Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

river_otter wrote:

firstimpulse wrote:

sprstdlyscottsmn wrote:

I think what first impulse may have been getting at is that if the F-22 has IR reduction measures then there is less of a target for an IR missile to find,

Yes, that's my perspective. But here's a really interesting question - If, hypothetically, two stealth aircraft with rather basic sensors (no advanced IRST) engaged each other, wouldn't the lack of reliable missile shots turn the fight into something WWII or Vietnam-esque dogfight? Say, between an F-22 and J-20? If stealth turns out to be nearly as effective at close range as long range, that would be a bit of a game-changer, as missiles would suddenly only be as good as guns. From my perspective at least.

Whistle

It's an interesting hypothetical, but dogfight is the wrong species I think. I think the pilot's goal would be to keep it more akin to modern submarine games of cat and mouse, just at higher speeds. If your missile won't track in a dogfight, it's not as good as guns; it's inferior to guns. Missiles will be better than guns, though, because they will be fired at the extreme edge of detection range with a good probability of hit. They would need remote guidance like a wire-guided torpedo, but that's not really difficult to do even today. There would be an arms race for better sensors and better stealth. First to see can guide a shot in. Better ability to see or greater protection against being seen gives you the ability to see first. It just wouldn't be as completely lopsided as today's F-22 vs. everything else fights.

(Although it's pretty clear PAK-FA and J-20 are nowhere near stealth aircraft, just not the glaring radar frequency bull's-eyes their legacy aircraft are. At some later date, F-22 or its successors will probably fight true stealth aircraft, but that's way off in the future as things look now.)

Some say that if there were a big shooting war, that fighters are going to be going in with radars turned off due to antiradiation missiles. There were studies done in the 80s showing that ARMs were devastating even to ARMAAM equipped fighters.

If true, then this makes the F-35 more valuable than the F-22 in aerial combat because of its passive sensors and situational awareness. First look, first shoot, first kill -- even w/o supercruising at mach 1.8.

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sewerrat wrote:

river_otter wrote:

firstimpulse wrote:

sprstdlyscottsmn wrote:

I think what first impulse may have been getting at is that if the F-22 has IR reduction measures then there is less of a target for an IR missile to find,

Yes, that's my perspective. But here's a really interesting question - If, hypothetically, two stealth aircraft with rather basic sensors (no advanced IRST) engaged each other, wouldn't the lack of reliable missile shots turn the fight into something WWII or Vietnam-esque dogfight? Say, between an F-22 and J-20? If stealth turns out to be nearly as effective at close range as long range, that would be a bit of a game-changer, as missiles would suddenly only be as good as guns. From my perspective at least.

Whistle

It's an interesting hypothetical, but dogfight is the wrong species I think. I think the pilot's goal would be to keep it more akin to modern submarine games of cat and mouse, just at higher speeds. If your missile won't track in a dogfight, it's not as good as guns; it's inferior to guns. Missiles will be better than guns, though, because they will be fired at the extreme edge of detection range with a good probability of hit. They would need remote guidance like a wire-guided torpedo, but that's not really difficult to do even today. There would be an arms race for better sensors and better stealth. First to see can guide a shot in. Better ability to see or greater protection against being seen gives you the ability to see first. It just wouldn't be as completely lopsided as today's F-22 vs. everything else fights.

(Although it's pretty clear PAK-FA and J-20 are nowhere near stealth aircraft, just not the glaring radar frequency bull's-eyes their legacy aircraft are. At some later date, F-22 or its successors will probably fight true stealth aircraft, but that's way off in the future as things look now.)

Some say that if there were a big shooting war, that fighters are going to be going in with radars turned off due to antiradiation missiles. There were studies done in the 80s showing that ARMs were devastating even to ARMAAM equipped fighters.

If true, then this makes the F-35 more valuable than the F-22 in aerial combat because of its passive sensors and situational awareness. First look, first shoot, first kill -- even w/o supercruising at mach 1.8.

This notion strikes me as highly speculative as few countries have fielded ARM in the A-A role and they didn't constitute the bulk of the inventory. I don't think they have sufficient accuracy for endgame intercept and could be defeated through simple EMCON schemes. The only real advantage I see in the F-35's sensor packages is the IRST, a sensor I'd like to see the F-22's get (although I'd like them to get a A-A optimized long wave IRST). TACBRAWLER results indicate a strong superiority for the F-22 in the A-A field (on the order of 5-10:1 in exchange ratio according to AvWeek) so I'm always suspicious of ideas that the F-35's advantages in certain sensors outweighs the F-22's advantages in kinematics and signature.

