Fantasma,
>>
In recent exercises over Alaska, the F-22 has been put to the test. The results have been staggering. F-22s notched an impressive 108 to 0 "kill ratio" ? often when outnumbered by as much as 8 to 1 by simulated Su-27/30 aircraft.
>>
To my knowledge, there are only 18 F-15Cs with the APG-63V(2) radar. The question then becomes how much of a reputation is earned vs. assumed based on the performance of the radar factor alone. An Su-27SMK with a late N001 radar is still basically 1970s array technology wrapped around some receiver/processor gear (itself almost certainly stolen from the APG-65/73) from the 1980s baseline Zhuk. The No-011M is closer to being a modern set but my understanding is that it's still closer, functionally, to the passive ESA on the RBE-2 an active array.
>>
In a very real sense, this is a preview of what is to come for forces facing the F-22. The F-15 and F-18 scored a 2:1 kill ratio against the simulated Flankers. This is not the only time that F-22s have shown their capabilities. Eight F-22s faced off against 33 F-15Cs earlier this year, and "shot down" all of the F-15Cs with no loss to itself.
>>
So America has big instrumented training ranges. Whoopy.
It's one thing to get a herd of aircraft running all in one direction for a synthetic shootex. It's another when they cross track, shift left or right, or turn off completely to challenge both the radar scan volumes/PRF and the total flight time/kinematic reserves of the weapon. 33 aircraft in fact probably means that they also shelfed back so whatever the first wave ate as a missile soak, the second ran over. Something that's fairly simple to do when Wave 1 is a dirtblower and Wave 2 is high fast behind them.
You also HAVE TO assume that this is FQ only stuff which means that the jets are effectively facing X-band only from the most advantaged aspect for engagement. It's a LOT different when the band goes lower into the S2A range of C-H and the power goes UP as a function of both emitter and strategic illumination games.
>>
Why does the F-22 dominate? The answer lies in the two biggest rules of air combat. The first rule is, "Speed is life." The F-22 has speed ? reaching nearly 2,600 kilometers per hour, and having the ability go faster (up to 1,830 kilometers per hour) than the speed of sound without using its afterburners. It is faster than a Eurofighter, Flanker, or Rafale. It can catch its target, or get out of a situation, should that rare occasion arise.
>>
SSC (Sustained Supersonic Cruise) is a transit aid as much as anything. It gets you TO the fight so that you can keep the pressure up on a threat's sortie:turn ratio. And it gets you HOME so that you can do your own recock from outside TBM ranges. But especially ab-initio where you are assu-u-me'ing that a Raptor centric GSTF is just 'dumped right into' a theater with the task of opening it up (something I hope they are /never/ so stupid as to attempt) you need to be _very careful_ in your creepsy-traipsing into a hot IADS. Because the threat WILL NOT be just an air or ground component. And they most assuredly WILL NOT be so 'convenient' as to illuminate off your nose.
In this, the assumption that SSC is going to save you from all threats is highly questionable and will remain so even after the blk.20 mod actually gives the Raptor something to take patch maps of what it's ALR-94 says is out there.
>>
The second rule is, "Lose the sight, lose the fight." The F-22 is very capable of making an opponent "lose sight" of it ? often through its stealth features that cause enemy radars to perform poorly when looking for an F-22. This means the F-22 will "see" its opponent far sooner than it will be seen itself. In aerial combat, 80 percent of those planes killed in air-to-air combat never knew the opponent that killed them was there.
>>
A moronic thing to say since it applies more to visual combat and this is something which, at 50,000ft and Mach 1.4 or better, watching everybody come up through the conbelt, the Raptor should be able to avoid almost as a given. While it is not explicitly stated that the AAR-56 is an SAIRST, I would be highly surprised if it could not at least be 'upgraded' to function as one.
OTOH, 'first look, first shot, first kill' as a function of radar/BVR warfare is one of those things that really only works when it's 'Nobody Shoots But Me'. And this is flatout NOT a guarantee when you look at the massive tails and slabsided body arrangement of the Raptor from a sidelook axis.
It most assuredly doesn't work when your best ARM is a 15-25nm range GBU-32. And it's only /slightly/ better when it's a 20-25nm GBU-39. Because the actual S2A sites are going to be in blink-and-blank sectored illumination looking across and even back along track as the Raptor moves past them, based on the cueing of advanced 2D/3D EWRs a whole generation later than the Bar Lock and Tall King of Vietnam days. If these systems can get even a soft lock with Mach 5 to 150km or 3.5 to 300km ranged 9m96 (S-300 anyway) rounds, the Raptor's invisibility may not be a given because they have the range and range rate to _chase it down_ if it holds to a given base course too long. As when fighting a sustained A2A campaign.
