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Fans of the F-22 Raptor need to wake-up
page: 3share:
Originally posted by Figher Master FIN
Yes, the F-22 is in full development, I'am aware of that... (wrote something I didn't mean, my bad) But it is still not combat prooven... And before that, I will not call it good, nor bad... only good looking...
Is the Gripen battle tested?
Is the EF-2000/Eurofighter battle tested?
Is the Rafale battle tested?
Is the Su-35 battle tested?
Is the MiG-29 battle tested?
Is the J-10 battle tested?
Is the Su-37 battle tested?
Is the Mikoyan Project-MiG MFI 1.42/44 battle tested?
Is the PAK-Fa battle tested?
Is the J-XX battle tested?
Is the Su-30 MK-Series battle tested?
Is the Su-47 battle tested?
Did I leave any out?
Btw, what is your definition of "battle tested"?
One air engagement, two, five, what?
Let me know?
seekerof
[edit on 22-4-2006 by Seekerof]
Heh... lets start a war just to get them battle tested.
I personally think the US military should invest in the EF2000 project. Buy some eurofighters for high speed, close quarters dogfighting.
The eurofighter also has a great long distance armament capability. No to mention the ability to outmaneuver alot of munitions. The rest can be left up to chaff and flare.
Stealth, and "Low Observability" are soon to be just a useless feature that used to be effective. I think its time to go back to basics. Speed and maneuverability... and really heavy weapons!
I personally think the US military should invest in the EF2000 project. Buy some eurofighters for high speed, close quarters dogfighting.
The eurofighter also has a great long distance armament capability. No to mention the ability to outmaneuver alot of munitions. The rest can be left up to chaff and flare.
Stealth, and "Low Observability" are soon to be just a useless feature that used to be effective. I think its time to go back to basics. Speed and maneuverability... and really heavy weapons!
Originally posted by johnsky
I personally think the US military should invest in the EF2000 project. Buy some eurofighters for high speed, close quarters dogfighting.
What makes you think the Typhoon is more maneuverable than the Raptor?
[edit on 22-4-2006 by WestPoint23]
"I asses the effectiveness of an air superiority fighter by how well it eliminates opposing fighters and or aircraft, and that is dependant
upon
how well it flies and shoots. "
First you owe me some royalties for trying to hijack my phrase.
But again if you read what I said you will see that you are not responding to the very point I raised. Kind of a useless gesture don't you think.
"No, at least not between nuclear powers. "
I wish I had your confidence in this fact.
"Tell me, have there ever been any direct wars between nuclear powers? "
Lol! I guess it will never happen then. Man I feel better with logic like this around to ease my worried mind. And no and I have never seen a dinosaur either. This is the weakest argument in the history of the world.
Well I feel were getting off topic here so I’ll only say this, no potential enemy currently has the physical means by which to conduct a war on the CONUS. And Iran is not a nuclear power, the US is.
Glad you are concerned about getting off topic.
Man have you ever heard of a subject called the history of western civilization? How many kids before you - do you suppose thought like you?
No body can attack us. LOL!!!!!!!
"Can you describe these conventional weapons? Remember now, these conventional weapons would have to hit runways in the CONUS and potential runways in US ally nations such as the UK. "
I don't suppose there are any french, british, german, indian, chinese or russian weapons that could pull off a complicated task like this. LOL!!! "They are ire friends! They wouldn't attack us!" Crap we are the largest exporter of military hardware in the world. They might swat us with our own flyswatters.
"One more thing, currently the Raptor is deployed only in the US, as such the material of its hangers are irrelevant, barring nuclear missiles I don't see how a potential US adversary is going to successfully attack US runways in the CONUS."
It is designed to replace the f-15 and you don't think it will ever be based in other countries? You have strange hangups with the points I make. And as for the other question, you have asked that one already.
Also, I find it funny that the only vulnerably you’re posting for the F-22 is its dependency on runways, incidentally every other similar fighter in the world also depends on them.
You got me.
Seeing as that was the point of my post - you made a pretty sharp observation to catch that.
And you are right too - there are no fighters in the world with vtol or the ability to operate from short runways.
"Its role is an air superiority fighter, as such its primary mission is to destroy enemy fighters to allow attack aircraft and ground assets to operate in/under friendly skies. "
I just pointed out to you twice how this definition is lacking. That was the point of my post. And I like that friendly skies bit. Pretty nifty.
So your comback and conclusion was to restate what I had already given as the lacking definition of an effective fighter. Not a very effective strategy was it?
[edit on 22-4-2006 by grantrl78]
how well it flies and shoots. "
First you owe me some royalties for trying to hijack my phrase.
But again if you read what I said you will see that you are not responding to the very point I raised. Kind of a useless gesture don't you think.
"No, at least not between nuclear powers. "
I wish I had your confidence in this fact.
"Tell me, have there ever been any direct wars between nuclear powers? "
Lol! I guess it will never happen then. Man I feel better with logic like this around to ease my worried mind. And no and I have never seen a dinosaur either. This is the weakest argument in the history of the world.
Well I feel were getting off topic here so I’ll only say this, no potential enemy currently has the physical means by which to conduct a war on the CONUS. And Iran is not a nuclear power, the US is.
Glad you are concerned about getting off topic.
Man have you ever heard of a subject called the history of western civilization? How many kids before you - do you suppose thought like you?
No body can attack us. LOL!!!!!!!
"Can you describe these conventional weapons? Remember now, these conventional weapons would have to hit runways in the CONUS and potential runways in US ally nations such as the UK. "
I don't suppose there are any french, british, german, indian, chinese or russian weapons that could pull off a complicated task like this. LOL!!! "They are ire friends! They wouldn't attack us!" Crap we are the largest exporter of military hardware in the world. They might swat us with our own flyswatters.
"One more thing, currently the Raptor is deployed only in the US, as such the material of its hangers are irrelevant, barring nuclear missiles I don't see how a potential US adversary is going to successfully attack US runways in the CONUS."
It is designed to replace the f-15 and you don't think it will ever be based in other countries? You have strange hangups with the points I make. And as for the other question, you have asked that one already.
Also, I find it funny that the only vulnerably you’re posting for the F-22 is its dependency on runways, incidentally every other similar fighter in the world also depends on them.
You got me.
Seeing as that was the point of my post - you made a pretty sharp observation to catch that.
And you are right too - there are no fighters in the world with vtol or the ability to operate from short runways.
"Its role is an air superiority fighter, as such its primary mission is to destroy enemy fighters to allow attack aircraft and ground assets to operate in/under friendly skies. "
I just pointed out to you twice how this definition is lacking. That was the point of my post. And I like that friendly skies bit. Pretty nifty.
So your comback and conclusion was to restate what I had already given as the lacking definition of an effective fighter. Not a very effective strategy was it?
[edit on 22-4-2006 by grantrl78]
The chances are that the Typhoon is more agile, being smaller and lighter, as well as an unstable canard. After all a larger mass is never good for
turning.
I wouldn't bet my house on it though as I wonder how effective the TVC of the Raptor is in countering those advantages?
One thing about TVC is that while in use, the aircraft is no longer being propelled forwards and energy is lost, so maybe TVC is a double edged sword? The loss of forward thrust and bleeding off of energy during TVC manouvering could be one of the reasons that the Typhoon's own TVC programme appears to have stalled, if you pardon the pun
I'd love to see a fly off between the types, to settle the argument, maybe in a Red Flag in the not too distant future?
I wouldn't bet my house on it though as I wonder how effective the TVC of the Raptor is in countering those advantages?
One thing about TVC is that while in use, the aircraft is no longer being propelled forwards and energy is lost, so maybe TVC is a double edged sword? The loss of forward thrust and bleeding off of energy during TVC manouvering could be one of the reasons that the Typhoon's own TVC programme appears to have stalled, if you pardon the pun
I'd love to see a fly off between the types, to settle the argument, maybe in a Red Flag in the not too distant future?
Originally posted by grantrl78
But again if you read what I said you will see that you are not responding to the very point I raised.
You said, "Just that the idea of how well it flies and shoots is not the only thing to consider when you try to fully assess its effectiveness."
My answer is that I have considered many things concerning the F-22 and I came to the conclusion a long time ago that it was the best choice for the USAF in terms of filling in the role of air superiority fighter. Its maintenance, training and capability make it more effective than the F-15, now you’re not going to tell me that's not a good air superiority fighter either are you?
Originally posted by grantrl78
I guess it will never happen then.
I used 50+ years of history to help me understand how the future will progress, what did you use? Your imagination to determine on how countries will react?
Originally posted by grantrl78
Man have you ever heard of a subject called the history of western civilization? How many kids before you - do you suppose thought like you?
It’s not about history or thought, it’s about what is physically possible, the Indians, Chinese and or Russians cannot carry out a war on the CONUS. Ever heard of a thing called power projection? Besides nuclear weapons they don't have what it takes.
Originally posted by grantrl78
I don't suppose there are any french, british, german, indian, chinese or russian weapons that could pull off a complicated task like this.
Before I posted I made sure that the Chinese or Russians couldn't, as for the rest, I don't consider them to be probable enemies in the future. Besides that’s not what I asked. I asked “Can you describe these conventional weapons?" Which you didn’t. I have a thing for being specific.