Don't get me wrong, I really would like to see a version of the F-35's avionics exported to the F-22, but I'm not convinced the fundamentals of air combat have evolved that much to swing to the F-35's favor.

BDF wrote:

sewerrat wrote:

river_otter wrote:

firstimpulse wrote:

sprstdlyscottsmn wrote:

I think what first impulse may have been getting at is that if the F-22 has IR reduction measures then there is less of a target for an IR missile to find,

Yes, that's my perspective. But here's a really interesting question - If, hypothetically, two stealth aircraft with rather basic sensors (no advanced IRST) engaged each other, wouldn't the lack of reliable missile shots turn the fight into something WWII or Vietnam-esque dogfight? Say, between an F-22 and J-20? If stealth turns out to be nearly as effective at close range as long range, that would be a bit of a game-changer, as missiles would suddenly only be as good as guns. From my perspective at least.

Whistle

It's an interesting hypothetical, but dogfight is the wrong species I think. I think the pilot's goal would be to keep it more akin to modern submarine games of cat and mouse, just at higher speeds. If your missile won't track in a dogfight, it's not as good as guns; it's inferior to guns. Missiles will be better than guns, though, because they will be fired at the extreme edge of detection range with a good probability of hit. They would need remote guidance like a wire-guided torpedo, but that's not really difficult to do even today. There would be an arms race for better sensors and better stealth. First to see can guide a shot in. Better ability to see or greater protection against being seen gives you the ability to see first. It just wouldn't be as completely lopsided as today's F-22 vs. everything else fights.

(Although it's pretty clear PAK-FA and J-20 are nowhere near stealth aircraft, just not the glaring radar frequency bull's-eyes their legacy aircraft are. At some later date, F-22 or its successors will probably fight true stealth aircraft, but that's way off in the future as things look now.)

Some say that if there were a big shooting war, that fighters are going to be going in with radars turned off due to antiradiation missiles. There were studies done in the 80s showing that ARMs were devastating even to ARMAAM equipped fighters.

If true, then this makes the F-35 more valuable than the F-22 in aerial combat because of its passive sensors and situational awareness. First look, first shoot, first kill -- even w/o supercruising at mach 1.8.

This notion strikes me as highly speculative as few countries have fielded ARM in the A-A role and they didn't constitute the bulk of the inventory. I don't think they have sufficient accuracy for endgame intercept and could be defeated through simple EMCON schemes. The only real advantage I see in the F-35's sensor packages is the IRST, a sensor I'd like to see the F-22's get (although I'd like them to get a A-A optimized long wave IRST). TACBRAWLER results indicate a strong superiority for the F-22 in the A-A field (on the order of 5-10:1 in exchange ratio according to AvWeek) so I'm always suspicious of ideas that the F-35's advantages in certain sensors outweighs the F-22's advantages in kinematics and signature.

Don't get me wrong, I really would like to see a version of the F-35's avionics exported to the F-22, but I'm not convinced the fundamentals of air combat have evolved that much to swing to the F-35's favor.

None the less, the threat of A2A ARMs remains, and we here don't know what the guys on the other side of the pond have built up in quantity - namely the Russians and Chinese. If the threat is real, and there are fighting quantities of ARMs in someone's inventory, then the advantage is going to go to the F-35.

Kinematically, the F-35 doesn't suffer as much some say. I believe/heard/read the F-22 can launch from internal bays at mach 2. The F-35 while not a supercruiser in the same league as the F-22, can fire at a reported mach 1.6... a couple hundred knots slower than the F-22. Only a few people here know what advantage there is in those couple hundred knots and I'm not one of them. So the -35 has to light up its can to hit its max launch speed. Again, only a few people here know how long the -22 can cruise at mach 1.8 or mach 2 or whatever its max cruise speed is. All that means is that the -22 can spend more time at those high airspeeds than the -35 can sustain, and in turn all that means is that the -22 spends more time (how much more!?) at a velocity that will maximize the effectiveness of the amraam. But you only need very little time to completely exhaust your internal bays of aams. The -35 can probably (I don't know for a fact) sustain its maximum aam launch velocity long enough, if not longer, to exhuast itself of 6 internal amraams. Altitude, that's another story with the award going to the -22 and not the -35.

With only 180 Raptors, they're going to be treated like silver bullets in war. They'll be used as missiliers and if anyone gets close enough to launch heat seaker, or worse yet, use guns, then the mission has going poorly wrong.

