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I agree that the F-22 is going to be untouchable for a long time. However... it is interesting to note that durig ODS, some Royal Navy destroyers with D-band radars claimed to be able to see the F-117 from 40 miles range. No one is going to ever confirm that but the sources are many, I heard about it from some US aviation mag`.
My point is that no weapons system remains invunerable for ever, except maybe the Blackbird, a unique exception. Some countries even claim that the B-2 is visible to IR detection systems....... I dont think anyone on this forum truly believes that the Raptor is invinsible, it will just be damn difficult to take one down, it will require an enormous defensive effort to do it , disproportionate to the numbers of attacking F-22s. That effort will overwhelm defences and allow other "strikers" to attack unhindered.

The F-22 is fascinating because it requires that other countries spend huge sums of money to try to counter it, money that they could spend on thier own people. No other country can produce an aircraft as effective in as many numbers as the F-22. They will also have to totally re-think thier defensive strategy and spend even more cash. As a deterrent, the F-22 is pretty powerful, even just in the mindset of a possible adversary.

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Enthusiast Joined: Aug 18, 2005 Posts: 55 Status: Offline

2sBlind wrote:

With the doors open, they were visible to radar (and a Raptor would be as well), and then all hell would break loose hoping for a "golden BB". The problem is that that is far from a firing solution on any kind of weapon. Even if they did get off a missile at a Raptor with his doors open, either the firing airplane's radar would have to keep a lock, not something possible outside of just a few nm, or the missile would have to have a good enough IR seeker to find the F/A-22 (which isn't something that's easy), then keep a lock through the flares and defensive maneuvering of the Raptor.

You're right, but I think it's much more probable than 'golden BB'. An F-117 got shot down over Yugoslavia for exactly this reason.

2sBlind wrote:

I'd like to postulate as well that if a Raptor is working outside of AWACS coverage, he's going to have his radar up and running, otherwise why is he there? Sure, it will spotlight him from far away (if the enemy can accurately detect and track his LPI radar), but only one jet out of a 4-ship needs to be radiating for all his wingmen to have the same information.

That's a really good point.

Enthusiast Joined: Aug 18, 2005 Posts: 55 Status: Offline

snypa777 wrote:

As a deterrent, the F-22 is pretty powerful, even just in the mindset of a possible adversary.

That's a really good point. It doesn't matter how good or bad the F/A-22 is, if everybody goes around saying it's invincible, and the enemy is scared of it, then it has done its job before it has launched the first missile.

Remember the MiG-25? It didn't matter that it turned out to be less than we thought in the West, the fact that we were scared of it led to the F-15 and F-16 and probably to different operating procedures for the SR-71.

snypa777 wrote:

durig ODS, some Royal Navy destroyers with D-band radars claimed to be able to see the F-117 from 40 miles range.

Those guys (117's) probably had their radar reflectors (the little "pyramids" on the fuselage sides) on for a training mission...
That was reported in AvWeek, and AvWeek also reported a 117 flying over a coalition SAM site, and the site crew spotting the Black Jet visually, but not on radar!

catisfit wrote:

You're right, but I think it's much more probable than 'golden BB'. An F-117 got shot down over Yugoslavia for exactly this reason.

It probably was just a golden BB - the fact that the Serbs couldn't nail any more of them on subsequent nights proves the point.
Vega 31 shouldn't even have happened at all... dunno why it seems lessons have to be re-learnt the hard way every time. I wonder if the Bandits staged a mini "revolt" to have the ingress routes changed after the shoot down to be more unpredictable, like the SAC BUFF drivers did in Linebacker II after the initial heavy losses to SAMs?

If the -22 takes so much effort to counter, and the country in question does this. They are more than likely leaving themselves wide open for an attack from another side. Ground based radar, meet wild weasel. The USAF is smart, they will probably do some crazy stuff in order to accomplish the mission in question. If the world is so scared of the capabilities of the -22 and they really try to take it out, then they very well may ignore a much clearer danger. Oh well, my Two Cents

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Enthusiast Joined: Aug 18, 2005 Posts: 55 Status: Offline

FoxFour wrote:

It probably was just a golden BB - the fact that the Serbs couldn't nail any more of them on subsequent nights proves the point.

Apparently the pilots were too cocky and were running the same routine into targets, so they sat underneath them and waited for the bomb bay doors to open...

After that incident the F-117 drivers remembered that they weren't invincible and began to respect the ground forces.

I can guarantee you that it wasn't cockiness that made them fly the same ingress routes every time. NO pilot, no matter what he is flying, would willingly do that. It was political constraints that forced them into this, same shi! happened in Vietnam, and some leadership didn't pay attention to the lessons of history. Fortunately Vega 31 knew what he was doing and stayed calm. That's why he was rescued so fast.