Originally posted by grantrl78
It is designed to replace the f-15 and you don't think it will ever be based in other countries? You have strange hangups with the points I make. And as for the other question, you have asked that one already.
Perhaps in the future, and even then the list of potential countries is thin, not to mention those countries are more than capable of making sure their bases remain safe. And no you didn’t, I asked “how a potential US adversary is going to successfully attack US runways", and you did not answer that anywhere in your post. Again, specifics.
Originally posted by grantrl78
Seeing as that was the point of my post - you made a pretty sharp observation to catch that.
And you are right too - there are no fighters in the world with vtol or the ability to operate from short runways.
Ha! What you a comic you are, but I’m afraid specifics again my dear friend, I said “incidentally every other similar fighter in the world also depends on them.” Notice the bold word, apart from being military aircraft that fly, the Harrier, F-35B, and the Yak have very little in common with the Raptor and are not designed for its role.
So your comeback and conclusion was to evade answering my questions and submit yours in response. Not a very effective strategy now was it?
And no, I don't give royalties.
[edit on 22-4-2006 by WestPoint23]
Originally posted by Waynos
The chances are that the Typhoon is more agile, being smaller and lighter, as well as an unstable canard. After all a larger mass is never good for turning.
Waynos you may be right, I was merely asking to see what gave the original poster this impression. However I too would like to see a fly off, even though the F-22 is bigger it has 2D TVC with + 20 degrees and it has a higher T/W ratio than the Typhoon.
One more thing, I’m not saying that the Typhoon is as maneuverable as the F-16 but I have seen a Raptor out turn an F-16 in a mock dog-fight, and the F-16 is about the same size as the Typhoon.
[edit on 22-4-2006 by WestPoint23]
If you look at history, most of the big weapons of the U.S. military were met with major criticism. Abrams tank (laughed at by critics for its
features), AWACs aircraft (Wall Street journal ran an article in 1980 or 1981 about how pointless these were, we all see how wrong that was!), F-15
(called pointless by one Congressman I believe), F-16, Bradleys, Apache attack helicopter, etc....all have proven to be of very great use as well.
The Raptor was not designed solely for the old Soviet-era, WWIII mindset. It was designed for that and many other possibilities.
The Russians continue to produce newer forms of radar that are more sophisticated. Many countries like to acquire these because they allow them to detect aircraft. Since the U.S. obviously has a big stance in global affairs these days, and air superiority is so crucial, they would love to acquire radar tech that allows them to scare away U.S. fighters should the U.S. ever attack them.
A fighter with the advanced capabilities of the F/A-22 will be able to penetrate through such technology with the right planning and secure airspace a lot better than any F-15 can.
These armchair generals are judging the F/A-22 when probably not one of them has ever flown a fighter in their life and half the F/A-22's capabilities aren't even known publicly. They can't properly judge the aircraft.
People say the F/A-22 is built on an old WWII-mindset, and is worthless for the flexible U.S. military of the 21st century. If anything, I think the complete, complete opposite is true. The F/A-22 is a true 21st century fighter, built to be far more capable and far more flexible for the 21st century U.S. military than any other aircraft.
It is built by proven aircraft companies, and praised by pilots of a very proven aircraft (F-15).
As for this whole "it has capabilities for a non-existing threat," history has proven that you build a weapons system that has features to fight such a threat in case it occurs. In the future, the stealth capabilities of the Raptor may come in very, very handy, as technology evolves. It has features that other aircraft just do not have, and it will revolutionize air warfare with features that no other Air Force has. It will give the U.S. Air Force true air superiority.
If there is one thing American defense companies have a history of, it is in producing very capable and necessary weapons platforms that prove to be mighty handy later on. They are also adaptable.
Look at the Apache attack helicopter. Built to stop a Soviet tank threat, yet they also prove plenty helpful in the war on terrorism. They are adapted and upgraded. The ones the Israelis just received are really upgraded. The F/A-22 was started in the 80s. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. I doubt that the companies that designed the Raptor just blindly continued designing it to solely fight WWIII.
The Raptor will be able to take on any aircraft out there with success, and it will be able to penetrate enemy airspace that other aircraft, such as an F-15, could not. If the Raptor is detected, and fighters are sent up, it can destroy those fighters, or it can get out of there really fast. And it's pilot will know immediately if it is detected.
Considering that the F-15's it flies against can't even detect it most of the time, I doubt fighters sent up to look for it would even find it.
It can be sent in as an observer to transfer information to the entire military internet systems, to other aircraft, to ground forces, etc....and if detected, it can get out really fast.
The F/A-22 has virtually no heat signature and it's maximum altitude is classified.
The F/A-22 will follow the same paths as the other U.S. aircraft. People will harp and yell about its worthlessness, until it is gradually shown just how useful it is.
This aircraft will give the U.S. capabilities beyond anything else, and as SeekerOf said, will provide a number of firsts in military aviation. And I am sure they will upgrade it as time goes on, just as they have the F-15.
Twenty years from now we could be fighting North Korea, China, etc...no one knows. The biggest mistake in war is to be unprepared. And war is very technological. The F/A-22 is a true technological marvel, and that is why it costs so much.
I am NOT saying it is invincible, and I am NOT saying it is undetectable. I AM saying that with the proper planning, it can fly missions that will let it be a lot LESS detectable than any current fighter planes, as well as fight other aircraft with capabilities never seen before. It has capabilities no one even knows about as well as information-gathering abilities that no other aircraft has. Even if it is detected, it is very difficult to track it (detecting and tracking are two entirely different things).
All other aircraft up to this point have followed very advanced versions of old-style methods. The F/A-22 is a true 21st century airplane.
The Raptor was not designed solely for the old Soviet-era, WWIII mindset. It was designed for that and many other possibilities.
The Russians continue to produce newer forms of radar that are more sophisticated. Many countries like to acquire these because they allow them to detect aircraft. Since the U.S. obviously has a big stance in global affairs these days, and air superiority is so crucial, they would love to acquire radar tech that allows them to scare away U.S. fighters should the U.S. ever attack them.
A fighter with the advanced capabilities of the F/A-22 will be able to penetrate through such technology with the right planning and secure airspace a lot better than any F-15 can.
These armchair generals are judging the F/A-22 when probably not one of them has ever flown a fighter in their life and half the F/A-22's capabilities aren't even known publicly. They can't properly judge the aircraft.
People say the F/A-22 is built on an old WWII-mindset, and is worthless for the flexible U.S. military of the 21st century. If anything, I think the complete, complete opposite is true. The F/A-22 is a true 21st century fighter, built to be far more capable and far more flexible for the 21st century U.S. military than any other aircraft.
It is built by proven aircraft companies, and praised by pilots of a very proven aircraft (F-15).
As for this whole "it has capabilities for a non-existing threat," history has proven that you build a weapons system that has features to fight such a threat in case it occurs. In the future, the stealth capabilities of the Raptor may come in very, very handy, as technology evolves. It has features that other aircraft just do not have, and it will revolutionize air warfare with features that no other Air Force has. It will give the U.S. Air Force true air superiority.
If there is one thing American defense companies have a history of, it is in producing very capable and necessary weapons platforms that prove to be mighty handy later on. They are also adaptable.
Look at the Apache attack helicopter. Built to stop a Soviet tank threat, yet they also prove plenty helpful in the war on terrorism. They are adapted and upgraded. The ones the Israelis just received are really upgraded. The F/A-22 was started in the 80s. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. I doubt that the companies that designed the Raptor just blindly continued designing it to solely fight WWIII.
The Raptor will be able to take on any aircraft out there with success, and it will be able to penetrate enemy airspace that other aircraft, such as an F-15, could not. If the Raptor is detected, and fighters are sent up, it can destroy those fighters, or it can get out of there really fast. And it's pilot will know immediately if it is detected.
Considering that the F-15's it flies against can't even detect it most of the time, I doubt fighters sent up to look for it would even find it.
It can be sent in as an observer to transfer information to the entire military internet systems, to other aircraft, to ground forces, etc....and if detected, it can get out really fast.
The F/A-22 has virtually no heat signature and it's maximum altitude is classified.
The F/A-22 will follow the same paths as the other U.S. aircraft. People will harp and yell about its worthlessness, until it is gradually shown just how useful it is.
This aircraft will give the U.S. capabilities beyond anything else, and as SeekerOf said, will provide a number of firsts in military aviation. And I am sure they will upgrade it as time goes on, just as they have the F-15.
Twenty years from now we could be fighting North Korea, China, etc...no one knows. The biggest mistake in war is to be unprepared. And war is very technological. The F/A-22 is a true technological marvel, and that is why it costs so much.
I am NOT saying it is invincible, and I am NOT saying it is undetectable. I AM saying that with the proper planning, it can fly missions that will let it be a lot LESS detectable than any current fighter planes, as well as fight other aircraft with capabilities never seen before. It has capabilities no one even knows about as well as information-gathering abilities that no other aircraft has. Even if it is detected, it is very difficult to track it (detecting and tracking are two entirely different things).
All other aircraft up to this point have followed very advanced versions of old-style methods. The F/A-22 is a true 21st century airplane.
