Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Look, I'm just saying that the PAK FA is nowhere near dead. If-and it's quite possible-the Russians are able to scrape up the funding, with Putin as President and the continuing modernization of their military, PAK FA is doing considerably better than the F-35, which, need I or any other educated person remind you, still costs more than the Raptor, regardless of what Reuters has to say, and will be able to compete with the Raptor as well as the F-35. Granted, it won't be invincible. Neither will be the Raptor. I believe, and SouthernPhantom can back me up on this, we need to increase the Raptor buy as well as the F-35C buy.

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papakaz wrote:

PAK FA is doing considerably better than the F-35

What. There are how many flying F35's...20? There are two, maybe three T-50's or Pakfa's or whatever they are calling it these days and none are progressing in testing. The F35 will build upon decades of stealth technology and will be tested vs. other 5th gen aircraft. Right now, there is no evidence that the PAK-FA will be considered a real 5th gen. You don't just copy, poorly I might add, the F22 design, cant the vertical stabs and say it will be evasive to radar.

firstimpulse wrote:

..... Frame cracks in two of the first prototypes?! That's cause for massive redesign, and years of setback......

Does anyone have any specific information about the cracks? How many, location, flight hours, current g limits, etc??

I doubt we’ll ever know details on the cracking. Even if it was released I think it would get burried. Western newspapers sell better when the F-35 is cracking to pieces and the PAK-FA is far better than the F-35 and F-22 for half the price.

The argument that Russia is developing the PAK-FA for far less than the F-22/F-35 is a load of crud. It is always easier and cheaper to do something second than to do it first (i.e., Pre-Roger Banister the 4 minute mile was impossible, now you see 4-minute miles by high school athletes). Russia (and China for that matter) are piggy backing on what has been learned and paid for by the US.

Additionally, quality has been an issue for Russia and China. Case in point, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, F-35, design life of 8,000+FH, The Europeans tend to go 6,000+FH, and the Russians/Chinese go for 2,000-4,000 FH. The lack of single engine fighters in production powered by non-US engines says something about engine quality. I am sure the engine quality is better than in Vietnam, but then you were talking an engine swap every 20FH on some MiG's, and I think it was the MiG 25 that had to have its engine swapped everytime it fired the afterburner for more than a few seconds. The F-22 and F-35 engines may have to have work down, but the same engine could stay with the aircraft for the life of the airframe.

Quality makes things more expensive up front, but often cheaper in the long run. (side note: I’m not saying the SU-27 family and their “J” counterparts are not good aircraft, just not long lasting quality)

For example, assuming PAK-FA follows it's SU-27 family trend it will have a 4,000FH service life, the F-22 is rated for at least 8,000FH, so you have to build 2 PAK-FA's for every F-22 to get the same service life. In addition to needing 2 airframes for every F-22, you need 8 engines (4 with the airframes and 4 spares). You can see how the price difference is dropping and maybe even inverse by this point.

Sufa Viper

sufaviper wrote:

I doubt we’ll ever know details on the cracking. Even if it was released I think it would get burried. Western newspapers sell better when the F-35 is cracking to pieces and the PAK-FA is far better than the F-35 and F-22 for half the price.

The argument that Russia is developing the PAK-FA for far less than the F-22/F-35 is a load of crud. It is always easier and cheaper to do something second than to do it first (i.e., Pre-Roger Banister the 4 minute mile was impossible, now you see 4-minute miles by high school athletes). Russia (and China for that matter) are piggy backing on what has been learned and paid for by the US.

Additionally, quality has been an issue for Russia and China. Case in point, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, F-35, design life of 8,000+FH, The Europeans tend to go 6,000+FH, and the Russians/Chinese go for 2,000-4,000 FH. The lack of single engine fighters in production powered by non-US engines says something about engine quality. I am sure the engine quality is better than in Vietnam, but then you were talking an engine swap every 20FH on some MiG's, and I think it was the MiG 25 that had to have its engine swapped everytime it fired the afterburner for more than a few seconds. The F-22 and F-35 engines may have to have work down, but the same engine could stay with the aircraft for the life of the airframe.

