[chuckles]

I thought the Tomahawk could already beat this from a greater distance without risking s pilot or an airplane. I'm not pooh poohing the Raptor, but there are other ways already. It is time to replace the F-15( even though it's never been shot down in combat), but a drone or a missile would be cheaper.

[MARKUSPRIME]

All of our cruise missile can easily,but its nice to have a feature like this on an air dominace fighter. Never know when you have to take out SAM's.

[StJacques]

". . . a drone or a missile would be cheaper."

Someone might check me on this, but I believe the JDAM targeting system is linked into that of the piloted aircraft, which permits in-flight retargeting in ways missiles are incapable of being handled and, given that the JDAM is 1,000 lbs. minimum, it delivers a much more powerful punch than anything a drone can carry.

[JRios1968]

The Tomahawk can beat the drop distance, but it can't be redirected inflight the way an F-22 can, and it can't do its own damage assessment...

[68skylark]

Bless you for thinking about cost as well as capabilities -- a lot of people here don't do that. I wish the Air Force would put a little more effort into low-cost solutions as well as the most expensive super-gee-wizz gear.

But on the other hand, the F-22 really does seem to give us some new capabilities we didn't have before -- I'm glad we've got it.

[thinkthenpost]

Tomahawks are great, but they only move at ~600mph, lets say the launching platform (DDG,CG,SSN) is 800 miles away, that's an hour, hour and twenty minutes, plus you don't just right up CIC and say launch TLAM to these coordinates now. The Raptor is doing lazy eights at mach 1.5 basically get tasking, acquires, and drops/launches the JDAM from 20+ miles away. Twenty miles at 1,500 miles per hour doesn't take long.

The F-15 has twenty years left IMO, nothing is around to replace it. 200 Raptors cannot do what 2500 Eagles can.

[MainFrame65]

A gravity bomb, with a little bit of stealth technology and no heat signature at all, would be virtually undetectable until the explosion. It would come in at high altitude and travel straight to its target, as much as an (announced) 24 NM away. It might even be able to exceed that range by a large margin by using a high-angle trajectory release.

Yeah, I think that that ImADummyJad would really get a kick out of this information.

[TexasPatriot8]

The Tomahawk (TASM anti-ship / TLAM Land Attack) is a great missile, but at it's best speed it's sub-sonic, and not stealthy, and they're not always in range for a desired targed, since they're mostly Naval or on heavier bombers that are typically flying in from bases hundreds or thousands of miles away. The F-22 being stealthy, and able to deliver from so high and so far can drop one of those, and literally, the targets would have no warning it was coming. That's the big advantage. An F-22 could drop one of those, and get "on target" much much quicker than it would take a Tomahawk to be targeted and launched and make up the distance from launch position to target. Plus, like with the F-16s that nailed zarqawi last Thursday, you can have F-22s flying racetracks over their assigned patrol area, carring those J/DAM's, waiting to be called to drop on a targed. And it would take longer to empliment a Tomahawk, since they are never just up flying around, like the Predators or other unmanned recon vehicles. That's the big advantage the F-22 gives us. The sooner they are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan the better. :)

[lepton]

The JDAM kit is only $21,000 per bomb. It is also a lot smaller than a Tomahawk, allowing planes to carry more, and more planes to carry them at all. Further, cruise missiles can be shot down like aircraft.

...But wanna see something sick? A B-2 can barrage bomb with up to 80 of the things, except that it wouldn't be scattered bombs, but rather 80 precision-targetted munitions dropped in short order.

[winner3000]

Isn't each Tomahawk worth about half a million bucks?

[poindexter]

I thought the Tomahawk could already beat this from a greater distance without risking s pilot or an airplane.

Tomahawks are about $1M per shot. JDAM is a fin kit that's fitted to a dumb iron bomb...I'd be surprised if the cost is $250K per shot.