Posted on 02/18/2010 2:11:39 AM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
In an open-source assessment of Russia's Sukhoi PAK-FA, aka the Raptor Killer, Air Power Australia concludes, "once the PAK-FA is deployed within a theatre of operations, especially if it is supported robustly by counter-VLO capable ISR systems, the United States will no longer have the capability to rapidly impose air superiority, or possibly even achieve air superiority." Moreover, the Obama administration's decision to kill the F-22 air superiority fighter in favor of the multi-role F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may prove disastrous, as "the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter struggles to survive against the conventional Su-35BM Flanker… Against [a basic-model] PAK-FA, the F-35 falls within the survivability black hole, into which US legacy fighters such as the F-16C/E, F-15C/E and F/A-18A-F have already fallen.”
When the Obama administration killed the F-22, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the administration's case in a speech before the Economic Club of Chicago. Gates explained that F-22 was unnecessary because nobody else was anywhere close to fielding an aircraft comprable to F-35, let alone F-22:
Consider that by 2020, the United States is projected to have nearly 2,500 manned combat aircraft of all kinds. Of those, nearly 1,100 will be the most advanced fifth generation F-35s and F-22s. China, by contrast, is projected to have no fifth generation aircraft by 2020. And by 2025, the gap only widens. The U.S. will have approximately 1,700 of the most advanced fifth generation fighters versus a handful of comparable aircraft for the Chinese. Nonetheless, some portray this scenario as a dire threat to America's national security.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
We need all the F-22s that were originally planned for ...
until a Marxist took over the US Government.
Cutting the F-22 was the biggest mistake ever.
Let's not forget another Russian specialty -- bluff! They were never as strong as they were made out to be during the Cold War. They rattled sabers, growled and made faces, and often times we and our allies backed down.
When the Cold War ended, a lot of people were chagrined about how gullible we were.
All they have right now is a prototype that has made two flights. OK, the airframe works. Nothing is known about how stealthy it's going to be, how reliable the avionics are going to be, how expensive the bird is going to be, etc., etc., etc...
It's too early to get wee-weed up about things. Although I do believe keeping the F-22 in production would be prudent.
I agree with you
F-22’s are good, but maybe if we made some thing with the handling and aesa radar of the F-22, but without the stealth. It might be affordable.
/
Here we go again. Every few years we get a scare story about falling behind in weaponry. It is always stated like this article. They compare existing American technology to the theoretical capabilities of the Russians’. Every time we go up against the Russian equipment in real life, however, their stuff turns out to be crap.
I sense a duel between these 5th Gen fighters, one of them vying to snatch the highly coveted crown of the world’s currently dominant air superiority fighter.
Akin to you building a kit car or home-built aircraft in your garage. Ya you can build a one off, fly it, but then truly test fly it, but now enter serial production with suppliers, material certs, the processes held too and the parts inspected to print, then assemble and test.
That is where the rubber meets the road and with the Ruskie's track record on their engines, ya it might work if we gave them some Pratt F100-220's other than that, you maybe spot on. This maybe another situation like when we thought the MIG-25 Foxbat was unobtainium, and it turned out to be a lead sled...
Oh yeah... I remember all the hype about the mysterious super-fast Foxbat. The Warp-9 Superduper Ruski-Klingon suborbital battlestar that was gonna kill us all.
And then Viktor Belenko defected with one and we found out that it used vacuum tubes in its electronics, weighed a huge amount more than expected, and that every time it hit the high speed we thought was in its operational envelope, the engines had to be replaced when it landed.
I suspect this new bird is not going to be that bad. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier for the Russians to buy tech these days than it used to be, but still, I do not expect to see the PAK-FA in operation in significant numbers before 2020.
I thought the Foxbat used vacuum tubes to improve avionics endurance, and boost its radar output.
Not necessarily. Check out the price of the new F-15s being built for the South Koreans and the Singaporeans ....in particular the F-15K for South Korea....they incorporate AESA radars and more modern engines. They are also quite expensive ...the 2006 cost for the F-15K (the one sold to S.Korea) was US$ 100 million. That is VERY expensive. The unit procurement cost for 187 airframes for the Raptor (that is once you strip out sunk cost) is US$ 177million. Had more been built (not cancelled ...even if we moved from the initial 700+ to the 300 something airframes) that would have made the unit procurement cost around 100m.
Yet, the advanced F-15s cannot supercruise (they actually have nothing close to the kinematics of the Raptor), have no stealth (even the so called Silent Eagle concept is a fraud ...you do not make something that in normal form has an RCSof 25m2 into a 'stealthy' airframe), does not have the fuel fraction, the combat persistence, etc etc etc of the Raptor.
What would be affordable would be to increase the number of Raptors to 300. Creating 'Super Eagles' would only create an airframe that would never be able to compete with a Raptor, but yet be very close to the price of the Raptor. A double negative! It's like being asked to buy a Lamborghini Gallardo for 150,000, or you can get a souped up Honda Civic for the 'cheaper' price of 100,000. While there is a savings, it would be best to just get the Bull. Furthermore, imagine you are buying a fleet of Gallardos for racing purposes, at which point the cost of the Gallardo would have been 90,000 due to the greater volumes involved. However, by cutting the numbers you pushed the price to 150,000 ....then someone in your organization decides you can save money by buying the super Civics for 100,000.
Maybe you should have stuck to the original number of Gallardos ...I mean Raptors.
As for the PakFa ....it is not the equal of the F-22 Raptor. It has immense potential, but it is no Raptor. However, if the Indian money keeps flowing to Russia for its development and production, it WILL be better than the F-35 and other legacy fighters.
“All they have right now is a prototype that has made two flights. OK, the airframe works. Nothing is known about how stealthy it’s going to be, how reliable the avionics are going to be, how expensive the bird is going to be, etc., etc., etc...”
Yes. To use the cliche, “the devil is in the details”. Two prototypes does not make an effective air force. There are still tons and tons of expensive engineering and manufacturing technologies that have to be developed and optimized before any of these will be rolling off the assembly line.
0bummer is the raptor killer
anything to help his comrades
By 2020, only 187 of those 1,100 "most advanced" fighters will F-22s, while the other 913 will be F-35s, many of which will be Navy and Marine variants.
By 2025, out of those 1,700 "most advanced" fighters, only 187 (or less depending on training losses) will be F-22s, while the remaining 1,513 will be F-35s.
The F-35 is only front aspect stealth, and as a strike fighter, it cannot dogfight it's way out of a paper bag against a good 4th generation fighters such as the Su-30, let alone the PAK-FA.
The air environment is very electronic, networked, and skilled operator/support intensive. I don’t really think it matters, if the Russians had the Raptors, and we didn’t.
Obama sucks and sucks big ...but the Raptor was killed during the Bush years by Rumsfeld. That’s when the number went to 187. It was over quite some time ago. All Obama did is write the obituary. A number of weapon systems died under Rumsfeld actually.
Your comments are so true. The stealth Eagle actually carries less of a weapon load than a regular F-15.
Until more Raptors get built, the opposing planes don’t have to be better, they just have to be more numerous. The chinese could make something like that happen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.