Quality makes things more expensive up front, but often cheaper in the long run. (side note: I’m not saying the SU-27 family and their “J” counterparts are not good aircraft, just not long lasting quality)

For example, assuming PAK-FA follows it's SU-27 family trend it will have a 4,000FH service life, the F-22 is rated for at least 8,000FH, so you have to build 2 PAK-FA's for every F-22 to get the same service life. In addition to needing 2 airframes for every F-22, you need 8 engines (4 with the airframes and 4 spares). You can see how the price difference is dropping and maybe even inverse by this point.

Sufa Viper

And 20+ years to steal, copy and innovate whatever intel & technology they could, to just achieve a rough parity.

And all of you are just bad-mouthing what needs to be done. The US simply does not have the number of assets required to protect its own territory. It was planned by ACC to have, at a bare minimum, 381 F-22s, to be able to sufficiently fly air defense sorties, and be able to deploy to conflict zones. There are projected to be 2,443 F-35s, in all variants, which means, essentially creating a fighter gap that is unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon. With only 187 operational F-22s, and a significant probability that the F-35A's (the most capable variant) projected buy may be further reduced, attrition will reduce the total number of F-35s to the point where we cannot replace the fourth-generation fighter force on a one-for-one basis.

I know it sounds like I'm Carlo Kopp or somebody, but I hate to break it to you: With all of his doom-and-gloom predictions of the US bloc's coming destruction, he does turn out to be right most of the time.

The US used to be able to fight two high-intensity conflicts and a brush-fire war at the same time. Now we can barely fight two police actions. What happened?

Quote:

The US simply does not have the number of assets required to protect its own territory.

Huh? Last time I checked, the US had roughly 5 times the number of 4th generation + fighter aircraft than the world's number 2 - Russia, with less than half the land area to cover. Approximately 12 times the number of refueling aircraft, and 6 times the number of AWACS. Can't work out how your statement could be more incorrect.

As for the PAK FA being more successful than the F-35? Really? Only 120 flight hours performed in 3 years and low G testing resulting in 2 broken prototypes now requiring extensive redesign .... how does that equate to success? The only thing successful about the PAK FA has been the Russian government's ability to avoid/squash public scrutiny and accountability.

F-35 all versions are tip of the spear fighters. You can salvage airframes out of AMARG if a war breaks out. Name a country with a similar depot.

johnwill wrote:

Does anyone have any specific information about the cracks? How many, location, flight hours, current g limits, etc??

Its very sketchy, and the only Russian site wihich seemed to have solid details had the page taken down soon after the news broke out.

G limits would have been low as 51 was grounded around August last year soon after MAKS I believe.

Looking at the airshow display, its pretty clear they had not yet cleared it for very high G maneuvering (or possibly just not for public displays).

At that stage the program had only performed around 100-110 hours total .... the majority done by 51, the one with the confirmed cracks.

Thank you for the information. If more is known later, I hope you will post it.

papakaz wrote:

If-and it's quite possible-the Russians are able to scrape up the funding, with Putin as President and the continuing modernization of their military

It's a bigger 'if' than you realize. The Russian finance ministry wants to chop the defense by $120B (20%) through the current proposed 2020 plan, and they are 32% less than what Putin would like.

If oil (Brent, not WTI) stays near $100/bbl, they will still have a budget deficit.

Putin hates the Bakken, Brazilian fields, and most definitely hates Eastern Med natural gas.

madrat wrote:

F-35 all versions are tip of the spear fighters. You can salvage airframes out of AMARG if a war breaks out. Name a country with a similar depot.

That's right. I'm still waiting to fight Syrian MiGs or whatever in an F-4...

Actually on-topic, the Russians have been putting out some very impressive aircraft in the past 10 years or so. What they haven't been doing is producing them in quantity. Quality is great, and I am an advocate of quality over quantity, but not when you've replaced 12 F-15s with 2 F-22s and can hardly generate sorties. Maybe Putin will help reduce this, maybe not.

southernphantom wrote:

madrat wrote:

F-35 all versions are tip of the spear fighters. You can salvage airframes out of AMARG if a war breaks out. Name a country with a similar depot.