Personally I think its pie in the sky to talk about the Raptor in a dogfight. Really, the -35 is going to be the fighter that may find itself in a gunfight at high noon, as its going to be the fighter that actually enters into enemy turf to drop its bombs and i.e. get up close to enemy fighters. Being so heavily networked as has been made public, the -35s close in "danger zone" can probably receive radar info from -35s further out, and not need to broadcast themselves to the world to hear, and coupled with its passive sensors, I've got to believe first place goes to the -35 with the -22 coming in 2nd place.

Quote:

(Although it's pretty clear PAK-FA and J-20 are nowhere near stealth aircraft, just not the glaring radar frequency bull's-eyes their legacy aircraft are. At some later date, F-22 or its successors will probably fight true stealth aircraft, but that's way off in the future as things look now.)

I disagree, they are stealth aircraft (as in, hundreds of times smaller on radar than 4.5 gen fighters like Rafale and Eagle). Although they definitely aren't as stealthy as the F-35 or F-22, seeing as the PAK FA's rear quarter has some shaping issues and the J-20 uses canards.

Quote:

Personally I think its pie in the sky to talk about the Raptor in a dogfight. Really, the -35 is going to be the fighter that may find itself in a gunfight at high noon, as its going to be the fighter that actually enters into enemy turf to drop its bombs and i.e. get up close to enemy fighters. Being so heavily networked as has been made public, the -35s close in "danger zone" can probably receive radar info from -35s further out, and not need to broadcast themselves to the world to hear, and coupled with its passive sensors, I've got to believe first place goes to the -35 with the -22 coming in 2nd place.

I'm not going to debate deployment tactics (these would change depending on the war, I'd assume), but I would like to point out that the F-35 is not anywhere near as good at dogfighting as the Raptor. Sure, it has an HMD, good maneuverability, and an American pilot... but put the 35' in a dogfight with PAK FAs, and the result might not be that great. However, out maneuvering a lumbering brute like the J-20 shouldn't be a problem. I worry about F-35's trying to outturn J-2Xs though.
Poke

sewerrat wrote:

river_otter wrote:

firstimpulse wrote:

sprstdlyscottsmn wrote:

I think what first impulse may have been getting at is that if the F-22 has IR reduction measures then there is less of a target for an IR missile to find,

Yes, that's my perspective. But here's a really interesting question - If, hypothetically, two stealth aircraft with rather basic sensors (no advanced IRST) engaged each other, wouldn't the lack of reliable missile shots turn the fight into something WWII or Vietnam-esque dogfight? Say, between an F-22 and J-20? If stealth turns out to be nearly as effective at close range as long range, that would be a bit of a game-changer, as missiles would suddenly only be as good as guns. From my perspective at least.

Whistle

It's an interesting hypothetical, but dogfight is the wrong species I think. I think the pilot's goal would be to keep it more akin to modern submarine games of cat and mouse, just at higher speeds. If your missile won't track in a dogfight, it's not as good as guns; it's inferior to guns. Missiles will be better than guns, though, because they will be fired at the extreme edge of detection range with a good probability of hit. They would need remote guidance like a wire-guided torpedo, but that's not really difficult to do even today. There would be an arms race for better sensors and better stealth. First to see can guide a shot in. Better ability to see or greater protection against being seen gives you the ability to see first. It just wouldn't be as completely lopsided as today's F-22 vs. everything else fights.

(Although it's pretty clear PAK-FA and J-20 are nowhere near stealth aircraft, just not the glaring radar frequency bull's-eyes their legacy aircraft are. At some later date, F-22 or its successors will probably fight true stealth aircraft, but that's way off in the future as things look now.)

Some say that if there were a big shooting war, that fighters are going to be going in with radars turned off due to antiradiation missiles. There were studies done in the 80s showing that ARMs were devastating even to ARMAAM equipped fighters.

If true, then this makes the F-35 more valuable than the F-22 in aerial combat because of its passive sensors and situational awareness. First look, first shoot, first kill -- even w/o supercruising at mach 1.8.

Assuming that future opponents won't have skin cooling in the future to minimize friction-derived skin heating is foolish, cancelling the F-35's advantage against suitably advanced opponents. The IRST also won't be especially useful against legacy aircraft, seeing as these are massive radar flares that will be spotted by the APG-81 and killed 30+ nm out. The F-35's situational awareness will either be wasted on legacy aircraft, or negated by advanced-technology enemy aircraft and little better than that of the Raptor.

I have to say, LPI AESA radars will probably be the standard for years to come. Viet Nam/Gulf War-style A2A will probably look more like Hunt for Red October at M1.8.

Ah, good point. Skin cooling is something that hasn't been brought up in this thread I think.

