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To: U-238
In the meantime, they'll have to take comfort in the fact that while the F-22 Raptor may be more agile and made entirely in the U.S.,

Agility is nice, but the whole point of a stealth fighter is to shoot down the other guy before he even knows you're there. Better sensors, and information exchange as part of superior system with other assets make the F-22 superior. Dog fights are a thing of the past.

the Dragon carries more fuel and weapons than Lockheed's fighter.

That means it will make a bigger boom when the F-22 shoots it out of the sky.

40 posted on 03/12/2012 11:00:05 PM PDT by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: Moonman62
Dog fights are a thing of the past.

That is what pilots said in Vietnam and we were creamed in the air. You cannot depend on missiles and techology.Missiles are a finite resource.
41 posted on 03/12/2012 11:26:54 PM PDT by U-238
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To: Moonman62
Agility is nice, but the whole point of a stealth fighter is to shoot down the other guy before he even knows you're there. Better sensors, and information exchange as part of superior system with other assets make the F-22 superior. Dog fights are a thing of the past.

I have wondered about that, although I cannot claim to own the idea since I read about it in some article. About how, in the near future, the war between stealth and sensors will go one of two ways. The first is that the advancement of stealth amongst near-peer competitors, for instance the Chinese and Russians, evolves to a level whereby their level of stealth is roughly analogous - not equal, but close enough - that by the time the USAF fighter and the Chinese/Russian fighter are detecting each other, the speed of the merge is basically bringing both aircraft at, or near, WVR. It is interesting that both the Raptor and whatever the PakFa prototype will give birth to are meant to be very agile in all regimes.

The second evolutionary thread was that sensor technology would outstrip the capabilities of stealth to ensure survivability within viable ranges, and it seems that sensor technology is evolving faster than stealth. A huge caveat to that statement is that it is based on what is publicly available, which means that the statement is worth a bucket of warm spit since none of us knows, with any degree of confidence, what the latest and upcoming developments are in terms of sensors and/or stealth. However, based on publicly available information, the British were (for example) able to track the B-2, and during the Gulf War were being able to easily track the F-117.

Anyways, sticking to the point of my post, going forward it is very possible that maneuverability will be back as a requirement, and looking at all Gen 5 and Gen 4.5/++ air-superiority fighters, all of them have not just maneuverability but extreme maneuverability as a must. Even the F-35, which was originally not meant to be a air-superiority fighter (before the Raptor got deep-sixed and its role got expanded) still has 'synthetic' maneuverability through its ability to target aircraft through its ingenious melding of its distributed aperture system and the HMDS, which can (based on what is publicly available, and assuming some of the issues they are having are sorted out) be capable of some nice piece of work.

But the interesting thing is - if in the near future a F-22C (assuming the next president lets Raptor evolution continue) facing off against (say) a SU-50 (the finished product of the T-50) or a J-23 (assuming the J-20 was just a technology demonstrator), it is quite possible that a 'dogfight' would ensue. Although I would agree that it would be a 'dogfight' in quotes since it would be I-IR missiles fighting it out rather than fighters aiming guns at one another. Although, again, both the Raptor and the T-50 prototype have maneuverability as key, both are able to jam incoming missiles (and, adding the F-35 to the mix, it was shown capable of jamming the F-22's radar), both have extreme maneuverability and not only in the supersonic regime (where it makes a lot of sense) but also in the sub-sonic area that is arguably only good for air-shows and dog-fighting, and both have guns (in the T-50's case there was a write-up saying the finished product may have TWO guns). In a future aerial environment between two near-peer adversaries (maybe US vs China; maybe China vs Russia) there will be constant jamming, all sorts of varied platforms, and a couple of stealthy players mucking about. I wouldn't be too surprised to see an actual dogfight when, in the muck of all the electronic warfare static in the air and fog of war, that two opposing stealthy platforms actually manage to get within WVR range where they are close enough to use I-IR missiles (which is arguably the modern form of the dogfight).

Just a thought.

49 posted on 03/13/2012 1:46:30 AM PDT by spetznaz (Nuclear-tipped Ballistic Missiles: The Ultimate Phallic Symbol)
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