Originally posted by WheelsRCool
If you look at history, most of the big weapons of the U.S. military were met with major criticism. Abrams tank (laughed at by critics for its features), AWACs aircraft (Wall Street journal ran an article in 1980 or 1981 about how pointless these were, we all see how wrong that was!), F-15 (called pointless by one Congressman I believe), F-16, Bradleys, Apache attack helicopter, etc....all have proven to be of very great use as well.
The Raptor was not designed solely for the old Soviet-era, WWIII mindset. It was designed for that and many other possibilities.
The Russians continue to produce newer forms of radar that are more sophisticated. Many countries like to acquire these because they allow them to detect aircraft. Since the U.S. obviously has a big stance in global affairs these days, and air superiority is so crucial, they would love to acquire radar tech that allows them to scare away U.S. fighters should the U.S. ever attack them.
A fighter with the advanced capabilities of the F/A-22 will be able to penetrate through such technology with the right planning and secure airspace a lot better than any F-15 can.
These armchair generals are judging the F/A-22 when probably not one of them has ever flown a fighter in their life and half the F/A-22's capabilities aren't even known publicly. They can't properly judge the aircraft.
People say the F/A-22 is built on an old WWII-mindset, and is worthless for the flexible U.S. military of the 21st century. If anything, I think the complete, complete opposite is true. The F/A-22 is a true 21st century fighter, built to be far more capable and far more flexible for the 21st century U.S. military than any other aircraft.
It is built by proven aircraft companies, and praised by pilots of a very proven aircraft (F-15).
As for this whole "it has capabilities for a non-existing threat," history has proven that you build a weapons system that has features to fight such a threat in case it occurs. In the future, the stealth capabilities of the Raptor may come in very, very handy, as technology evolves. It has features that other aircraft just do not have, and it will revolutionize air warfare with features that no other Air Force has. It will give the U.S. Air Force true air superiority.
If there is one thing American defense companies have a history of, it is in producing very capable and necessary weapons platforms that prove to be mighty handy later on. They are also adaptable.
Look at the Apache attack helicopter. Built to stop a Soviet tank threat, yet they also prove plenty helpful in the war on terrorism. They are adapted and upgraded. The ones the Israelis just received are really upgraded. The F/A-22 was started in the 80s. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. I doubt that the companies that designed the Raptor just blindly continued designing it to solely fight WWIII.
The Raptor will be able to take on any aircraft out there with success, and it will be able to penetrate enemy airspace that other aircraft, such as an F-15, could not. If the Raptor is detected, and fighters are sent up, it can destroy those fighters, or it can get out of there really fast. And it's pilot will know immediately if it is detected.
Considering that the F-15's it flies against can't even detect it most of the time, I doubt fighters sent up to look for it would even find it.
It can be sent in as an observer to transfer information to the entire military internet systems, to other aircraft, to ground forces, etc....and if detected, it can get out really fast.
The F/A-22 has virtually no heat signature and it's maximum altitude is classified.
The F/A-22 will follow the same paths as the other U.S. aircraft. People will harp and yell about its worthlessness, until it is gradually shown just how useful it is.
This aircraft will give the U.S. capabilities beyond anything else, and as SeekerOf said, will provide a number of firsts in military aviation. And I am sure they will upgrade it as time goes on, just as they have the F-15.
Twenty years from now we could be fighting North Korea, China, etc...no one knows. The biggest mistake in war is to be unprepared. And war is very technological. The F/A-22 is a true technological marvel, and that is why it costs so much.
I am NOT saying it is invincible, and I am NOT saying it is undetectable. I AM saying that with the proper planning, it can fly missions that will let it be a lot LESS detectable than any current fighter planes, as well as fight other aircraft with capabilities never seen before. It has capabilities no one even knows about as well as information-gathering abilities that no other aircraft has. Even if it is detected, it is very difficult to track it (detecting and tracking are two entirely different things).
All other aircraft up to this point have followed very advanced versions of old-style methods. The F/A-22 is a true 21st century airplane.
This is an excellent freakin post! I agree.
Don't you find it odd that I draw raptors on my site?
I am so full of #.
Working on a rendering of one now.
The bastid is hard to paint because all of the pics of it suck.
And its finish is dull as hell, so it always looks rubbery.
BTW I get my jollies from drilling weak arguments.
And the argument that I put forth was from an 80s book called modern combat aircraft. Should be called notso modern combat aircraft. But the author must have been a brit because he sided with the harriers as the most effective platform for all modern warplanes. And this was in the heyday of the f-15 - so there is no way that I buy his arguments. But he directly stated that it didn't matter that the harriers had their a$$es kicked by the superior eagles because they had a secret weakness. They were nonflexible as a fighter and too expensive to be stored in weak hangars in germany and too easily crippled by pavewayII type weapons.
But westy, the only parts of your argument that I disagree with are that 1. we will not be the big kid on the block forever.
And history to prove this one goes back alot longer than 50 years. And 2. chances are very high that tactical nuclear weapons will be exchanged in the future. Can you think of any other weapon in history that was used only twice? And for our sake, I hope the bs argument flaw that is the slippery slope doesn't turn out to be true.
How else will we beat back the chinese when they come to kick our a$$?
[edit on 22-4-2006 by grantrl78]
I assume you are aware the raptor took on 10 F16's (all at once) in trials and beat all of them quite handily. Of course that was using BVR
capabilities, which is what it was designed to do.
[edit on 23-4-2006 by Astronomer70]
[edit on 23-4-2006 by Astronomer70]
Originally posted by Seekerof
Btw, what is your definition of "battle tested"?
One air engagement, two, five, what?
Let me know?
seekerof
[edit on 22-4-2006 by Seekerof]
Never said those are better did I...?? You have asked the same question before... Defining a good aircraft in my opinion is that it has been in service for a couple of years, without getting destroyed by a bad landing gear...
And when it comes to combat, it's not about winning or loosing... It's about beeing in combat... it doesn't have to win 100-0... As long as it has been in combat, and has prooven that it works in practic...
[edit on 23-4-2006 by Figher Master FIN]
JIMC5499,
>>
Fans of the F-22 Raptor need to wake up and face reality. While the F-22 is a technological wonder, it has it's flaws. The article below examines some of these.
>>
So does the article, let's look at some of ITS SHORTCOMINGS, shall we?
>>
Q. Can the Raptor see the enemy first, outnumber it, outmaneuver it, and kill it quickly?
>>
See the enemy first. Yes. Because it will be using offboard sources to not only sorte the force but increasingly to /morte/ it as well. With remote tethers tied to radars BEHIND the shooter. Including other Raptors.
Outnumber them. Yes. Because it's the weapons bay load that determines who wins and how they die. As an F-14 driver once said "It's 'cause I have six little kamikaze wingmen hanging under my butt!". And Slammer works. Whereas Phoenix did not.
This is a key determinator because few podunk air forces can afford wall to wall MRAAM (half a million each) let alone LRAAM (1 mil apop) in any significant numbers. Yet digital systems design and particularly strapdown nav ability to shorten the A-Pole is getting to the point where individual jam techniques don't work against all comers.
So that if you have a 1,000 AMRAAM and he has 40 R-77 and you BOTH have decently updated GCS tapes on your missiles ECCM. Them's as can see to shoot will do so. And thems as cannot will not.
'Numbers' of airframes then simply add to the tallyboard on the side of the jet. Whereas 'numbers' of shots count more.
Outmaneuver? Who thee hell wants to maneuver? Janes has an article... HERE-
>
"I never had a tally on any of the bad guys. I rarely saw our wingman. We never put more than 3g on the airplane and we never got inverted. There were missiles and people dying everywhere."
>
www.janes.com...
Maneuvering bleeds E all over the place, especially supersonic at altitude (where most fighting is now practiced). It also planforms your airframe if you are at all 'serious' about making the move mean something. And is handgrenade-in-fishbowl if you are not.
Kill quickly? Let's talk REAL PHYSICS people. At Mach 3.5 sustained (an almost impossible to achieve figure over longer ranges) you are moving at roughly 30 miles PER MINUTE. Where some weapons have outer engagement zones on the order of 80-100km, Missile Warfare is not Top Gun.
And it never will be Maverick.
>>
Q. How does the Raptor stack up against the F-16?
>>
WHICH F-16? The original F-16 was a maintenance /nightmare/. Systems were not well organized on the jet and, according to one old USAFE crew dawg I used to know 'the reason it had so many body access panels was so they could replace everything at once' when it broke.
30 years on and the F-16 is a very much KNOWN QUANTITY.
But it is not and NEVER WILL BE a Raptor. Whose principal design advantages are that it doesn't /need/ to stress the airframe with constant G excursions and throttle slams. It ghosts by like a phantom airliner.
It is very likely that, if they treat these airframes as precious-gem assets (as they should) that they will quickly settle down to become very reliable as experience with the M&R issues stabilizes into an instititutional knowledge base.
>>
Q. Why did Congress cap production of the Raptor at half the number sought by the Air Force?
>>
That's simple. This country is in the midst of the worst (largely because it is unacknowledged) budget crises ever known to us. We failed, utterly, to downsize our military and our 'mission' in the post Cold War era (itself a period of massive debt gain only slightly better managed than Russia's) and now we have another Trillion Dollar Debt looking us in the face for giving a handup to a bunch of wolves-bite-feeders.
