Ok you guys have read the specs, read pilot reports, but one thing among many many that will and cannot change is the plane’s limited range. It is a tanker queen; shoot down the tanker (Chinese strategy) and the plane is useless.
Station it on the ground close enough to the front lines to be effective and it is within S-500 range (Russian strategy) and would be shot down as soon as it becomes airborne.
Fix the gun so it can shoot, but it will run out of rounds after a few bursts; fix the software so it actually works, and you might be on to something as longs as the plane remains on the ground; fix the naval version so it does not nearly kill the pilots on take off only to run out of fuel when the tankers go away; fix the radar so it actually can be turned on, and wait to be hit by an S-500.
Find some way to surpass all those obstacles and get shot down by Russian BVR missiles; get around that and you get to drop the one or two bombs the plane is capable of carrying before running the same gauntlet to return to base.
These are problems are not even being considered to be fixed as the fixes would require either redesigning the POS from the ground up or making it far too expensive - exceeding costs before the ‘Trump Effect’ occurred.
Stop cheer leading for an extremely poor design (even for a committee); push for a modernized version of the F-22, or F-22B(omber).
Just saying, none of the pilots I talk to share your views. Again, I only talk w F-16 jocks
Here are some publicly reported combat radiuses:
Of course, the F-15 is not carrying bombs and that would make a difference for the others listed here.