Forum: F-22A Raptor

I have been a long time reader of F-16.net, but this is my first post. I finally believe I have something worth breaking my silence.

Firstly, don't give me crap about my screen name. I know pilots and such love to call it the Viper, but I have been a fan of the F-16 for 30 years. I grew up reading about the Fighting Falcon. Although, I do admit is doesn't sounds as good as the Viper.

Recently the administration chose to terminate production of the F-22. Many have discussed this to death. The consensus seems to be that we do not need the F-22 because in modern warfare most of our aircraft will have the benefit of surprise due to stealth. Also BVR missiles have become so affective that dog fighting is a thing of the past, therefore we don't need an air dominance fighter. I understand these arguments but then it dawned on me. We are not going to be the sole owners of stealth forever.

When other countries obtain stealth technology air warfare will go back to the skies of Nazi Germany in the 1940s. No longer will radar be the dominate factor in air to air combat. Engagements will become more reliant on close range sensors and the pilots visual senses. BVR missiles will become a thing of the past. And air dominance fighters will become a front line necessity. Wouldn't you all agree? I would like to hear your opinions.

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This has been discussed to death, but I enjoy talking about it.

Quote:

We are not going to be the sole owners of stealth forever.

As I've learned in the past, you're going to have to really define what you mean by "stealth". I think it's more than just having an aircraft shaped and painted in a way that it absorbs radar or doesn't send it back to the emission source. If you're talking about an airframe that is almost invisible to radar, I agree. We are, in fact, selling this technology (hopefully to a limited degree) to nations partnered with us in the JSF program. F-35 LO technology will most certainly not be secret in the future when Lightnings are sold, by the masses, to foreign countries. It's hard to predict the future. I hope the F-35 is up to the task of being an air dominance fighter if the F-22 is unavailable.

I believe that Russia and china are both working on stealth projects of their own so the f-22 and f-35 will soon lose their capabilities as the only stealth fighters in the world. however i think it will be a while before this happenes because of Russia's lack of fiance and China's lack of tech

It's maybe more the question of how sensors and weapons of the future look like and if stealth in its current form might become obsolete. Engineers around the world are working on new technologies, it might last an eternity or not. Yet I wouldn't worry to much about the US air dominance at all.

Strealth aircraft can be defeated if an enemy jams as many SAMS as it can on the box where the plane operates. One lucky hit destroys it. Numbers count as we learned in the 1973 Arab/Israel fight th emore you have, the longer you last as a force. I will agree that the endof the F-22 program was not prudent as we could have bought 20 F-22's a year for the next three years to take the total force to 243.

Talk has been ongoing on buying F-18E/F's for the Air National Guard to replace older F-16's as they retire to the boneyard once their airframe hours expire. This does not make any sense as we already have F-16's in production and we could buy newer F-16 Block 60's to fill out ANG units and to ensure we have enough fighters to cover their space. Why buy another airframe system when you already support F-16's?

Best way to make maximum use of the F-22 is to deploy them overseas near trouble spots and to use remaining/new F-16's to patrol and intercept commercial aircraft. Why waste a stealth airframe on this when conventional F-16's are still good for it?

Ulitmately, action must be taken to ensure the F-35 is a viable war platform with all its issues resolved and production ongoing in a timely fashion. If the F-35 becomes too expensive or the delays too costly, then existing platforms such as the F-16, F-15 and F-18E/F may be considered. We cannot waste time for the F-35 to become the aircraft we want it to be.

FalconFollower:

With regards to *only* hardware (airframes) it is a crying shame that the F-22 is being terminted with not even 190 copies. All things being equal the 22 is better than the 35 with regards to taking the fight inside hostile airspace before the bad guys even get out of their own playground. The 22 has the range, speed, missile load, and LO to be more effective than the 35 which is slower and probably not as good in a turning and spiraling dogfight.
But the 35 has helmet mounted look and shoot capability that the 22 doesn't have (although it could have it).

So then, that being said, our leaders look into the future to see who we might be knocking heads with. And considering who we might be knocking heads with, then we have to look at the particulars of those enemy nations and at what their capabilities are relative to what we ar fielding.

You have to face the facts: 1) we're not going to fighting Russia in the forseeable future. 2) We're not going to be fighting China either. Russia and China, despite our differences, their leaders are soaking up their new found riches of capitalism and corruption. Why would they want to start a war with the "West" and go from living in palaces and driving around in Mercedes and BMWs to living in a wartime environment. We ain't going to be fighting them anytime soon, I can assure you!

So who is left? Iran, and North Korea. And face the facts, that China is not going to ever let NK start a war for the reasons I gave above. So we're left with an impending fight with Iran, & probably pretty damned soon. We're not going to be able to field another 100 F-22's before that fight starts. . . Even if the production line was kept open, we wouldn't be able to build them fast enough to make it into this fight. If we're lucky we might be able to build another 20 airframes before this fight.

After Iran is defeated what are the threats left in the world that require the 22's speed ad all around Buck Rogers performance? There's nothing out there on the horizon. The 35 is good enough for taking out insurgents in Pakistan and everplace else in southwest asia.

And who knows what whiz-bang electronics we have that render the need for airframe-built-in LO. Maybe the 35 doesn't need the same level of LO built into the airframe as the F-22 did when it was designed 25 years ago. Think about it; it was basically 25 years ago that the ATF's were designed. We were still using Commadore 64s when the ATFs were being drawn up.

And maybe the 35 doesn't need to cruise at M1.8 in dry thust because its got enough fuel in its fat a$$ to fly the same distances at M1.8 in afterburn as the 22 can fly without burners lit. Face this as well, the 22 can't fly 1200nm at M1.8... I think the true numbers are around 500nm. And IR is so god that even a non-burning supersonic F-22 can be targeted just as easily as a 35 with the burner set to 'high'.

So basically you have to look at the whole geopolitcal nature of our planet, and what capabilities the 22 and 35 have relative to one another. The USA will go on quite nicely with only 187 F-22s. It really is a shame however to have such a wonderful airplane being built as we speak and killing it off.

To be honest what the USAF really needs is something of super-B1. Something with a very long range and large weapons capacity that can loiter for hours and hours, and then rush in at supersonic speed when they get called by forward controllers. We need something low flying a blazingly fast so its not downed by some poppy seed farmer with a shoulder launched rocket or some pop-up sam threat. What we need is something that does NOT require the nations of the free world to give us basing rights. Hence we long ranged fast bomber capability and not another slow B2 whose performance is not constrained by being overly stealthy.

That would mean the construction of a regional bomber to handle threats. Northrup Grumman is building a 2/3 size classified bomber prototype to test flight concepts for a replacement bomber for B-1 and B-52's in addition to taking care of attrited B-2 airframes. Plus more RPV's loitering around like we have in Afghanistan to hit high value targets at opportunity.

Forum: F-22A Raptor

F-22 Cuts Not Prudent