The F-22 _should never_ be exported. The JSF (supposedly) can be. /At best/ there would be 276-383 F-22. At -worst- there will be more than a 1,000 JSF.
Congressmen are pigs. Where they smell money, they root it out. For their districts. To leverage the national debt with exports. For their own personal, political, gain.
That couldn't happen if an alternative fighter was around to challenge the INCREDIBLE performance@cost issues that beset the F-35 (as many predicted they would) under a 'one name, three planes' level of shared R&D and diverse basing modes.
Let's keep going, I always enjoy kicking the snot out of 'old pros'.
>>
One British pilot called it “the most formidable fighter” that the world had seen to date. Its pilots said it was a delight to fly.
Yet military historians today say the German Messerschmidt 262 fighter had little effect on the air war over Europe during World War II, and two military aviation experts last week warned that the U.S. Air Force has likely set itself up to repeat the harsh lesson of the Me-262 “Stormbird” in a future conflict against an adversary with a modern air force.
>>
First off, the Schturmvoegel or Storm Bird (Petrel) was the bomber version. And if they KNEW THAT then they also knew that failure to capitalize on the projected A2A capabilities of the airframe /in late 1943 early 1944/ as the _Schwalbe_ (Swallow) was what ran the 262 out of time. Not budgetary or threat related problems but bureacratic stupidity.
Second, there is a helluva difference between fighting DCA with overwhelming numbers of threat aircraft overhead from Dawn til Dusk as the enemy invades your homeland and taking the airwar TO THEM, at a time and place of your own choosing _over their dirt_, as an OCA platform does. Which is what the F-22 as an 'expeditionary' fighter is designed to do. I might worry if those Rafale, Euroflubber, MiG-29's and Su-27's were flying the upwards of 1,000nm that a Raptor can reach in a couple hours to bomb it's bases. But not much. Because DCA is won by ARH SAM like the ERINT or SLAMRAA. Not by fighters.
Lastly, let's be clear here dears. The 262 SUCKED as a fighter. Especially at altitude where the combination of the engine nacelle design sensitivities (the 262 did not like high AOA rakes angles in turns and if not 'coordinated' in all maneuvers, could easily stall one or both engines in the resulting yaw state) and compressibility effects made it very hard to handle when chasing agile recip fighters that could maneuver out of plane with rather less sedate (say heavy) controls and next to no performance limitations.
The 262 was, in it's 'fighter' form. A 1PHA _Interceptor_ optimized to kill virtually non maneuvering Dicke Auto Bus targets. The F-22 /can/ function that way, largely because missiles are the true dogfighers today and nobody knows they've been shot.
>>
(For Tyndall Air Force Base, where the Raptor pilot training program is located, this has meant a reduction in training squadrons from two to one, with 29 of the sleek fighters to be used in preparing pilots for combat units.)
But to Sprey, a founding member of the so-called “fighter mafia” group that during the 1960s and 1970s ramrodded the F-15, F-16 and A-10 programs into being despite fierce internal opposition, and military author Stevenson, who has written extensively on the Navy’s F/A-18 and A-12 fighters, the Air Force has created a major crisis in its future combat capability by sticking to the Raptor program.
>>
The Fighter Mafia introduced an airframe that was so incapable as to require _for much of the next decade_ the previous generation F-4 to continue to stand tall as America's ONLY PGM PLUS BVR CAPABLE 'fighter' platform. The AMRAAM was largely ruined by the requirement for the F-16 to carry it and certainly delayed so long that a war with the Soviets in Europe would have been lost based on the need for few-vs.-many offset to limited air superiority presence, in theater. The F-16 /approach/ is the wrong one for what it requires of multiple tankers to serve multiple airframes on a minidrag to the target area. Increasing risk-at-cost in a time when the only way to keep from having the 'top air superiority fighter' be a T-72 running over the pilots Nike's was to launch out of England, France or Spain.
The F-16 'raised the bar' on followon competition but look how much good that did us. Now, instead of facing a MiG-21 baseline threat with Archer and Atol and Aphid, or a MiG-23 with paired Apex, we see a Mir-2K or Rafale with MICA and a JAS-39 with Darter or IRIS-T. i.e. By designing around a heavyweight airframe that could /burn off/ the gas needed to get to X 'with agility remaining', and weapons fit to kill, dominantly, once it got there (MRM as a 500lb standard instead of a 350lb one) the powers that be could have forced everyone to follow the same standards and thus limited the _total count_ of threat aircraft in each air force. Instead, purely for DOTC profit, they have escalated the threat technology base AND numbers-of-shooters level to the point where ONLY the combination of stealth and SSC boosted missile poles will save us. MORONS.
Lightweight fighters exist to employ and otherwise socially worthless knight-class. A cruise missile or UCAV could do a better job as a bomber. Yet because industry builds whatever the military wants. And the military sells itself to Congress, not based on capability but on PROFIT, district by district, in select committees; where fighter pilots are the Samurai of the current era. UCAVs are Admiral Perry threatening to blow up Tokyo Bay. And they ain't havin' none of that.
To which I would only add that Riccioni, Sprey and Boyd sabotaged the F-15 at every turn to get what they wanted and what they got was a roughly 250nm sphere of influence around the boat or base. Compared to the 500nm for the prior generation and the 650nm that the 'bombers before that' (F-111, A-3/5/67) had brought to the table.
IMO, they blew it completely and ARE NOT the heros of anyone but overage children whose concept of operations comes down to 'kick the tires, light the fires, I gotta be back in an hour to play golf!' airpower.
>>
Sprey said his briefing focused on the time-tested factors that define an effective fighter plane: (1) See the enemy first; (2) outnumber the enemy; (3) outmaneuver the enemy to fire, and (4) kill the enemy quickly.
“The Raptor is a horrible failure on almost every one of those criteria,” Sprey said.
The stellar attribute of the F-22 — its invisibility on enemy radar due to a computer-aided stealth design — is a “myth,” Sprey said. That is because in order to locate the enemy beyond visual range, the Raptor (like every other fighter) must turn on its own radar, immediately betraying its location.
>>
Such utter /bilge/. The reasons driving the VID selection are many and complex but among them are:
1. DETECTION RANGE.
On the fighter, especially in the mid-60s, even a 27-30" array was lucky to see aircraft at more than 35nm. On jets like the F-8 and indeed naval F-4s this could be further cut by both the nose size and the naval landing requirement's effect on tube and discrete transistorized electronics based technology. Now throw in mixed fighter forces on a joint services ops plan whose day to day ATO effects were virtually /unknown/ and things get REALLY UGLY because you have no damn idea if the promised (USAF for a USN strike) CAP of the fighter fields north of your target is 'on, off or just late'. And you won't be SEEING those targets until they themselves are long past being a separate entity from where you know the threat baselane empties out from. Include another variable inherent to compromised IFF (and strangled parrot factor) and there is nothing left to trust BUT your eyeballs.
Obviously, with ranges upwards of 100nm and secure-voice + datalinking to AEW&C, this no longer applies. AND IT HASN'T FOR AT LEAST TWENTY FIVE YEARS!
2. LDSD.
Simply put, if you can only see to about 20db mixed clutter or 5,000ft below your airframe (which ever comes first) anyone who comes out to play based on the HUGE ruckus you're making (tankers and jammers and radio and music) only has to play rugburner and he's safe. But shift to an APX-80/C-Tree or QRC-248 element. Plus a hotwired enemy radio/landline communications system. And things get a helluva lot easier.
Take this forward another 'notch' into PD AWACS and LDSD Fighters and things become almost passing fair.
Throw in a decent moving map (base locations as a certainty) SAD and AESA and taking life in lookdown is almost acceptable.
Because now you can have a historical trackfile which leads right back to the airbase in question and which seldom, if ever, 'gets lost in the press' of other tracks as there are fewer and fewer direct approaches to airbases anyway.
Under positive track, almost immediately, wheels-in-well, threats tend to die early and badly. And stealth just helps this along.
3. STANDOFF.
With todays nominally /ballistic/ weapons having ranges upwards of 12-15nm and glide weapons taking this out to 40+, the need to fly right up to ANY target is GREATLY minimized. If they have to come to your BRL not you to their runway centerline, things become a heckuva lot harder for them, if only because you can continually run decoy tease (full court press and run away!) ops until they are (GAI reaction time) utterly 'mapped' if not depleted of sortie options, long before the actual attack.
4. IFF as a JEM+ISAR OPTION.
Typically, if you have intraflight datalinks and secure Mode IV/V options; you can ping-to-see and AIFF certainly helps here. But the real game is going to remain 'image the airframe and resonate for a harmonic' (EPulse and ISAR) while it is already acknowledged that Jet Engine Modulation has been an element of the game for nie on 15 years. And if EID fails you go to _EOID_ as it is now admited that targeting pods have had 'secondary AAW capabilities' in for a similar period. Whether you believe in IFF or NCTR or not, if you _fail to mention them_ as a function of intelligent discourse, nothing you say in their deliberate ignorance has validity.