The submarine comparison is intriguing, but rather misleading. That will comprise most of the engagement (the BVR part), but when the craft get close I'd think the resulting scene would be more like Red Tails than Run Silent, Run Deep.
I wouldn't mind a bit if someone proved me wrong though. ; )

firstimpulse wrote:

Ah, good point. Skin cooling is something that hasn't been brought up in this thread I think.

The submarine comparison is intriguing, but rather misleading. That will comprise most of the engagement (the BVR part), but when the craft get close I'd think the resulting scene would be more like Red Tails than Run Silent, Run Deep.
I wouldn't mind a bit if someone proved me wrong though. ; )

Thanks

I think the FA-XX requirements hint at the future of air combat. It's supposed to be a VERY low observability (not mere LO) long-range, high-endurance aircraft with two crewmen. This points toward a trend of long-duration OCA/DCA missions with some similarities to submarine 'dogfights'. But whether Red Tails or Red October, the advent of more 5th and 6th-gen aircraft and how they change aerial warfare will be fascinating to say the very least Wink

With regards to the often quoted 'F-15 exchange pilot' example reportedly saying he couldn't put a weapon system on it... I'd personally be willing to bet his F-15 wasn't flying with HMCS, sniper pod, or the 9X. Also, I'm not sure of the technical differences between missiles, but the IRIS-T for example seems to have a pretty good swivel sensor head for off-bore sighting which could very capably be cued with an HMCS to effective WVR off-bore targeting of aerial targets - eg anything with skin differentials or heat out the tail.

And most of all... if by chance the F-22 could indeed escape engagement by even the latest IR sensors, JHMCS and HOBS missiles while in WVR, then it would make no sense at all why the line was prematurely killed when just beginning to enter into more mature and cost-effective manufacturing, when the F-35 was completely uncertain as a going Program, more expensive per unit than the F-22 and slated to be massively delayed operationally.

For an hypothetical Red Flag scenario... I would not want to be head-on 15nm out in any aircraft vs an 'aggressor' jet equipped with a Sniper SE pod + MICA-IR rounds.

That being said, in future BVR engagements when both aircraft entering into an engagement have reduced RCS and other counter-measures against BVR engagements, it would probably be most advantageous to be operating a platform capable of maximally sustained high-G, high-speed defensive maneuvers as an essential capability.

I’m chuckling. The F-22 seems to be doing so well with its “passive” sensors all this time…

Quote:

I'd personally be willing to bet his F-15 wasn't flying with HMCS, sniper pod, or the 9X.

Minus the Sniper Pod (why would an Aggressor in A2A want to carry that?), they routinely wear the helmet and have 9Xs. Yet even with these fine weapon systems, gets regularly spanked by F-22s in BFM.

Two kinds of airplanes in the world:

F-22 and targets.

By the time anyone manages to put weapons on an F-22, another F-22 will have killed him. That was the whole plan all along.
fisk

geogen wrote:

With regards to the often quoted 'F-15 exchange pilot' example reportedly saying he couldn't put a weapon system on it... I'd personally be willing to bet his F-15 wasn't flying with HMCS, sniper pod, or the 9X. Also, I'm not sure of the technical differences between missiles, but the IRIS-T for example seems to have a pretty good swivel sensor head for off-bore sighting which could very capably be cued with an HMCS to effective WVR off-bore targeting of aerial targets - eg anything with skin differentials or heat out the tail.

And most of all... if by chance the F-22 could indeed escape engagement by even the latest IR sensors, JHMCS and HOBS missiles while in WVR, then it would make no sense at all why the line was prematurely killed when just beginning to enter into more mature and cost-effective manufacturing, when the F-35 was completely uncertain as a going Program, more expensive per unit than the F-22 and slated to be massively delayed operationally.

For an hypothetical Red Flag scenario... I would not want to be head-on 15nm out in any aircraft vs an 'aggressor' jet equipped with a Sniper SE pod + MICA-IR rounds.

That being said, in future BVR engagements when both aircraft entering into an engagement have reduced RCS and other counter-measures against BVR engagements, it would probably be most advantageous to be operating a platform capable of maximally sustained high-G, high-speed defensive maneuvers as an essential capability.

