YellowFever said:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-35-design.htm
"According to November 2005 reports, the US Air Force states that the F-22 has the lowest RCS of any manned aircraft in the USAF inventory, with a frontal RCS of 0.0001~0.0002 m2, marble sized in frontal aspect. According to these reports, the F-35 is said to have an RCS equal to a metal golf ball, about 0.0015m2, which is about 5 to 10 times greater than the minimal frontal RCS of F/A-22. The F-35 has a lower RCS than the F-117 and is comparable to the B-2, which was half that of the older F-117. Other reports claim that the F-35 is said to have an smaller RCS headon than the F-22, but from all other angles the F-35 RCS is greater. By comparison, the RCS of the Mig-29 is about 5m2."
I just scanned this from an long article i did read and that wasn't the only source that said the same about the stealth capabilities of the F-22 and YF-23.
Also in a documentation about the F-22, an us airforce officer said the same.
It might be wrong, but even if the radar refelction surface is as small as you say, a sophisticated radar system can still detect it. It just has to be clever enough to know that this flying nickle it sees is not a coin but a stealth fighter.
Now I don't know what the hell I'm talking about but the F-15 has something like a 4m1 (or something close to it) RCS, doesn't it? Can someone explain this in greater details? It does not seem like the Raptor is just twice as harder to detect than the Eagle.
And I find your "it's advantages will be nulified if it runs into an aircraft with better radar and longer ranged missiles" argument to be questionable EVEN if your paragraph about the Raptor's RCs to be true (which I don't think so). From everything I read about the F-22, it has probably the most advanced radar system (or close to it) in any fighter aircraft.
That's why i quoted this rumors about the Mig 1.44.
The wish to have room for a very powerful radar might explain the design of this thing.
I have no doubt that it was indeed contrived with the soviet bloc in mind.
And it was not meant to be an attack aircraft. It was designed to be the best air superiority fighter. And where is your proof that it "loses it's advantage when in hostile airspace, in the range of powerful radar stations,interceptors and SAM", come from?
What do i need to proofe there? It's just logical that an system that is so obviously build to be superior when being on it's own at the range of it's AMRAAM missles, is vulnerable to being detected by much larger radar systems and shot at with missles of way longer range.
The combination of a F-15 carrying bigger missles and an AWACS aircraft that sees for it, perhaps is still more effective than an F-22 that is designed to be able to sneak on to it's enemy close enough to use AMRAAM. Just because it cannot sneak very good in the range of powerful ground based radar.
Of course if ever a fighter with a significant more powerful radar is built, the Raptor will lose it's advantage. And of course if someone produces an AAM that travels at mach 50 or so with a range of 1000 miles or so, it'll be the best damn missile on earth. Only problem with talking like that is there is no fighter aircraft in the near future with a significantly more powerful radar (at least not that I heard of). It's only logical to assume that someday (not that distant future) , someone will be able to produce a reliable radar system (small enough to load onto a fighter's nose) that will detect the F-22 reliably but I have a feeling it ain't gonna be too soon. I see the Raptor being the premiere air superiority fighter for the next 10 to 15 years, after which the others will slowly catch on. That's what happened to the F-15. And when that happens, I'm sure there will be talk about the new F-49 or something.
(That last part is pure speculation on my part and I have no data whatsoever to support it, but it seems logical looking at the history of the fighter aircraft for the last 3 decades or so.)
No, i'm talking about systems that already exist or are a short time before being in service. AWACS and it's russian and chinese counterparts, new, powerful ground based radar systems, "over the horizon fire and forget missles" like FMRAAM or METEOR (and it's russian counterparts of course)......
Now speaking for myself, I know absolutely nothing about fighter tactics and such but this seems like a dumb idea.
Just fire some missiles in the general direction where an F-22 is suspected to be????
Do you know how big the sky is? Of course if you're guided by AWACS and they tell you in which general direction to head for AND they have enough return for a general volley this makes alot more sense. But as I understand it, the Raptor has a very low RCS so radar guided missiles have a somewhat hard time locking onto it and it also masks it's heat signature rather well so heat seekers will not have an easy time as well.
