Posted on 07/08/2004 1:01:01 PM PDT by Akira
It made sense to kill the Crusader self-propelled howitzer program, a bulky cold war left-over developing so slowly it wouldn't be available before the Starship Enterprise. We also didn't need the Comanche stealth helicopter when our problem is losing choppers to low-tech ground fire. But the stealth F/A-22 Raptor fighter, with apologies to those who consider every new military project a boondoggle, we need this jet. And far more of it than Congress plans to buy.
Even critics admit the Raptor is an incredible fighting machine. Slated to enter Air Force service next year, it blends key technologies that before only existed separately on other aircraft -- or not at all.
It has radar-avoiding stealth, of the F-117A Nighthawk, the agility of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, air-to-air combat abilities and penetrability of the F-15 Eagle, tracking abilities of the E-3 Sentry (AWACS), and, like the SR-71 Blackbird, it can fly faster than the speed of sound without using fuel-guzzling afterburners.
The F/A-22 also has better reliability and maintainability than any military fighter in history and can wipe out ground targets like radar, anti-aircraft sites, and armor formations as readily as it can sweep the skies.
IT'S NOT THAT WE'RE in danger of losing our air superiority edge -- we've already lost it. With "some foreign aircraft we've been able to test, our best pilots flying their airplanes beat our pilots flying our airplanes every time," Air Force Commander John Jumper told Congress three years ago. When U.S. planes go against the Soviet Su-27 Flanker "our guys 'die' 95 percent of the time," observes Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham of California.
Cunningham is one of only two American aces from the Vietnam War. He knows the value of even a slight edge in combat capabilities. "I'm alive today because of it," he told me.
The international arms market is now flooded with Su-27 aircraft, because the Russians will sell to anybody with a bit of loose change jingling around.
The independent American Federation of Scientists notes that the Su-27 "leveled the playing field" with the F-15, our best fighter but one that's 30 years old. Meanwhile, "The Su-37 represents a new level of capability compared with the Su-27." The Su-37, apparently close to deployment, looks frightfully effective against both air and ground targets -- meaning our soldiers.
Nor is it just Russian planes we have to worry about. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1999 that "Congress Should Shoot Down The F-22." O'Hanlon nevertheless admitted that even then the "Swedish Gripen, French Rafale, Eurofighter EF-2000" are "impressive weapons systems that rival the F-15 and F-16." As well they should be: One entered service in 2001, one in 2002, and one just last year. The F-15 is their grand-pappy.
No, we probably won't go to war with Sweden or France anytime soon. (Well, maybe France.) But we already face enemies with high-tech French weaponry. Rest assured in the future we will clash with them -- including the Rafale fighter. It's also rather pathetic that the Czech air force is about to take possession of 39 Gripen fighters, meaning this tiny country will be flying more advanced aircraft than the United States.
Fortunately even the Su-37 lacks one thing the F/A-22 has -- stealth capability. "Only the F/A-22 can compete with the Su-27 or Su-37," Cunningham insists, because "the stealthiness allows you to get inside his radar so you can have first [missile] launch."
Surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) also regularly improve, and potential targets like the North Korean capitol of Pyongyang bristle like porcupines with SAM sites. "If you target an area with the current SAM threat today, our planes will probably die before they ever get to the target," says Cunningham. "So the F/A-22 and B2 [stealth bomber] must soften up those radar sites." Cunningham knows a bit about SAMs, too. After his fifth "kill," he was splashed by an enemy missile that's a slingshot compared to today's technology.
ONE MAJOR CONGRESSIONAL criticism of the Raptor is the cost per plane, now over twice the original estimate. But much of that is because prime contractor Lockheed Martin added a ground attack role. Most of the rest is because those congressional critics cut back the order, knowing that with fixed development costs the smaller the order the higher the per-unit price. Sound like a sneaky game? It is.
Originally the Air Force requested 762 Raptors to support two squadrons for its ten Expeditionary Wings, and then was forced to cut that in half. But it only made its first official purchase last month of a grand total of 22 planes. That's almost enough to stock the nation's aeronautical museums. Worse, it has only authorized only enough money for 218 planes total, and may slice that further.
Mind you, these same congressmen recently passed pork-laden highway spending bills of around $300 billion, but apparently Cleveland needs that transportation museum more than our troops need protection from enemy aircraft.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona told NBC's Meet the Press that we should consider completely canceling the F/A-22 program to free up money for more troops in Iraq. But McCain assumes defense spending is a zero-sum game. It's not.