LASTLY. AA-ARM are NOT wonder weapons. They actually have very low accuracies unless supplemented by secondary guidance modes and are particularly apt to starvation or RMAX problems where the-
TARGET..........SHOOTER...........ILLUMINATOR
0.....................20-40nm..............80-100nm
Are so widely spaced in range and azimuth. Not least because, even a fairly conventional fighter with Have Glass type treatments becomes pretty darn hard to see, nose-on, above 50nm. And a stealth jet should be well night completely invisible to both IR and X-Band at anything over 30.
The only REAL (not test range) operational success I'm familiar with on a like anti-radiation system basis is the use of the external CG uplink antenna dipole array on the SA-2 as a primitive home-on-jam system againt latewar B-52 ALT type jammers whose strobe pattern and technique generation (as well as flight path and formation celling predictability) were all VERY primitive.
Lobbing AA-ARM /from range/ against an F-22 is about as likely to work as chucking horseshoes at a shark in the ocean. From Kansas.
>>
Nor is the aircraft design effective simply because its advocates insist so, Sprey said. The 1980s-era F-117 stealth fighter was supposed to be invisible too, but post-Gulf War studies showed that the aircraft had been spotted by Iraq’s ground-based radars, he said.
And in the 77-day aerial campaign against Serbia in 1999, the adversary’s “1950s-era radar” managed to locate and shoot down two F-117s, Stevenson pointed out in his presentation. The situation is actually worse today, he said, because many nations have acquired advanced missiles that can home in on radar emissions.
“Who do you want in a dark alley?” Stevenson asked. “The cop with the flashlight, or the crook with a gun that fires light-homing bullets?”
>>
Morons. ONE F-117 was lost. It was lost, supposedly, because it flew a route three nights in a row and a French officer decided to 'do his part' by mentioning this. The F-117 itself is compromised, not by it's signature but it's weapon delivery capabilities which (at the time) included next to no IAM or thru-cloud options.
OTOH, the typical 'Low Band' (2GHz) radar is surmounted by a sail shaped parabola about the size of a truck and about as easy to move about as a statue.
While the TRUE 'Low Band' (750-950MHz) systems are closer akin to the backstop on a baseball diamond or the giant 'golf ball' domes of yore and are more or less there til the concrete fails.
They have VERY poor volume definition and so the best you can hope for is to send a weapon platform to the general area to sweep it down with high band as an alternative to lobbing missiles into their own search-cone proximity. Both are VERY expensive, the former not least because it the Raptor will be hunting the target back.
>>
Because the Raptor ultimately ballooned into a weapon that costs $361 million per copy, even Congress could not stomach the total program cost exceeding $65 billion, Sprey said. As a result, the Air Force is now committed to fielding a fighter program that lacks sufficient numbers to prevail in a major conflict, however effective the individual aircraft may be.
>>
The USAF, 'as a gift' to Lunchmeat, added ONE extra Airframe purchase to the FY2003 funding. At 117 million dollars. Congress, embarrassed and angry at having this 'over expensive' asset purchased so cheap, immediately closed the loophole designed SPECIFICALLY to reward production line (economics) savings. And 'no more was heard' about real costs of the airframe.
In any case, the JSF is about 70% through it's own 45 billion dollar R&D program while the total number of purchased airframes as gone down from 2,968 airframes to about 1,423. And 'total program acquisition costs' have skyrocked from 191 BILLION to 257 BILLION. And /that money/ ladies and gents, we have not even -begun- to spend yet.
Even as export customers are threatening to jump ship if the 104 million dollar asking price (in CRS Budget documents) is not 'stabilized' back towards the promised 48-55 million that they signed up for.\
i.e. Whether we ourselves get fewer jets, we are going to end up subsidizing the FMS 'for profit' sales, regardless. Get ready to BOHICA Taxpayers, it's once more spring time in Texas.
>>
“Hitler had 70 Me-262s in combat,” Sprey said. “They were crushed by the force of 2,000 inferior P-51s that the United States had in the air.”
>>
BWUAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHH!
Hitler had what, 1,200 airframes in various subcomponent centers?
Hitler _Had No_:
Gas.
BMC2/Early Warning.
Pilot Training System.
The reality being that he HAD NOT had such a system since October, 1943 when Black Thursday TAUGHT THE WRONG LESSONS TO THE LUFTWAFFE.
Namely that a lack of OCA wouldn't come to haunt them. That the USAAF would not implement a system of effective (ranged) OCA themselves and that they didn't need to think beyond the 400mph boundary in avoiding what they could not numerically match. Or numerically (by radius) what they could not on-the-ground protect.
OTOH, the Me-262 _Swallow_, as I have stated before, was a ONE PASS HAUL A$$ DEFENSIVE COUNTER AIR PLATFORM with all of **one** built in 'guaranteed kill'. Be it rockets or guns.
Try for anything more than that and you would be dogpiled in wide turns by 470mph P-47M or P-51H anyway.
This argument MIGHT make sense if the 'great and wise' Senor Sprey had said that the Nazis were fools for investing in the Me-262 instead of Wasserfall and Rheindochter SAMs. But then again, that would require comparison with the materials and subsystems buildup going on in the equally wasteful offensive ballistic weapons program (without nuclear tips) and so either way your deep into fuzzy logic territory.
What the F-22 is entirely different yet again.
It is NOT an OCA platform. Indeed, I would not call it a 'fighter' because it doesn't need to kill enemy fighters to survive or have principal mission relevance. It is certainly NOT an escort platform because then it's initiative and freedom of ops is compromised on a guilt-by-association basis with the sheep. It is NOT a 'bomber' perse because it doesn't lose any fighter like capabilities by virtue of carrying four or eight GBU-39.
I would call it a battlespace dominance or 'COE' mission system because it really wins by NOT succumbing to the 'must kill X' threat-as-role definition of combattive function.
It can glide by one. Zap another and come home. It can KILL FROM BVR an entire formation. And then go home as if nothing at all has happened.
And it can do ALL of this, supersonically, at range. Using supercruise as a _transit_ multiplier to speed sortie generation. Which is as if (in comparison with the Me-262), Hitler could pick up Germany and move it 1,000nm in any direction, in 3hrs. THAT is what may ultimately be determinative on the F-22's achieved vs. promisary performance. In that the less we are liked (by friends and enemies alike) the farther we may have to come to shoot stuff down and blow stuff up. And while this will not only save us from the 'DCA = SAM vs. TBM' likely progression towards a future, missile based, warfare system. It will only work if we do not spend HOURS inbetween target and base.
Something which, in any case, the Schwalbe never could achieve because it had neither the gas nor the engine life to manage multiple sorties per day.
The F-22 is the ghost in the machine of whatever operational paradigm shakes out of the fraud that is Iraq and the JSF program. It is almost certain to reduce U.S. tacair dependence on multiple support sortie (tanker and EA at least) capabilities in any future war over a 1,000nm from base. And depending on the progression of ABL and UCAV technology beds, it may well be the preferred long range BD (strike) system in a world where AAW is a function, not of 15 mile per minute supercruise. But 186,000mps followon DEWS. While 'CAS' is performed, not by assets that can reach the target area quickly. But rather ones which, once there, can REMAIN ON STATION for several hours.
I myself think it likely that it is the combination of the latter two factors which will spell the ultimate doom of most military airframes and all manned ones. Probably starting no later than 2015.
KPl.
>>
Fans of the F-22 Raptor need to wake up and face reality. While the F-22 is a technological wonder, it has it's flaws. The article below examines some of these.
>>
So does the article, let's look at some of ITS SHORTCOMINGS, shall we?
>>
Q. Can the Raptor see the enemy first, outnumber it, outmaneuver it, and kill it quickly?
>>
See the enemy first. Yes. Because it will be using offboard sources to not only sorte the force but increasingly to /morte/ it as well. With remote tethers tied to radars BEHIND the shooter. Including other Raptors.
Outnumber them. Yes. Because it's the weapons bay load that determines who wins and how they die. As an F-14 driver once said "It's 'cause I have six little kamikaze wingmen hanging under my butt!". And Slammer works. Whereas Phoenix did not.
This is a key determinator because few podunk air forces can afford wall to wall MRAAM (half a million each) let alone LRAAM (1 mil apop) in any significant numbers. Yet digital systems design and particularly strapdown nav ability to shorten the A-Pole is getting to the point where individual jam techniques don't work against all comers.
So that if you have a 1,000 AMRAAM and he has 40 R-77 and you BOTH have decently updated GCS tapes on your missiles ECCM. Them's as can see to shoot will do so. And thems as cannot will not.
'Numbers' of airframes then simply add to the tallyboard on the side of the jet. Whereas 'numbers' of shots count more.
Outmaneuver? Who thee hell wants to maneuver? Janes has an article... HERE-
>
"I never had a tally on any of the bad guys. I rarely saw our wingman. We never put more than 3g on the airplane and we never got inverted. There were missiles and people dying everywhere."
>
www.janes.com...
Maneuvering bleeds E all over the place, especially supersonic at altitude (where most fighting is now practiced). It also planforms your airframe if you are at all 'serious' about making the move mean something. And is handgrenade-in-fishbowl if you are not.
