I'm curious if he had similar difficulty locking on with his sidewinders?

Hey says "I can't see the [expletive deleted] thing," said RAAF Squadron Leader Stephen Chappell, exchange F-15 pilot in the 65th Aggressor Squadron. "It won't let me put a weapons system on it, even when I can see it visually through the canopy. [Flying against the F-22] annoys the hell out of me."

The Sidewinder would be considered a weapons system, wouldn't it?

just trying to reconcile his statement with what i read about the latest IR missile seekers being able to target aircraft based on heat signature generated by air friction on the fuselage, not to mention signature from the engine nozzle/exhaust. I know the AF and LM paid a lot of attention to reducing IR signature of the Raptor but surely it cannot be as cold as the surrounding air? A difference of a few degrees would be detectable, wouldn't it?

An IRST can detect temp` differences of just ONE degree. When the Aussie pilot said he couldn`t get a weapons system on it we don`t know what he was talking about so we just speculate! Did he mean he couldn`t get into a shooting position on the F-22 or his weapons systems couldn`t acquire it??

The F-22 employs wing leading edge cooling for those nice head on heater shots and other ways to reduce IR signature. There is NO way an F-22 is invulnerable to IR missiles because the F-22 will sure as hell have a heat signature , even rainwater to the kind of surface coatings on the fuselage will change the way any aircraft looks to an IR seeker from what I have read....The only way it could evade a heater is if it has defensive systems onboard to defeat their seekers/processors and/or other means that we don`t need to know about!

Anyway, good to see that the F-22 is spanking all-comers at Red Flag, I expect no less for the pricetag!

Well, yes and no. The problem with IRST is that it is not a feasible volume search tool. In order to acquire a target at long distances (>20~30km) it has to use tremendous optical magnification. Using high maginification optics also means that it is has a very narrow field of view. At the kind of magnification it takes to fill an F-16 sized target to about 1/64th of the sensor frame (~1/8 length x width), it'll take 30 mins to 3 hours to complete one full sweep of the 60x60 degree area in front at the slewing speed of a typical MSA and a capture rate of 60 fps. And this is all assuming that atmospherics co-operate which may or may not be the case.

In otherwords, IRST is only useful for volume search at close range or for point tracking at longer distances when cued by radar or EW systems. Once you reduce the effectiveness of the enemy's radar set through LO technology and you implement an effective LPI radar, you also indirectly renders the operational effectiveness of any IRST rig minimal.

He probably couldn't get a radar lock to cue his sidewinders onto the F-22. I can't believe that the F-22 won't be detected by IR sensors at that close a range.. the Raptor is great but not THAT great. LOL

Well I obviously wasn't there, but even if you couldn't get a radar lock to cue the AIM-9, you can still go for a no-lock AIM-9 shot using the missile's seeker tone to tell when ya when to uncage. This is assuming you can
stay at the Raptor's six long enough to do all that.

This is assuming you can stay at the Raptor's six long enough