>>
In a very real sense, the F-22 is the superfighter of the 21st Century. The F-22 is emerging as a long-range fighter (with a range of over 3200 kilometers), capable of fighting when outnumbered 4 to 1 (or more), and it also has significant edges in the areas of speed and stealth. The F-22 is proving to be a very reliable plane (with less than 7 percent of sorties being aborted). Some problems have emerged as the F-22 joins the operational force, most notably with a titanium boom on the first 80 planes, but these problems are being fixed. The F-22's high speed and performance also gives weapons like the AMRAAM and JDAM much more range than from the F-15E or F-16.
>>
It's a shame that this 'range advantagement' wasn't advertised before. I and a few others were among the VERY FEW who didn't fall for the USAF's '150nm in and out' BS as part of a sustained anti-Raptor/pro-JSF campaign. The simple fact being that while the F-22 has 20-25,000lbs of gas (roughly the same as the F-35) and indeed TWO, very-hot core, engines to feed. It also has the incredible advantage of a propulsion cycle:altitude profile that takes the drag down by 50% or more over what even our best 'high' profile transits can achieve while having no problem with sustained supersonic speeds in IRT (titanium frontend). The two capabilities should allow the Raptor to match what it has long been admitted the F-104 can do in achieving /fantastic/ downrange numbers, once it builds a head of speed (500nm on less than 8,000lbs at 1.4 Mach perhaps). What's more, while the Raptor doesn't have the drag figures of the F-104, it DOES have a useful internal payload. You loadup a Zipper with 4 bags and two AIM-9s or a centerline Nuke and your not going anywhere, fast or high. OTOH, for a Raptor, 'clean' does not mean _nothing to kill with_.
As to the AMRAAM/JDAM argument...ainh. If I want to suppress a SAM sight, I want it to happen at high comparitive Mach with the weapon being slung at me. Where that weapon is 20ft long and barreling along at in excess of Mach 3.5 from a position offset or even behind my ground track, it makes no sense to kill it with even an SDB which can make the wide engagement turn. But is gonna burn Mach points doing so. Instead, let the SDB be the weapon that kills the SOC/IOC or HAS. While the _AMRAAM_ is what gives me **Dual Role** capabilities.
This being particularly important when there are only 60-90 Raptors in-theater (as indeed there were in ODS, not including the Saudis who were kep a long ways from the coalface of the active OCA battle). Because an AMRAAM which slams into a target going the better part of Mach 3, even burned out, is still going to pack a helluva wallop. While an SDB on an SMER only sterilizes the bay for all but one other AIM-120.
In this, it's not the specific capabilities but the carriage (assymetric 3+1 AMRAAM-D plus 4 GBU-39) and 'unacknowledged' employment modes which will make or break the F-22's weapons suite. Indeed, probably the biggest mistake on the program was shortening the inlet ducts to the point where the originally promised side-bay compatibility with MRM weapons was defacto removed.
>>
The F-22's biggest weakness seems to be its price tag ($361 million per plane*). But it is quickly proving it is capable of clearing the skies against as many as eight opponents per F-22. When you consider that the Eurofighter costs $58 million per plane, and the Rafale pushes $66 million, while the F-35C pushes $61 million, the F-22 isn't that bad, particularly when two F-22s at $274 million** can easily wipe out eight Eurofighters at $464 million.
>>
So are you encouraging GB to export the Typhoon or...what? Last I checked they were among our ONLY friends out there. And thus the question is not whether we are 'better than them'. But whether the Russians, Chinese or some unstated power is good enough to beat the Meteor+AMSAR or APG-81.
Frankly, so long as the fight remains 'distant' (via LO or true range plus support jamming) anything with a longer pole is going to pretty much dominate the current range of Su-3x and J-10 level fighter design.
The key difference being that if you've designed a greyhound, it may well HAVE TO come-a-runnin' because that's the way it burns gas most efficiently. OTOH, if you are a sniper rifle in a shopping cart, you can _walk_ to the site of your enemies demise. Leaving the missile to do the sprint work.
>>
While the U.S. Air Force may be engaging in some puffery when it comes to describing the F-22, the track record of new American combat aircraft over the last few decades, indicates that the F-22 is, indeed, an impressive combat aircraft. But, as with any warplane, it won't be until the aircraft actually experiences combat, that it's reputation can be established as more than just potential.