In 1960, with no U.S. involvement in a hot war, the percentage of GDP spent on defense was 9.3. This year, with wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and anti-terrorist military activities around the world, we're spending a miserly 3.5 percent. Merely splitting the difference between 1960 and now would allow the Army to expand from 10 divisions to 12 and supply the Air Force with more F/A-22s than it would know what to do with. And yet last summer Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia offered an amendment to seize $1.1 billion from the Defense Budget and use it for AIDS/HIV spending.
Other armchair air experts say we can skip the F/A-22 (other than the 22 already procured) while awaiting the cheaper F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35 is a fine plane and will be great for exporting to our allies, but it's far inferior to the F-22, especially in the stealth category. (Its advantage is a much lower price.) F-35 development is also three years behind that of the Raptor. If you needed a top-of-the-line new car immediately, would you hold off three years on buying that BMW until Honda Civics become available?
It's also true that F/A-22s were unneeded in invading Iraq -- though one of our F-117s was shot down over Serbia. The value of the F-22 in the current guerrilla war? Zero. But you know that expression about generals "planning to fight the last war"? Here it's the F/A-22 critics like O'Hanlon who remind us that during Desert Storm "The Air Force's premier fighter, the F-15C, flew 6,000 missions without a single loss." Yes, and that was 13 years ago. Any war against North Korea or China would make heavy use of the Raptor.
A WASHINGTON POST ANALYSIS piece that ripped the F/A-22 was reprinted on websites of such groups as Environmentalists Against War and Million Worker March. The Post claimed the plane's "role is now more ambiguous because no country is developing an aircraft with anything near its capabilities."
But isn't that exactly what we want: Quick and complete air domination? If price is the primary consideration, why not scrap both the F-22 and the F-35 and start rebuilding the P-51s of World War II, which cost only $54,000 in 1943 dollars? Like the F-15, they were marvelous planes in their time.
Why not? Because our potential enemies will be flying the best jets and antiaircraft missiles they can make or buy, allowing them to intimidate us in peacetime and defeat us in war. We must beat their capabilities, or we will surely die trying.
Incorrect. The ASAT has been out of production for decades and the F-22 couldn't carry it even if was in our arsenal.
Firing an ASAT from a non-F-22 platform likewise shows that the F-22 itself can't handle the sub-orbital problem, per my original post, too.
"Not at night."
On the contrary, night vision is a mature technology.
ANSWER: Because it is advantageous.
Uhhh, not always. In fact, most military aircraft could have been built with far more speed than they already have, except that they sacrifice TOT (Time Over Target) due to high fuel usage (as most of our present fleet needs to use afterburner to get to Mach speeds... which the F22 doesn't). So the average engagement would take place at sub-Mach speeds (especially since any close-in engagements take advantage of a aircraft's "corner velocity," i.e., the speed where it turns at the fastest rate. Corner velocities tend to be well below Mach 1. So speed isn't everything. But loiter time is very important... so much so that the US pioneered mid-air refueling to increase it.
What's the loiter time on your civilian space-planes? How long can one fly CAP over an important tactical or strategic target? Your religious zeal for these space-planes is based on a very narrow and flawed understanding of what combat aircraft are actually tasked with. But I'm sure some of the former flyboys on FR can tell you that better than I can...
The long range Phoenix has a terrible combat record (at msot 1 combat kill, if that), and it's doubtful that it can reach up to even the 62.5 mile altitude of current *civilian* technology.
The Pods are operational now. They are similar to a target pod.
And why is that? Because most recent conflicts have required fighters to get within visual range in order to make sure they are downing a bandit (can't just lob missiles at a bogey 50 miles away, because it might just be a civilian airliner).
ROE will be different for every conflict, and the question is which fighter solution will allow it to be used under the most varied conditions. The F22 will rule the skies in a close turn-and-burn engagement (the most likely in a limited war engagement) and will be untouchable from BVR (due to its stealth). The only advatages your mythical (yes, they are mythical becuase there's not a single one even on the drawing board) military space-plane has are speed and altitutde... what happens when the ROE say to eyeball a bogey before you can splash it?