That's right. I'm still waiting to fight Syrian MiGs or whatever in an F-4...

Actually on-topic, the Russians have been putting out some very impressive aircraft in the past 10 years or so. What they haven't been doing is producing them in quantity. Quality is great, and I am an advocate of quality over quantity, but not when you've replaced 12 F-15s with 2 F-22s and can hardly generate sorties. Maybe Putin will help reduce this, maybe not.

There's not too many F-4s left. They'd be pulling F-15 and F-16 airframes.
They also haven't replaced the F-15 with the F-22 at a 6:1 ratio. I'd prefer 381 F-22s, but let's not resort to hyperbole.

Curtailing the F-22 where it was production wise makes sense to me honestly. No one else has the capability right now to seriously challenge that force. They learned a lot from the F-22 program that went into the F-35 program and I would venture that if allowed to do so they would probably redo the F-22 program and do things very differently. It seems to me the military decided it did not need to go any further down the F-22 path given what they were learning with the F-35.

My guess is that you see the navy program for something to replace the Super Hornets result in a two engined something that is along the lines of an F-22/F-35 hybrid and the Air Force ends up buying those as its F-22 replacements as well.

munny wrote:

Quote:

The US simply does not have the number of assets required to protect its own territory.

Huh? Last time I checked, the US had roughly 5 times the number of 4th generation + fighter aircraft than the world's number 2 - Russia, with less than half the land area to cover. Approximately 12 times the number of refueling aircraft, and 6 times the number of AWACS. Can't work out how your statement could be more incorrect.

Okay, here's what the US Air Force will look like when compared with the Russian Air Force in 2015.

US Air Force: 187 F-22A Raptors, 63 F-35A Lightning II's, 178 F-15C Eagles, 224 F-15E Strike Eagles, 450 F-16C/D Vipers/Fighting Falcons, 246 A-10C Warthogs/Thunderbolt II's. Total tactical strength: 1,348 aircraft of all types

VVS: 124 Su-34 Fullbacks, 188 MiG-31BM Foxfires, 241 Su-25SM Frogfeet, 553 Su-24M Fencers, 48 Su-35S Flanker-E's, 226 MiG-29SMT Fulcrums, 30 Su-30 Flanker-C's, 281 Su-27SM Flankers. Total tactical strength: 1,691 aircraft of all types. Strike one: VVS outnumbers USAF with viable legacy fleet prior to full-rate production of PAK FA and low-rate LMFS prototype production.

US Air Force: 418 KC-135 Stratotankers, 59 KC-10A Extenders. Total refueling capacity: 477 refueling aircraft of all types

VVS: 20 Il-86 Midas, plus buddy refueling stores on Su-24M Fencers (potentially 200 aircraft used in capacity with limited strike capability). Strike two: USAF tactical aircraft are unable to perform buddy refueling. The USAF does not possess over 12 times the number of aircraft, and if a common consensus exists, well over half the total Su-24 force (including other aircraft, such as older MiG-25s, which also can carry a heavy load, and can probably be modified to be buddy tankers).

US Air Force: 32 E-3B/C Sentries. Only AEW&C airframe in service with USAF

VVS: 20 A-50 Mainstays. Strike three. The VVS does not hold a significant disadvantage.

Conclusion: In a defensive war, the USAF has no real advantage over the Russian military. The USAF, further, has its slim advantage further reduced to the point where any additional attached air assets from the Marine Corps or Navy can be rather effectively attacked by Russian TACAIR, SAMs, or triple-A. Russian training dictates separate attacks that can be supported by a wingman lurking in a loose formation in an air superiority mission (as shown in an air-to-ground variant with the Frogfoot in Afghanistan), or alternatively, tight, line-astern formations ideal for passes on American strategic assets, while simultaneously disregarding individual losses for taking out higher-priority targets.

Defend against that, Munny.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

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