Judging by what I read so far about this platform, I think there is no equal to it in the world as far as "electronic" or BVR combat it concerned. What I do worry about is the "knife fight" ACM's. It's what the Navy pilots said about the TomCat and the Phoenix missile combination. If they're within 100 miles of your carriers, you've given away your biggest advantage.
But that is exactly what the russians build the Mig-25 and the Mig-31 for. I'm not sure which of them, but one of those didn't even have a radar. It just did carry the long range anti air missles and the controll center, seeing the enemy on the ground based radar told it when to fire it into which direction without the interceptor ever seeing or knowing what it was firing at.
Even the smallest radar reflection surface can be detected if you are close enough or if your radar is powerful enough, so all you have to do is to bring a autonomous missle close enough to the target so it can detect it itself. There already are many such systems.
Why else should the socalled "over the horizon" missles like the FMRAAM or METEOR with ranges way longer that the radar range of the aircraft that will carry them be build?
With missles like that you really just have to know the direction in which the enemy probably is and the missle does the rest.
This is just a basic military principle that not always the system that carries the weapon has to be the one who sees the enemy. It is the same with ground based SAM. Not every launching-system has it's own radar.
And the russians have such over the horizon missles too. Actually designing good missles seems to be a russian speciality.
And they are selling their stuff to virtually eveybody as we know.
I don't think any engineer will be dumb enough to specifically design it's internal bomb bays for one kind of missiles only. The AMRAAM is one of the best missiles out there and for sure it is the premiere Medium AAM in the US arsenel. Having said that, how hard is it to design a new missile? All the same class missiles have similar diameters and I do not think it'll be that hard to modify the bomb bays if they have to come up with new missiles with drastic different diameters. If these guys are smart enough to come up with an incredible machine such as this, I'm sure they took all this into consideration. Hell, for all we know, it might be easily modified to carry tactical nukes.)
Have a look:
Doesn't this pretty much look like it is designed for the AMRAAM? At least you won't fit much bigger stuff (FMRAAM for example) in there.
Maybe to lower the cost per copy?
I don't think they're going to sell the damn things to China or Russia or to any of the ME countries. They are looking into selling them to trusted and historical allies (Japan, england, Aussies, etc)
Of course that is the reason, but still you wouldn't give away such a super weapon if it would be as invincible as many people here seem to think.
After all the shah of persia and even Saddam Hussein were trusted allies once too.
edit: The Jane's article says (quoting): "Granger's amendment comes at a time when foreign sales of the F-22A could prove crucial to Lockheed Martin's business, while future sales to the US government are no longer guaranteed."
So it rather looks as if the prize per piece for the us airforce won't be lowered by this, because most likely they will have bought and payd for all the F-22 they ordered when the first one is sold abroad.
More and more it looks as if the us airforce doesn't really know what to do with the new toy. It is a formidable piece of technology without a doubt, but it's premise is outdated and everything you could use it for can be done better by combining older, cheaper and more flexible systems (see my example of the AWACS & F-15), or by newly developed and still much cheaper systems like the new unmanned vehicles.
It reminds a bit of the Me-262 in WW2. It is a great fighter and superiour to the older and cheaper systems in many ways but it can't cope with the requirements and the hazzards it would meet in action.
What rendered the Me-262 insignificant was the loss of superiority over the own airspace before it even was in action for the first time, the lack of fuel and spare parts and the sheer numbers of enemys.
The problem of the F-22 is that it is a clearly defensive design in an airforce that only needs offensive systems because it follows the doctrine of preemtive strikes and defending the own country by attacking potential enemies first.
Maybe the F-22 is good in controlling an airspace, but only where there are no long range radar and missle systems of the enemy, or after they were disabled first and that most likely will remain the job of the F-15 and F-16 till they are displaced by unmanned attack aircraft and sophisticated cruise missles.
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