Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Here's the issue there. All China has to do is keep the US out and they win. The US has to actively push into the Chinese controlled area to affect anything. The situation is not symmetric, hence why range is more vital for the USAF than the Chinese.

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Can we all agree that the F-111 with an empty weight of 21 tons was rather heavy and that the F-22 with an empty weight of 20 tons is a real lightweight fighter with plenty of margin to add more junk in?

hcobb wrote:

Can we all agree that the F-111 with an empty weight of 21 tons was rather heavy and that the F-22 with an empty weight of 20 tons is a real lightweight fighter with plenty of margin to add more junk in?

Meh, seeing as the F-22 has about 1/3 more power and digital FBW, I can see how that might be the case.

1st503rdsgt wrote:

ark, There's no need to build another fast penetration fighter-bomber. The F-111 and F-15E were only necessary because high speed was the way to beat air defenses back then. A medium-range, sub-sonic, VLO bomber would be a better platform for that kind of mission today.

A-12?

tacf-x, I believe the A-12 defensive armament was AIM-9 rather than AMRAAM, but I could be wrong.

A-12 was supposed to have HARMs and AMRAAMs (2 each) plus a nominal bomb load (totaling 5,160 lbs) according to wiki. Looking at the requirements of the A-12, it's not at all surprising to me it failed before it left the ground.

The A-12 didn't fail. It had significant cost issues and it was right when the Cold War ended so they cut it instead of restructuring. One could make an excellent argument that the nation misses the A-12, or the early retired A-6, and that having long range strike on the carriers would be extremely useful in every conflict we've had since the Cold War ended. Indeed the USN will be getting back into long range strike with the UCAS-D, still planned to enter service in 2018, perhaps before the F-35C.

On the positive side the F/A-18E/F is far more economical to operate than the F-14's and A'6's it replaced; however, we lost a lot of capability especially in terms of range. The original plan of 20 A-12's per carrier would have vastly increased the ability of our carriers to strike at long range, leaving aside the higher survivability of the low observable A-12. The loss of the A-12 still has impact and will for decades to come.

Prinz, I know what Wiki says, and I think it is in error. There was one large bay and one small bay in each wing. The small bay was for air to air missiles and I think it was too small for an AMRAAM and I know it was too small for a HARM. AMRAAMs and HARMs would fit in the large bays, but I don't recall there being any requirement for suspension equipment for either of them in the initial design. Certainly they could have been added later. The large bays were unusual in that all weapons were to be suspended by a retractable platform, to which weapon racks and launcher rails were to be attached. To drop bombs or launch missiles, the bay doors opened, the platform extended so the weapons were in the free air stream, then the weapons were separated. The platform was felt to be necessary, to avoid the problems associated with dropping weapons from a bay into high speed air, although other airplanes had successfully done it. The platform was very heavy and complex and I thought is was responsible for much of the weight problem the airplane encountered.

That makes me wonder - how cost effective is it to fit BVR capability to a light bomber/attack aircraft?

That totally depends on your definition of an attack aircraft. Does a strike fighter qualify? How about Sea Harrier? Now define cost effective. How cost effective is it to have a strike package with escorting fighters and other support aircraft all demanding tanker sorties vs a smaller package that can self escort within certain threat environments? The F/A-18 originally was viewed rather favorably in that it was able to do both strike and escort itself on the same mission. The drawback of the F/A-18 is the short range and requirements for tankers. It also shouldn't be lost that depending on the adversary there's a point your tankers can not approach his air defenses. It can come down to flying unescorted by fighters or not flying at all and being able to do limited self protection then becomes rather critical if the chance of detection is significant. Of course at this point you might just consider cruise missiles instead, if that's an option.

destroid wrote:

That makes me wonder - how cost effective is it to fit BVR capability to a light bomber/attack aircraft?

The Russians have done it with the Su-25UTM(?). It can take a centerline radar pod and two AA-12s. I don't think this would be too expensive as long as you didn't buy a huge stock of weapons. What aircraft do you have in mind??

My question came out wrong. In light of the desired attributes being more like a modern A-6 or F-111 than a newer F-15E, what I meant was - couldn't you realise large savings and better performance in the attack role, by dropping BVR air to air capability? But perhaps if you want to have night fighting capability you need radar anyway and it's of little consequence to have it handle BVR in addition to it's air to ground modes?

A2A is the primary reason for super-radars (and EW to some degree), so a simple aircraft could probably use an APG-68 or similar with few ill effects. The only real cost of BVR capability on an aircraft is going to be in the radar and datalink areas, everything else will theoretically be just about the same.

A-12's SAR radar was compatible with air to air, but there was considerably difficulty integrating it into the airframe so I don't know if it would be a good example. Still, air-to air modes on an air-to-ground optimized radar might not be up to par with a dedicated A2A platform in terms of detection and tracking range, engagement capabilities, etc. but the A2G modes should still work fine.

Why does the strike platform need to be manned and fast when unmanned and slow is cheaper?

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

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