Kill quickly? Let's talk REAL PHYSICS people. At Mach 3.5 sustained (an almost impossible to achieve figure over longer ranges) you are moving at roughly 30 miles PER MINUTE. Where some weapons have outer engagement zones on the order of 80-100km, Missile Warfare is not Top Gun.
And it never will be Maverick.
>>
Q. How does the Raptor stack up against the F-16?
>>
WHICH F-16? The original F-16 was a maintenance /nightmare/. Systems were not well organized on the jet and, according to one old USAFE crew dawg I used to know 'the reason it had so many body access panels was so they could replace everything at once' when it broke.
30 years on and the F-16 is a very much KNOWN QUANTITY.
But it is not and NEVER WILL BE a Raptor. Whose principal design advantages are that it doesn't /need/ to stress the airframe with constant G excursions and throttle slams. It ghosts by like a phantom airliner.
It is very likely that, if they treat these airframes as precious-gem assets (as they should) that they will quickly settle down to become very reliable as experience with the M&R issues stabilizes into an instititutional knowledge base.
>>
Q. Why did Congress cap production of the Raptor at half the number sought by the Air Force?
>>
That's simple. This country is in the midst of the worst (largely because it is unacknowledged) budget crises ever known to us. We failed, utterly, to downsize our military and our 'mission' in the post Cold War era (itself a period of massive debt gain only slightly better managed than Russia's) and now we have another Trillion Dollar Debt looking us in the face for giving a handup to a bunch of wolves-bite-feeders.
The F-22 _should never_ be exported. The JSF (supposedly) can be. /At best/ there would be 276-383 F-22. At -worst- there will be more than a 1,000 JSF.
Congressmen are pigs. Where they smell money, they root it out. For their districts. To leverage the national debt with exports. For their own personal, political, gain.
That couldn't happen if an alternative fighter was around to challenge the INCREDIBLE performance@cost issues that beset the F-35 (as many predicted they would) under a 'one name, three planes' level of shared R&D and diverse basing modes.
Let's keep going, I always enjoy kicking the snot out of 'old pros'.
>>
One British pilot called it “the most formidable fighter” that the world had seen to date. Its pilots said it was a delight to fly.
Yet military historians today say the German Messerschmidt 262 fighter had little effect on the air war over Europe during World War II, and two military aviation experts last week warned that the U.S. Air Force has likely set itself up to repeat the harsh lesson of the Me-262 “Stormbird” in a future conflict against an adversary with a modern air force.
>>
First off, the Schturmvoegel or Storm Bird (Petrel) was the bomber version. And if they KNEW THAT then they also knew that failure to capitalize on the projected A2A capabilities of the airframe /in late 1943 early 1944/ as the _Schwalbe_ (Swallow) was what ran the 262 out of time. Not budgetary or threat related problems but bureacratic stupidity.
Second, there is a helluva difference between fighting DCA with overwhelming numbers of threat aircraft overhead from Dawn til Dusk as the enemy invades your homeland and taking the airwar TO THEM, at a time and place of your own choosing _over their dirt_, as an OCA platform does. Which is what the F-22 as an 'expeditionary' fighter is designed to do. I might worry if those Rafale, Euroflubber, MiG-29's and Su-27's were flying the upwards of 1,000nm that a Raptor can reach in a couple hours to bomb it's bases. But not much. Because DCA is won by ARH SAM like the ERINT or SLAMRAA. Not by fighters.
Lastly, let's be clear here dears. The 262 SUCKED as a fighter. Especially at altitude where the combination of the engine nacelle design sensitivities (the 262 did not like high AOA rakes angles in turns and if not 'coordinated' in all maneuvers, could easily stall one or both engines in the resulting yaw state) and compressibility effects made it very hard to handle when chasing agile recip fighters that could maneuver out of plane with rather less sedate (say heavy) controls and next to no performance limitations.
The 262 was, in it's 'fighter' form. A 1PHA _Interceptor_ optimized to kill virtually non maneuvering Dicke Auto Bus targets. The F-22 /can/ function that way, largely because missiles are the true dogfighers today and nobody knows they've been shot.
>>
(For Tyndall Air Force Base, where the Raptor pilot training program is located, this has meant a reduction in training squadrons from two to one, with 29 of the sleek fighters to be used in preparing pilots for combat units.)
But to Sprey, a founding member of the so-called “fighter mafia” group that during the 1960s and 1970s ramrodded the F-15, F-16 and A-10 programs into being despite fierce internal opposition, and military author Stevenson, who has written extensively on the Navy’s F/A-18 and A-12 fighters, the Air Force has created a major crisis in its future combat capability by sticking to the Raptor program.
>>
The Fighter Mafia introduced an airframe that was so incapable as to require _for much of the next decade_ the previous generation F-4 to continue to stand tall as America's ONLY PGM PLUS BVR CAPABLE 'fighter' platform. The AMRAAM was largely ruined by the requirement for the F-16 to carry it and certainly delayed so long that a war with the Soviets in Europe would have been lost based on the need for few-vs.-many offset to limited air superiority presence, in theater. The F-16 /approach/ is the wrong one for what it requires of multiple tankers to serve multiple airframes on a minidrag to the target area. Increasing risk-at-cost in a time when the only way to keep from having the 'top air superiority fighter' be a T-72 running over the pilots Nike's was to launch out of England, France or Spain.
The F-16 'raised the bar' on followon competition but look how much good that did us. Now, instead of facing a MiG-21 baseline threat with Archer and Atol and Aphid, or a MiG-23 with paired Apex, we see a Mir-2K or Rafale with MICA and a JAS-39 with Darter or IRIS-T. i.e. By designing around a heavyweight airframe that could /burn off/ the gas needed to get to X 'with agility remaining', and weapons fit to kill, dominantly, once it got there (MRM as a 500lb standard instead of a 350lb one) the powers that be could have forced everyone to follow the same standards and thus limited the _total count_ of threat aircraft in each air force. Instead, purely for DOTC profit, they have escalated the threat technology base AND numbers-of-shooters level to the point where ONLY the combination of stealth and SSC boosted missile poles will save us. MORONS.
Lightweight fighters exist to employ and otherwise socially worthless knight-class. A cruise missile or UCAV could do a better job as a bomber. Yet because industry builds whatever the military wants. And the military sells itself to Congress, not based on capability but on PROFIT, district by district, in select committees; where fighter pilots are the Samurai of the current era. UCAVs are Admiral Perry threatening to blow up Tokyo Bay. And they ain't havin' none of that.
To which I would only add that Riccioni, Sprey and Boyd sabotaged the F-15 at every turn to get what they wanted and what they got was a roughly 250nm sphere of influence around the boat or base. Compared to the 500nm for the prior generation and the 650nm that the 'bombers before that' (F-111, A-3/5/67) had brought to the table.
IMO, they blew it completely and ARE NOT the heros of anyone but overage children whose concept of operations comes down to 'kick the tires, light the fires, I gotta be back in an hour to play golf!' airpower.
>>
Sprey said his briefing focused on the time-tested factors that define an effective fighter plane: (1) See the enemy first; (2) outnumber the enemy; (3) outmaneuver the enemy to fire, and (4) kill the enemy quickly.
“The Raptor is a horrible failure on almost every one of those criteria,” Sprey said.
The stellar attribute of the F-22 — its invisibility on enemy radar due to a computer-aided stealth design — is a “myth,” Sprey said. That is because in order to locate the enemy beyond visual range, the Raptor (like every other fighter) must turn on its own radar, immediately betraying its location.
>>
Such utter /bilge/. The reasons driving the VID selection are many and complex but among them are:
1. DETECTION RANGE.
On the fighter, especially in the mid-60s, even a 27-30" array was lucky to see aircraft at more than 35nm. On jets like the F-8 and indeed naval F-4s this could be further cut by both the nose size and the naval landing requirement's effect on tube and discrete transistorized electronics based technology. Now throw in mixed fighter forces on a joint services ops plan whose day to day ATO effects were virtually /unknown/ and things get REALLY UGLY because you have no damn idea if the promised (USAF for a USN strike) CAP of the fighter fields north of your target is 'on, off or just late'. And you won't be SEEING those targets until they themselves are long past being a separate entity from where you know the threat baselane empties out from. Include another variable inherent to compromised IFF (and strangled parrot factor) and there is nothing left to trust BUT your eyeballs.
Obviously, with ranges upwards of 100nm and secure-voice + datalinking to AEW&C, this no longer applies. AND IT HASN'T FOR AT LEAST TWENTY FIVE YEARS!
2. LDSD.
Simply put, if you can only see to about 20db mixed clutter or 5,000ft below your airframe (which ever comes first) anyone who comes out to play based on the HUGE ruckus you're making (tankers and jammers and radio and music) only has to play rugburner and he's safe. But shift to an APX-80/C-Tree or QRC-248 element. Plus a hotwired enemy radio/landline communications system. And things get a helluva lot easier.
Take this forward another 'notch' into PD AWACS and LDSD Fighters and things become almost passing fair.
Throw in a decent moving map (base locations as a certainty) SAD and AESA and taking life in lookdown is almost acceptable.
Because now you can have a historical trackfile which leads right back to the airbase in question and which seldom, if ever, 'gets lost in the press' of other tracks as there are fewer and fewer direct approaches to airbases anyway.