An F-117A shot down by an SA-6 and one more damaged by an SA-3, another one crash-landed somewhere with no further details available (see Air Forces Monthly, July and August issues). Russian military analysts agree that every combat mission of another American stealth bomber - the B-2 - required up to 50 support and escort aircraft. This is because B-2s proved vulnerable to modified long-wave radars deployed by the Serbs (presumably a Soviet-made mobile P-12 radar), passive EM detection systems like Czech-made Tamara and Russian-made Vega, and much-improved long-range TV tracking systems installed on Serbian SA-6 and SA-3 SAM systems. And now, Jane's and Stratfor suggest that Russians might have supplied Yugoslavia with about a dozen of S-300PM SAM systems and as many as 50 Tunguska integrated mobile air defense systems.
Several Russian military and technical publications mentioned that B-2s were escorted by F-16CGs and F-15Cs when in Yugoslav air space. One may say that it is absurd to send a stealth bomber escorted by non-stealth fighters. Not at all. As some of you may know, long-wave radars work the best when they achieve half-wave resonance effect. This effect is achieved when the wavelength of the radar is twice the length of the target along the direction of wave propagation. This relationship does not have to be exact, only very approximate. Let's suppose the targets are F-117A, F-22, and B-2. Despite many differences and size and geometry of these aircraft they have similar lengths: 20 m, 19 m, and 21 m, respectively. A radar operating at 7.5 MHz should be able to get the half-wave resonance effect on all three aircraft. In order to guide a SAM, the target's location must be determined with about 30-50-meter accuracy - not very possible at this time for a single long-wave radar. Such precision would require multiple receivers and emitters. However, detecting a target with lower accuracy still allows for a successful intercept: either by vectoring a fighter aircraft for an intercept or by providing approximate targeting information to other radars and passive detection systems. If a fighter aircraft was directed by a long-wave radar to intercept a stealth bomber, fighter escort would be a good idea.
My comment:
The author notes in the 1999 article that F-22 has rather small internal weapons bays..limiting its ground attack capability and its ability to carry long range air to air missile's.
So..5 years later..is the author still correct..or has Raptor had weapons bay enlargement?
How much bang for the buck do you get from a Raptor..in an age of advancing radar detection?
Not only do I disagree, but you're missing the point! Those weapons were built and tested with success over a decade ago (2 or so). Think about that. Are you seriously suggesting the US military couldn't knock down a SPACE1 military variant within 3 months of identifying the threat? Hell, the Phoenix, a 30 year-old missile with a 100 mile+ range, can get damn close as is! Imgaine that exact booster package coupled with modern guidance!
However, part of me thinks the technology there might just be to expensive at this time (5 years from now...lets build them for sure)
It seems that perhaps the smarter plan could have been to upgrade the F-14's ...in to the F-14D+ ...and do the same with the F-15's (make an E/F version) - Obviously the new F-14D+ and F-15E/F would be cost more then the current versions.....but we could have built them in much more numbers -
These two aircraft updated.....along with our better skilled pilots......would clearly have the advantage over the SU-27's and SU-35 out there - I have no doubt about this - Upgraded F-14's and F-15's...(with American pilots)......would eat any SU-27 / SU-35 for lunch).
This perhaps would have been the better short term solution....with the F-22 coming around at a cheaper rate in 2009/2010 time frame.
Actually, the number of degrees the nose is pulled through per second is probably the best definition, as turn radius is not nearly as important as turn rate. But I guess that wasn't clear from my post. Sorry!
Good point - and I was having that same argument in my head even while making my post -
But my thinking is....an updated F-14 and F-15 would surly be able to handle the "threats" of tomorrow for at least the next 5 years - and considering that the huge costs the F-22 is showing now....when resources are somewhat limited....currently we are involved in more "smaller scaled engagements" - (though, a big engagement could pop-up tomorrow as well!..and we must be prepared for that...I know).
I just somewhat think we blew it by not upgrading the F-14 - It seems the F-18E/F we replaced it with...(for cost reasons)...has bore out well - with the F-18F proving to be no real replacement for the F-14 -
The bottom line is....We definitely need aircraft that can win the sky's for us - Since we have abandoned the F-14....The Navy definitely needs a new air superiority jet (be it the F-22 or YF-23) The Navy needs one of these jets and we definitely have to bite the bullet and fund it!!
As for the air force.....and upgraded F-15 could still be an option....but at the same time....They don't want the Navy getting a "newer" toy without them getting one as well.
real kick in the head if Russia and China come up with soemthing like this in the future which can mutli task.
Anyhoo..Russia's been playing with the forward wing design..internal weapons bays...SU 47
at present just test bed...and ya..it is limited by the size of its internal wepaons bays.
From my perspective..they are trying concepts and learning.
China might be capable of this soon ..once they steal the technicals.
I sent you a freep mail.
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