>>
Well, I would say that the F-15/16 designs of the 80s beat the MiG-23/25 because the latter did not have the weapons suite to overmatch the formers 15->2nm optimized missile overlaps. If the threat had gone immediately to a BVR dominated (AEW&C + advanced LDSD and big-missile ARH) engagement scenario, they would have put the 'Vietnam Optimized' Teen generation designs into serious trouble. Because we were working on the premise that early detection and vectoring was impossible and you would always run into visual range while your weapons TOF'd out. The problem being that we were also working on the assumption that an offensive counter air system has to go into the other guys territory and beat him up there. Particularly the 1982 Bekaa Valley campaign showed that the DCA counter to this doesn't have to even be based /in the same country/. And so the biggest problem for the Syrians was coming up over the Shouf and Bekaa ranges with blocked LOS and terrible jamming forcing a short fight because they couldn't lobshot-and-run from the high-fast one.
It seems to me that we have actually chosen for the Raptor exactly this mode of combat. And so it remains to be seen if the Soviets will go the otherway with hordes of cheap (robotic) 'dogfighters' to swamp our onboard missile limits. Or if they will try and tailchase us through yet another generation of LO-vs.-LO 'if you can't beat the weapon, avoid being shot at!', high performance, systems.
Either way, it can be safely said that the real key to maintaining initiative is not inherent to the technology but the way you employ it to rapidly offset numbers vs. numbers fighting into critical hits which generally (basing mode) or through specific gap-opening (radars and sector centers) techniques roll up the threat.
CONCLUSION:
I would just like to say that having 80 odd jets come off the production line with defectively hardened titanium spar structures is not a 'little thing' when the wings to which they are attached are not designed to readily be pulled off the jet, peeled open and repaired. Especially when 80 is nearly _half_ the total inventory purchase and the resulting 1-1.5 billion dollar overage to repair them puts production extension to 2010 (when presumably the AF will pull an 'F-22C' attempt to get REAL production going through another 200-300 airframes again) also up for either-or selective choosing before a Congress eager to kill the Raptor for ANY reason.
To which I would add that you cannot pretend that air to air performance against a high density, high capability, threat is enough to purist-justify the NAPFAG communities desire for the F-22. The F-22 exists in too few numbers to leverage a slow and LO, largely conventional, or limited-aspect 'semi-LO' signature force. It's not designed to fly that way and it becomes exponentially more vulnerable when it is commited to predictable raid corridor 'shotgun escort' work.
At the same time, you cannot measure even A2A performance independently of A2G restrictions on weapons load and 'other commitments' (BoTOT timings for a followon mainforce). An F-22 with six multirole AMRAAM is indeed a capable airframe, well able to penetrate enemy airspace and 'blow up or shoot down' whatever it finds there. An F-22 with 2 AMRAAM and 8 GBU-39 is _only_ a bomber. Because it cannot afford to backup it's first shots with a second round of BVR cleanup. And it cannot fight a mixed S2A/A2A threat at all.
In this, a full X6 Meteor slinging Typhoon force that can use the _full range_ of a 150-200km ramAAM is in fact /better than/ a Raptor which uses the excuse of LO to go wandering into the high weeds expecting not to get bit. Because the Flubber will always be a conventional signature jet. And so it will never be risked in gambits where it can overstep it's capabilities, be asked to do more than it is capable of achieving in any one given mission.
Such is why I label the Raptor a COE platform. Because it nibbles at the edges of a _limited_ (I mean how long has it been since we've seen 30 threat jets in the sky simultaneously? 1972? 1982?) IADS. And then goes home untouched. When you start to do the 'bragging rights' thing, you quickly tend to overextend yourself based on not only how much, but how fast and even how /synergistic/ a threat you can take on and defeat. Where this is applied to what amounts to a National Asset (10-15 Raptors = 1 B-2) whose technology leveraging we cannot afford to lose. And particularly where this is further meant to be a system which pathfinds for an extant strike package pushing it from behind, you are setting yourself up for a major drubbing if you don't take things slow and kill _on your schedule_ to the limits of _your abilities_. And no one elses'.
Finally, let's get something straight here: An 80nm SDB shot is all well at good if it comes no further than 20nm /this side/ of a hostile border. But in another 10 years at most, DEWS will begin to populate the battlespace in SERIOUS numbers, both airborne and surface based. And these will largely change the nature of the Air Dominance/Strike Warfare game from that of 'maneuvering for position' with a 15nm/minute airframe. To 'hiring accountants' to determine whether the risk:loss ratio on 186,00 MILE PER SECOND beam weapons is acceptable.
Here too, it's one thing to say you have the best fighter out there. It's another to put it into context with what is the best _Air Supremacy Solution_. And right soon now, that may well be a 747.
KPl.
