Even some more information coming out of future Red Flags etc would be helpful in silencing some of the idiots out there. After all, it's not as though the F-22 has had to fire a shot in wartime - all there has been is pilot testimonials as to how damn difficult it is to fight the thing during training exercises.
Personally I don't believe the balloon is going to go up with any of those nations (maybe, maybe Syria, depending on how the Russians feel about it), but if it did I'd expect the vast majority of their air forces to be destroyed on the ground, along with their support systems and infrastructure. Which of course would validate APA's claims that the F-35 is only useful for air-to-ground, ha ha ha...
Well theres little doubt about the F-22s capabilities by those who operate her and the USAF philosophy is to train like you fight, it is supposedly difficult for them to find someone willing to take on the Raptor, so I am especially excited about the possibility of the F-35s going to Nellis, 12 to the 422nd T & E squadron, and 24 to the Fighter Weapons School. Hopefully this latest grounding will be a short lived situation, I heard through the grapevine, that there is to be a preliminary report Wednesday and I hope that is true, as the initial four Lightening IIs were to be flown there before the end of the month, so that tactics can be tested and flown in order to begin to develop some operational guidelines. I am especially excited to see how she stacks up with the F-22, but the four gens will possibly be even more interesting, I'm willing to go out on a limb here and predict the F-35s will be as nearly overwhelming as the F-22 was when it achieved IOC.
I do hope that those critics of the F-22, who are in fact proponents of the F-35, will see in these initial forays with the F-35 that a fifth gen is indeed a different animal, and these growing pains are part of the pathway to fifth gen capability, I hate to say it but the F-35 is going to have to earn her stripes just as the F-22 did, and this fifth gen biz is indeed rocket science. Folks expecting success to be plopped in their lap by this little bird, need to realize that these capabilities are not only costly, but require a lot of hard work to integrate into a combat system. As you correctly observed about the F-22 the integration is often difficult- but to counter that concern it is also much more difficult for the bad guys to hack or jam, which may prove to be a silver lining.
Once the Raptor and Lightening begin to sortie together at Nellis, IMHO we will have a "dream team", and they are both growing and adding capability, once they begin to be integrated together as a fighting force, I believe the bad boys will have second thoughts about mixing it up in a serious contest where they will no doubt lose. While our friends continue to design and test upstart fifth gens, USAF will be banking on over 25 years of operational savvy in the L/O biz and the Navy and Marines will be fully informed and brought up to speed very swiftly. We must NOT let these aircraft be derailed by the un-believers, those who pulled the plug on the F-22, are ignorant enough to do the same on the F-35, which will compound our problems and significantly reduce our war fighting capability. Air Force Brat
