Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

The F-22 was chosen by the USAF to be the replacement of the F-15.

If the former Soviet Union didn't collapse, wouldn't they have built fighters far more powerful than the F-22, stealth and weapons-wise?

I thought of this because the F-22 has been going through testing for about 18-20 years now, hearing that first test happened in 1983.

Also, wouldn't the F-22 be semi outdated because of the time it took to put it into production?

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Well the few public consumption leaks I have see, is in early friendly air battle testing is that Eagle pilots are having trouble picking this thing up with sensors and get "killed" almost every time. 2 years ago I read a piece, where, at an unknow altitude grouping. A fairly new F-16 was running chase ( flown by the then USAF Chief of Staff) they were cruising along at about Mach 1.6 and the F-16 was maxed out. The F-22 started walking away from it..... climbing...not using burner.
A couple good things to consider when comparing it against modern conventional designs. If it can get off a BVR AMRAAM shot and you can't aquire it good enough to lock it up and fire a weapon, you are dead.

So it's a good fighter/bomber after all, also putting in factors such as, most countries that we have wars with nowadays barely have an air force to send up and get shot down.

The F-22 was never about being fair. It's purpose is air supriority, and it chieves that by having everything the enemy doesn't have. Yes, it's had a long gestation period, but that's it advantage. It will be far more developed by the time it goes operational, than any other platform before it.

Quote:

I thought of this because the F-22 has been going through testing for about 18-20 years now, hearing that first test happened in 1983.

ATF Dem/Val RFP was released in October 1985,
YF-22 first flight was 29 September 1990,
F-22 EMD first flight was 7 September 1997.

I wouldnt say Fighter/Bomber, they may have fooled congress with the F/A designation, but unlike its purebread turned mudmover breathren, this plane is going to have a few more problems if they actually try and use it for something other then Air Dominance.

Yes it can carry a pair of JDAMS. It doesnt however have the bomb truck capability of the Strike Eagle, and doesnt have the cheapness like the F-16 to make up for that with numbers.

And for the record, my vote went for Northrop not Lockheed.

Drew

I liked the YF-23 too, it looked like a spaceship, or like a picture of a Bill Gunston's book. Very Happy

We already talked a little about that in another thread, but I still wonder how one could counter the F-22, except by a lot of luck. Any idea?

You sneak up behind it! LoL, I don't know either.
Does the stealthiness have a specific range, i.e. at 10 miles you can't see it with your radar, but at less than 5 maybe you can?

Yeah, stealth is like that. given different aspects from a target, you can detect it from several distances. The shortest detection range is head-on most of the time and to longest detection range is usually from the side. Stealth is pretty much the same, but because of the way that the planes are built and the materials being used, this distance is reduced very much, practically down to a few miles, depending on what the plane is doing. Outside those few miles, you'll be lucky if you'll get a signature the size of a bird.

And about the F-23, my guess is they went with the F-22 for two reasons:

Lockheed had more experience with stealth technology than Northtrop.
The Raptor simply did a lot more stuff in the fly-offs than the F-23, in whose case most of the data presented by Northtrop came from ground testing (i.e. wind tunnel testing, computer simulations, that sort of stuff).

Yeah. The SDB held interaly thing is just a helper for targets that can be taken out with it right away that will go away easy if hit with the little SDB. If they can cram an SDB/ Diamondback in there, so much the better.

They did a test showing payload on the wings. Dumb to the extreme. I don't need wing life issues brought up on a jet thats sole purpose is to dominate the air. I am sure the maintainers are already figuring how to "configure" the jet to carry more important internal payloads on TDY's. Twisted Evil

Originally I liked the YF-23 ATF design, but the F/A-22 has grown on me. One thing that turned me off on the YF-23 was looking at it from behind. Hell, it looks like it would be real easy to spot those exhausts with IR... The YF-23 lines reminded me a bit of the SR-71 family so that was also a plus...

The neat thing about the -22 is how integrated the sensor suite is. I recently read an article in Avionics about the Eurofighter Typhoon systems. They may be more complete than the -22, but they are all individual systems, each of which needs manual control for best effectiveness. The -22 presents displays that show all the info you have on a target in nice easy graphics.

The AESA radar on the -22 is impressive, although the version in the JSF is better, a generation better. The good thing is if needed it is easy to upgrade the systems to the later spec. The system is much more modular than the earlier systems where whole wiring harnesses would have to be ripped out and re-plumbed to do an upgrade. Now the longest time for upgrade will be getting the funding.

The survivability features of the avionics are also quite impressive. They use standard core boxes that are software configured for function with the specific hardware connected by the Bus. This allows for a landing or navigation radio to become an attack radar if there is a problem with the attack unit. Then before RTB the box can revert to the other function.

Neat stuff. We might not need to have the hottest rod on the planet, but with Singapore and Israel upgrading MiG-29 and Sukhoi aircraft to superhot avionics, it can't hurt to be able to counter any forseable threat.

Kevin
The Ejection Site
ps, the ACES III (as Goodrich calls it) is a heck of a seat. Not necessarily the best in the world, but the upgrades are worth it. The testing program showed why we needed to do the ACES II SIP upgrade too...

Watched the Raptor pass over today with the Viper chase going back into Dobbins. I remember sitting on the canopy rail of the T-33 answering questions during a Lockheed open house at Dobbins a few years back, an F-22 took off in dry thrust and walked away, climbing, from a Viper in burner, it was darned impressive!

Kmceject, sensors are integrated indeed on Eurofighter and Rafale. For instance, there is no RWR display. Why? Because the computer automatically uses all the available information from various sensors to provide a global picture.
In the Rafale, that I know more, RWR and ECM info, radar info, IRST info and JTIDS info are not individually displayed for the pilot: the pilot only sees the global information resulting from the computer study of compared information on the central screen. For example, in several trials, interceptions were led without switching on the radar, or the IRST: it made absolutely no difference for the pilot, he only saw usual target information and he did not have to compare various displays to get a global picture of the situation.

Wildcat, the article I read was written by an avionics guy, not a pilot. He was reporting what he learned from the avionics crew. The impression he gave was that the controls were not as unified as the F-22, however they were quite impressive. I wouldn't want to go against either jet in an older tech aircraft. Add in the Raptor's stealth and the force multiplication factors of the datalink to the AWACs and I'd have to give it an edge at least on paper...

Kevin

Oh yes, Rafale and Eurofighter are good, no doubt, but I also think that the Raptor dominates all other fighters. Unless something is found to efficiently counter the F-22's stealth, it is too great a advantage.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

F-22 semi-outdated?