I believe the F-22 line was killed (for now) because several people with no knowledge of the subject painted it as a Cold War relic (not a bad label, as it implies excellent conventional warfighting ability), and because of seriously questionable decisions by our possibly illegal CIC, who again has effectively zero prior experience with any kind of military hardware. Face it, most of the civilian leadership is not qualified to make these decisions. They're more focused on domestic policy than military force structure, and I believe our country has seriously suffered as a result. Give the DoD/services XYZ dollar amount, and allow them to use it as they desire, with limited congressional oversight. This approach would probably have permitted retirement of the Golden Eagles, which, although very capable aircraft, just can't compete with a Raptor.

firstimpulse wrote:

Quote:

(Although it's pretty clear PAK-FA and J-20 are nowhere near stealth aircraft, just not the glaring radar frequency bull's-eyes their legacy aircraft are. At some later date, F-22 or its successors will probably fight true stealth aircraft, but that's way off in the future as things look now.)

I disagree, they are stealth aircraft (as in, hundreds of times smaller on radar than 4.5 gen fighters like Rafale and Eagle). Although they definitely aren't as stealthy as the F-35 or F-22, seeing as the PAK FA's rear quarter has some shaping issues and the J-20 uses canards.

Mikhail Pogosian of Sukhoi has outright stated the PAK-FA's frontal RCS is somewhere between 0.5 and 2 times the frontal RCS of the Super Hornet. That's good, but not better than some 4.5 gen. designs. That's not stealth, it's signature reduction. It's a tremendous advance for Russia compared to their legacy Flankers, but it doesn't approach a real stealth aircraft. And as you point out the RCS from other angles likely has even worse problems. The J-20 likely has even worse problems than the PAK-FA, from a country with even less experience with stealth. At least Russia had access to a downed F-117. It's not hard to have an RCS much smaller than an Eagle or Flanker. I'm pretty sure the B-52 has a smaller frontal RCS than the F-15. But that's not stealth. An RCS hundreds of times smaller than an Eagle is still hundreds of times larger than what's needed to remain undetected until after weapon release.

southernphantom wrote:

I believe the F-22 line was killed (for now) because several people with no knowledge of the subject painted it as a Cold War relic (not a bad label, as it implies excellent conventional warfighting ability), and because of seriously questionable decisions by our possibly illegal CIC, who again has effectively zero prior experience with any kind of military hardware. Face it, most of the civilian leadership is not qualified to make these decisions. They're more focused on domestic policy than military force structure, and I believe our country has seriously suffered as a result. Give the DoD/services XYZ dollar amount, and allow them to use it as they desire, with limited congressional oversight. This approach would probably have permitted retirement of the Golden Eagles, which, although very capable aircraft, just can't compete with a Raptor.

I can't agree with that; Gates was not a person with no knowledge, and he'd been trying to kill the Raptor since the Bush administration. This one can't be laid at Obama's feet.

The Raptor was killed because politicians on both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. wanted to reduce the budget, and lack(ed) the fortitude to cut popular social programs and/or raise taxes. It's the easy and cowardly way out to cut military programs, because the benefits of them are largely indirect and invisible (the Raptor's most appropriate and efficient use is to scare our enemies into never actually fighting it), and the direct jobs the Raptor produced are much fewer in number than the people collecting Social Security. Cut all the Raptor jobs completely, and the votes lost are inconsequential. Cut everyone's SS payment by $15 a month and political heads would roll. Moreover, of the Raptor and Lightning II, the Lightning is far and away the more important plane for us to have. Gates wasn't wrong about that. The end of the Cold War only amplified that skew; the Raptor will face far fewer and far less capable planes than we expected it to face when there was still a Soviet Union, whereas we will have far more little tiny bombing and CAS missions against third-world insurgents with grey-market SAMs. If we take as gospel his contention that every dollar spent on the F-22 was a dollar taken away from the F-35, then his decision was a sound one. We had to cut the Raptor program to ensure the health of the Lightning program. The flaw is that we don't have to take it as gospel. A tax increase of less than $7 a month on every citizen (about $4.25 taking only build cost and no allowance for people who still wouldn't pay any taxes at all) would've fully funded the Raptor program to completion over 10 years without taking a penny from the Lightning II. But aside from the "no tax increases" purists, the anti-military leftists, and the "I'm on a fixed income!!!" crowd, the other services would also be miffed about an earmarked tax increase just for one USAF weapon. Real leadership could have done it; politicians could not.

River Otter, This statement by "Mikhail Pogosian of Sukhoi has outright stated the PAK-FA's frontal RCS is somewhere between 0.5 and 2 times the frontal RCS of the Super Hornet".

From my limited knowledge I find that hard to understand that a newer purpose built "stealth" is 0.5 to 2 times than superhornet? (I am reading that as 0.5 to 2 x worse?)

Do you have the original reference for that. I have done quick search on goggle and no luck.

Thanks.

The T-50 isn't designed & built for the purpose of stealth. It's designed & built for the purpose of looking like an F-22 to politicians and the public.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

F-22 in dogfights