Under positive track, almost immediately, wheels-in-well, threats tend to die early and badly. And stealth just helps this along.
3. STANDOFF.
With todays nominally /ballistic/ weapons having ranges upwards of 12-15nm and glide weapons taking this out to 40+, the need to fly right up to ANY target is GREATLY minimized. If they have to come to your BRL not you to their runway centerline, things become a heckuva lot harder for them, if only because you can continually run decoy tease (full court press and run away!) ops until they are (GAI reaction time) utterly 'mapped' if not depleted of sortie options, long before the actual attack.
4. IFF as a JEM+ISAR OPTION.
Typically, if you have intraflight datalinks and secure Mode IV/V options; you can ping-to-see and AIFF certainly helps here. But the real game is going to remain 'image the airframe and resonate for a harmonic' (EPulse and ISAR) while it is already acknowledged that Jet Engine Modulation has been an element of the game for nie on 15 years. And if EID fails you go to _EOID_ as it is now admited that targeting pods have had 'secondary AAW capabilities' in for a similar period. Whether you believe in IFF or NCTR or not, if you _fail to mention them_ as a function of intelligent discourse, nothing you say in their deliberate ignorance has validity.
LASTLY. AA-ARM are NOT wonder weapons. They actually have very low accuracies unless supplemented by secondary guidance modes and are particularly apt to starvation or RMAX problems where the-
TARGET..........SHOOTER...........ILLUMINATOR
0.....................20-40nm..............80-100nm
Are so widely spaced in range and azimuth. Not least because, even a fairly conventional fighter with Have Glass type treatments becomes pretty darn hard to see, nose-on, above 50nm. And a stealth jet should be well night completely invisible to both IR and X-Band at anything over 30.
The only REAL (not test range) operational success I'm familiar with on a like anti-radiation system basis is the use of the external CG uplink antenna dipole array on the SA-2 as a primitive home-on-jam system againt latewar B-52 ALT type jammers whose strobe pattern and technique generation (as well as flight path and formation celling predictability) were all VERY primitive.
Lobbing AA-ARM /from range/ against an F-22 is about as likely to work as chucking horseshoes at a shark in the ocean. From Kansas.
>>
Nor is the aircraft design effective simply because its advocates insist so, Sprey said. The 1980s-era F-117 stealth fighter was supposed to be invisible too, but post-Gulf War studies showed that the aircraft had been spotted by Iraq’s ground-based radars, he said.
And in the 77-day aerial campaign against Serbia in 1999, the adversary’s “1950s-era radar” managed to locate and shoot down two F-117s, Stevenson pointed out in his presentation. The situation is actually worse today, he said, because many nations have acquired advanced missiles that can home in on radar emissions.
“Who do you want in a dark alley?” Stevenson asked. “The cop with the flashlight, or the crook with a gun that fires light-homing bullets?”
>>
Morons. ONE F-117 was lost. It was lost, supposedly, because it flew a route three nights in a row and a French officer decided to 'do his part' by mentioning this. The F-117 itself is compromised, not by it's signature but it's weapon delivery capabilities which (at the time) included next to no IAM or thru-cloud options.
OTOH, the typical 'Low Band' (2GHz) radar is surmounted by a sail shaped parabola about the size of a truck and about as easy to move about as a statue.
While the TRUE 'Low Band' (750-950MHz) systems are closer akin to the backstop on a baseball diamond or the giant 'golf ball' domes of yore and are more or less there til the concrete fails.
They have VERY poor volume definition and so the best you can hope for is to send a weapon platform to the general area to sweep it down with high band as an alternative to lobbing missiles into their own search-cone proximity. Both are VERY expensive, the former not least because it the Raptor will be hunting the target back.
>>
Because the Raptor ultimately ballooned into a weapon that costs $361 million per copy, even Congress could not stomach the total program cost exceeding $65 billion, Sprey said. As a result, the Air Force is now committed to fielding a fighter program that lacks sufficient numbers to prevail in a major conflict, however effective the individual aircraft may be.
>>
The USAF, 'as a gift' to Lunchmeat, added ONE extra Airframe purchase to the FY2003 funding. At 117 million dollars. Congress, embarrassed and angry at having this 'over expensive' asset purchased so cheap, immediately closed the loophole designed SPECIFICALLY to reward production line (economics) savings. And 'no more was heard' about real costs of the airframe.
In any case, the JSF is about 70% through it's own 45 billion dollar R&D program while the total number of purchased airframes as gone down from 2,968 airframes to about 1,423. And 'total program acquisition costs' have skyrocked from 191 BILLION to 257 BILLION. And /that money/ ladies and gents, we have not even -begun- to spend yet.
Even as export customers are threatening to jump ship if the 104 million dollar asking price (in CRS Budget documents) is not 'stabilized' back towards the promised 48-55 million that they signed up for.\
i.e. Whether we ourselves get fewer jets, we are going to end up subsidizing the FMS 'for profit' sales, regardless. Get ready to BOHICA Taxpayers, it's once more spring time in Texas.
>>
“Hitler had 70 Me-262s in combat,” Sprey said. “They were crushed by the force of 2,000 inferior P-51s that the United States had in the air.”
>>
BWUAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHH!
Hitler had what, 1,200 airframes in various subcomponent centers?
Hitler _Had No_:
Gas.
BMC2/Early Warning.
Pilot Training System.
The reality being that he HAD NOT had such a system since October, 1943 when Black Thursday TAUGHT THE WRONG LESSONS TO THE LUFTWAFFE.
Namely that a lack of OCA wouldn't come to haunt them. That the USAAF would not implement a system of effective (ranged) OCA themselves and that they didn't need to think beyond the 400mph boundary in avoiding what they could not numerically match. Or numerically (by radius) what they could not on-the-ground protect.
OTOH, the Me-262 _Swallow_, as I have stated before, was a ONE PASS HAUL A$$ DEFENSIVE COUNTER AIR PLATFORM with all of **one** built in 'guaranteed kill'. Be it rockets or guns.
Try for anything more than that and you would be dogpiled in wide turns by 470mph P-47M or P-51H anyway.
This argument MIGHT make sense if the 'great and wise' Senor Sprey had said that the Nazis were fools for investing in the Me-262 instead of Wasserfall and Rheindochter SAMs. But then again, that would require comparison with the materials and subsystems buildup going on in the equally wasteful offensive ballistic weapons program (without nuclear tips) and so either way your deep into fuzzy logic territory.
What the F-22 is entirely different yet again.
It is NOT an OCA platform. Indeed, I would not call it a 'fighter' because it doesn't need to kill enemy fighters to survive or have principal mission relevance. It is certainly NOT an escort platform because then it's initiative and freedom of ops is compromised on a guilt-by-association basis with the sheep. It is NOT a 'bomber' perse because it doesn't lose any fighter like capabilities by virtue of carrying four or eight GBU-39.
I would call it a battlespace dominance or 'COE' mission system because it really wins by NOT succumbing to the 'must kill X' threat-as-role definition of combattive function.
It can glide by one. Zap another and come home. It can KILL FROM BVR an entire formation. And then go home as if nothing at all has happened.
And it can do ALL of this, supersonically, at range. Using supercruise as a _transit_ multiplier to speed sortie generation. Which is as if (in comparison with the Me-262), Hitler could pick up Germany and move it 1,000nm in any direction, in 3hrs. THAT is what may ultimately be determinative on the F-22's achieved vs. promisary performance. In that the less we are liked (by friends and enemies alike) the farther we may have to come to shoot stuff down and blow stuff up. And while this will not only save us from the 'DCA = SAM vs. TBM' likely progression towards a future, missile based, warfare system. It will only work if we do not spend HOURS inbetween target and base.
Something which, in any case, the Schwalbe never could achieve because it had neither the gas nor the engine life to manage multiple sorties per day.
The F-22 is the ghost in the machine of whatever operational paradigm shakes out of the fraud that is Iraq and the JSF program. It is almost certain to reduce U.S. tacair dependence on multiple support sortie (tanker and EA at least) capabilities in any future war over a 1,000nm from base. And depending on the progression of ABL and UCAV technology beds, it may well be the preferred long range BD (strike) system in a world where AAW is a function, not of 15 mile per minute supercruise. But 186,000mps followon DEWS. While 'CAS' is performed, not by assets that can reach the target area quickly. But rather ones which, once there, can REMAIN ON STATION for several hours.
I myself think it likely that it is the combination of the latter two factors which will spell the ultimate doom of most military airframes and all manned ones. Probably starting no later than 2015.
KPl.
Here was a letter I planned on sending him, if you guys would like to edit/add more stuff feel free.
[edit on 25-4-2006 by Laxpla]
Dear Ed Offley
I just wanted to introduce myself to you to get some background laidout about me. My name is Joe and I am 17 year old junior currently attending the Hilton High School in Hilton, New York.
Considering you are a student currently attending Harvard University, I will help you correct some misleading information made in a article you wrote on April 19, 2006. Just for an F.Y.I., To save me time, and prevent plagerism (Which I do not have a excellent awareness of cause of my education level) I will direct the source directly and you can read from the various sources.
