as I’m aware, while the F-117 was often used for the most hazardous missions.

How does the F-22 make the F-117 expendible… one of these planes is not like the other… can you guess which one… hint although both were called stealth fighters one isn’t really a fighter at all.

Right, but if there is a need to send an aircraft into heavily-defended airspace to take out high-value targets, I presume that the USAF is not going to send in the B-2–it’s like the Battleship Yamato of their fleet. 🙂 The F-117 was not as valuable per unit, which is why it was given this role, and the F-22 (which can carry bombs internally and drop them) has inherited the role (for now) because it’s the most survivable aircraft. This was more than enough of an excuse to retire the F-117–the USAF hates to keep around more types than absolutely necessary (no more labor-intensive old-style stealth touch-ups and F404 engine support to worry about for them). I can still hear echoes of all of the screaming when they retired the much-needed EF-111A (and the US Navy retired the F-14), but they did it anyway.

the F-22 would likewise detect the S-400 searching for it, and either report its location and evade it, or attack the S-400 site itself if hunting SAMs is of a higher priority than its primary target.

And if that S-400 system was guarding a long wave radar and getting target data from said radar while remaining electronically silent itself what would the F-22 do?

That’s a good question. The data from the search radar would not be precise enough to target the F-22, and it would be risky for the F-22 to simply take the bait, so I suppose the F-22’s pilot would be wise to report the approximate location of the radar so that the appropriate measures can be taken. A UAV could be used to more precisely locate the radar, and cruise missiles could then be launched to take it out. If the S-400 emits in order to defend the search radar from this attack or take out the UAV, then any F-22 within a wide area is going to detect it and start tossing SDBs its way. By the way, each F-22 can carry 8 SDBs in a strike-oriented loadout or potentially 4 SDBs (along with 4 AIM-120s and 2 AIM-9s) in a multirole loadout, so ammunition should not be much of an issue.

With the right tactics a 1960s SAM can bring down a state of the art stealth bomber.

Yep, and the trap you just described may or may not work, depending on the USAF’s tactics. It would serve them well not to underestimate what their potential adversaries are capable of, and although I’m sure their “aggressor” squadrons are trying to develop tactics to counter the F-22 in air-to-air combat, the real danger, as usual, is SAMs and people who know how to use them well. While the F-22 should theoretically be stealthy enough to deal with the S-300 and S-400 series SAMs by using sound tactics, admittedly the capabilities of these systems can potentially deny the F-22 absolute freedom of action, and they leave little room for error.

The big long range SAM missiles will kill the carrier plane

The system would have to be able to accurately target the F-22 at over 100 km in order to do that. This doesn’t seem very likely at all to me, but it depends on what one believes.

and the smaller shorter range weapons will take on the bombs and ARMs.

There could be a lot of bombs headed their way. 🙂

Honestly I think it is pointless for anyone to speculate on such technologies as the F-22, B-2, S-400 etc. because the systems are all so new none of the real capabilities are being exposed yet, as they are most likely all still classified. All the information we have to play around with is the stuff which the developers “leak”, so the other side fears their supposedly invincible new piece of hardware, but no doubt, despite what everyones been saying and though I may get lynched for saying this, all the new technologies will have mistakes and shortcomings which will prove it to be a lot worse than everyone is predicting, just is the same with most aircraft in the past.

That’s true, although some of the shortcomings would appear to more or less cancel each other out in theory, such as imperfect stealth versus underachieving radar. Besides, it’s interesting as long as we have some “reasonable” information with which to play around. 🙂