Enthusiast Joined: Aug 18, 2005 Posts: 55 Status: Offline

I heard that the pilot in question didn't drop on the first run and went around to retrace his steps. The guys on the ground knew where he was going as he'd just done it once, so they took advantage. It wasn't ingress routes, it was IP and target approaches.

About the detective sensors for F/A-22................

http://www.strategypage.com/messageboar ... -21564.asp

Well, it seems that APG-77 is only the No.2 sensor for F/A-22, and the real boss is ALR-94............

Page 245 of November 2005 Air and Space magazine's story on the Raptor quotes the pilot as having "seen targets beyond 320 miles". Good article but not enough stuff we haven't heard or seen already. JL Raleigh NC

Enthusiast Joined: Oct 12, 2005 Posts: 21 Status: Offline

Guysmiley wrote:

The trouble with long wavelength (low frequency) radar is that the antenna gets larger as the frequency gets lower. You aren't ever going to see a low frequency radar guided missile.

As far as the cell phone detection systems, if a country is at "no-kidding" all out war with the U.S. their cell towers aren't going to last very long.

The 'cell phone tower' idea isn't practical anyway. The towers aren't powerful enough and a large enough network would require an impractical amount of computer processing power. It might work if a Raptor flies through your laboratory at an altitude of ten feet, though.

Enthusiast Joined: Oct 12, 2005 Posts: 21 Status: Offline

catisfit wrote:

Pat1 wrote:

The Raptor boost one of the most (the most?) impressive passive sensor suite out there, coupled with a marvelous AESA radar. IMHO, anything you send at them, radar on or off, will be lunch for the Raptors.

Hi Pat1,

I'm not so sure about that, if you vectored something in under strict emcon until it was within missile range (like Gums' 4th point), the F/A-22 wouldn't be able to pick it up, there would be nothing to pick up. No radar, IR doesn't travel that far. It can turn on its AESA radar, but that would be giving its position away, so it wouldn't do that unless it knew it was under threat. A lot of people jump to the 'lunch for the Raptors' reply, and that's kinda why I started this thread, to destroy the myth.

Using the radar may not necessarily give the aircraft's position away. AvWeek published some eye-opening stuff a few years back. The Raptor's radar is a Low Probability of Intercept device - it doesn't just hop frequencies every few seconds, it can encode EVERY PULSE with a different frequency, phase, waveform, etc. In addition it probably uses spread spectrum techniques that use a pseudorandom sequence encoding scheme to spread the signal out over a wide band of frequencies (similar to a GPS). When the return signal comes back, the radar processor uses that same sequence to decode the signal and read the return. And the APG-77 automatically varies the transmitted power to the minimum needed. To an outside listener the radar signal would be indistinguishable from random background static. You probably couldn't detect it, and it would ignore jamming. I'm not saying that it's perfect, or that it will be impossible to detect or counter - It doesn't HAVE to be. On the other hand, I'd bet there's a lot of stuff they didn't tell AvWeek.

But, let's say I'm wrong and the Raptors can't use their radars at all without giving away their position. It might go down like this:

The Bad Guys have noticed that their AWACS and it's escorts just vanished. They figure that there must be Raptors in the general area. So they vector Flankers in under strict emcon. Mr. Flanker is using (IRST? Binoculars? Quija Board?) to try and get a tally on an F/A-22. But there's another Raptor 100 miles away, scanning the area with his radar and datalinking data to the other Raptors close in....

loflyn wrote:

Guysmiley wrote:

The trouble with long wavelength (low frequency) radar is that the antenna gets larger as the frequency gets lower. You aren't ever going to see a low frequency radar guided missile.

As far as the cell phone detection systems, if a country is at "no-kidding" all out war with the U.S. their cell towers aren't going to last very long.

The 'cell phone tower' idea isn't practical anyway. The towers aren't powerful enough and a large enough network would require an impractical amount of computer processing power. It might work if a Raptor flies through your laboratory at an altitude of ten feet, though.

It's not a power issue. The way I understand PCL (Passive Coherent Location) is that aircraft can cause a measurable change in the signal from one cell tower to the next. By tracking these signal changes over time, theoretically a track can be established. I wasn't convinced, but some folks smarter than me say it theoretically could work. Which goes back to if there were a real shootin' war, the towers wouldn't last long...

Loflyn, the processing power already exhists. The idea is that you would also use the GPS constellation to track your target.
Roscoe, it isn`t a power issue you say. If you did need more power, there is a system that has been around for years which is much , much more powerful than a cellphone network...A television broadcast transmission! Which covers huge areas. Theoretically, if a cellphone system could do it, the TV broadcast system could be used in the same way...

Vunerability of such a system remains as you have said though....

One thing I forgot to add....the GPS network is controlled by.......the US millitary!
You would need to use GPS to make any tracking system work.
Hell, you wouldn`t even need a single JDAM, a few clicks of a mouse could take out the system!

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