Concerning the article,
"The F-22 Raptor is said to be invisible...until it isn't"
April 19, 2006
niemanwatchdog.org...
By Ed Offley
[email protected]
Here is some information that if you willingly choose too, can correct your article. In your article, I will pull out some of your writings based on interviews of WWII veterens, against Aviation Specialists, High Ranking Officials, Aerospace Engineers, Aircraft Scholors (Like me), and Reliable sources.
The biggest most blunt thing I would like to address, is the title. There is no information from any source that states that the F-22 is Invisible. Can you send me a excerpt from The F-22 Raptors Team Website, or a government funded source?
"The stellar attribute of the F-22 — its invisibility on enemy radar due to a computer-aided stealth design — is a "myth," Sprey said. That is because in order to locate the enemy beyond visual range, the Raptor (like every other fighter) must turn on its own radar, immediately betraying its location." - (An excerpt from Ed Offley's article)
This brings up a very intesersting point, the aerospace engineers who made this aircraft must have forgot about the radar giving up there postion away. Or did they?
"On-board antennas and radar systems are a major potential source of high radar visibility for two reasons. One is that it is obviously difficult to hide something that is designed to transmit with very high efficiency, so the so-called in-band radar cross section is liable to be significant. The other is that even if this problem is solved satisfactorily, the energy emitted by these systems can normally be readily detected. The work being done to reduce these signatures is classified."
- www.f-22raptor.com...
"Sprey said his briefing focused on the time-tested factors that define an effective fighter plane: (1) See the enemy first; (2) outnumber the enemy; (3) outmaneuver the enemy to fire, and (4) kill the enemy quickly."
Very interesting, some food for though... Setting: Dark Room Time: Midnight, A Navy Seal vs 3 Thugs, who is going to win? Outnumbering means nothing. Sure its good to have, but why not take 2000 P-51 vs 1000 Raptors? Numbers in theory according to your article states that in order to define an effective fighter, it needs number superiorty thus, leaving Raptor a worse fighter. A year or two back, a single F-22 Raptor slaughtered 4 F-16's. The F-16's couldnt see it unless the F-22 was directly on top of it.
The Raptor is a First Attack Aircraft. There are going to be in the sky F-22, F-18SH, JSF (Possible equiped with a 12w Raytheon Laser) and possible other airfcraft we don't know of.
"Nor is the aircraft design effective simply because its advocates insist so, Sprey said. The 1980s-era F-117 stealth fighter was supposed to be invisible too, but post-Gulf War studies showed that the aircraft had been spotted by Iraq's ground-based radars, he said."
F-117 won desert storm, none were lost. We would have lost hundreds of pilots, as Iraq had one of the best defenses on earth. Of coarse it was shot down because it followed the same path in multiple bombings, a nono which was human error. Remember, F-117 I believe is a size
While these conversations, many of them informal, didn't touch on "even one-third of its classified capabilities," according to one pilot, they included the ability to hunt down and destroy cruise missiles well behind enemy lines, the introduction of a new missile that allows the head-on attack and destruction of stealthy enemy missiles, a tailless bomber derivative design, a planned electronic attack capability so powerful that it actually damages enemy electronics, and modifications that would allow the aircraft's electronic package to invade enemy computer networks
In conclusion, The F-22 is 20 years more advanced then any other aircraft today. Dont you feel protected knowing you have something that Dominates, instead of on par with? It would be very pleasing to me if you can show the benefits of that Raptor instead of the cons. I first heard of your article on a Message Board called AboveTopSecret. Stop by and say hi sometime.
[edit on 25-4-2006 by Laxpla]
I only did a couple of the claims. It would take me an easily 2 -3 other hours to complete the rest and make it look profesional.
Hey Laxpla how about the claims he makes abou the LPI radar we need to point it out not to mention we should completely analyze the article which i
already have analyzed in my previous posts on page 1 or 2(that is if you want to give more proof).
[edit on 25-4-2006 by urmomma158]
[edit on 25-4-2006 by urmomma158]
just wanted to give some sources
www.f22-raptor.com...
www.f-22raptor.com... some sources inidcate less Tr modules though but it stil has the same cpabilities.
www.aviationnow.com... ew%3Dstory%26id%3Dnews%2F05244wna.xml
the avaition link is long so might have to copy n paste it. Not to mention it will be difficult for ARMS to lock on to the F 22 and if they do it can shut its radar off n datalink with other Raptor's,JSF's using EOTS,AWACS, etc.
Radar signature approximately the size of a bumblebee, thereby avoiding detection by the most sophisticated enemy air defense systems
Signatures/emissions of sound, turbulence, and heat that can aid detection are reduced
Requires no direct assistance from electronic support aircraft that may be more easily detected
Includes planform alignment of the wing and tail edges, radar-absorbing sawtoothed surfaces, an engine face that is concealed by a serpentine inlet duct, "stealthy" coating cockpit design to minimize the usually substantial radar return of pilot’s helmet
Through internal weapons placement, the F-22 eliminates multiple surface features that could be detected by enemy radar
www.f22-raptor.com...
The F/A-22's AN/APG-77 radar is an active-element, electronically scanned (that is, it does not move) array of around 2000 finger-sized transmitter / receiver modules. Each module weights ca 15g and has a poweroutput of over 4W. The APG-77 is capable of changing the direction, power and shape of the radar beam very rapidly, so it can acquire target data, and in the meantime minimizing the chance that the radar signal is detected or tracked.
www.f-22raptor.com... some sources inidcate less Tr modules though but it stil has the same cpabilities.
www.aviationnow.com... ew%3Dstory%26id%3Dnews%2F05244wna.xml
the avaition link is long so might have to copy n paste it. Not to mention it will be difficult for ARMS to lock on to the F 22 and if they do it can shut its radar off n datalink with other Raptor's,JSF's using EOTS,AWACS, etc.
That's simple. This country is in the midst of the worst (largely because it is unacknowledged) budget crises ever known to us. We failed, utterly, to downsize our military and our 'mission' in the post Cold War era (itself a period of massive debt gain only slightly better managed than Russia's) and now we have another Trillion Dollar Debt looking us in the face for giving a handup to a bunch of wolves-bite-feeders.
While I can’t speak to much of your Tolstoy-esq post due to lack of specific knowledge and your use of jargon and acronyms and the fact I have a life to live. Your statement regarding America’s national debt you could not be more wrong.
And
And finally
I hope this helps.
El Tiante,
This nation has a total public commerce and real estate debt of 8.8 trillion dollars, 50% of which is leveraged overseas.
This nation has a total consumer debt of 3.6 trillion dollars. 20% of which is leveraged overseas.
This nation has a GDP of approximately 12,485,725 a year. i.e. the 'magic 67%' which would be required, in a single year, to lay off our total debt. BUT. Our non-defense discretionary budget is only ranked 3-5%. This being the best indice of yearly 'operational excess' slush available past the amount required to run government. Right now, Cost Of Government is about 18-19% of GDP. In 2075, that cost will be 23-25%. BEFORE you factor in the Medicare, Social Security and other aging-pop factors by which this nation's last generation of 'truly smart people' CAN NO LONGER CONTRIBUTE to a taxable interest coverage on the overall debt. Indeed, the situation will be so bad that the combination of their being out of the workforce and INTO retirement will take COG to well over 40% (of GDP) at the same time we have NO ONE SMART ENOUGH to drive the economy as more than a 'services' (wage slave) driven marketplace for the megawealthy.
This is a factor which we can no longer afford to ignore because this nation is no longer the dominant powerhouse in ANY heavy industrial or agro or specialist/high tech areas. Indeed there are as many as FOUR competitors in EACH area. The only thing we truly contribute to the global economy is militant force and an irrational hunger for production goods WE CAN'T PAY FOR. Combined with a large median SOL population base living the credit-card precursor to a 'service economy' life and a HUGE wealthy class vamping from the top.
What this means is that we will only be king of all we survey so long as other economies which bolster our existence are healthy and they in turn will only be viable slave-state labor sources so long as transport remains cheap and they have _no one else_ to trade nearer-and-dearer to.
When they are fully stood up as independent economies, when oil hits 90-100 dollars a barrel. When ANYTHING else effects our precarious consumerist-tradeworm ability to be a 'market economy'; our debt will collapse this nations financial stability in a heartbeat. And all of the country's wealthy will rat-off-Titanic taking with them any hope of an immediate reinvestment/recovery without yet more external intervention.
This is China's ultimate goal in waiting to rule the world until we screw ourselves over.
This is what will lead to a World Government by trade alliances standing in for national populist elected regimes.
Uncle Sam sagging like a pricked militarist-egotistical balloon as the world wakes up and realizes that "Hey, after 450, the tributory states didn't really need Rome either!".
CONCLUSION:
Rome had a good run before economic obsolescence and falling national birth rates destroyed her. We have not. We don't need to build the JSF to continue our own marathon because we don't need jets to keep from being overrun by 'barbarian hordes'.
We DO need to recapitalize our existing fleet with a replacement and the Raptor is a jet which is at least twice as capable as the F-35 is and yet costs ony 29 million more each. A jet whose _program costs_ will indeed be **one third as much**. Bashing the Raptor is popular right now because it's a funding cripple. But the alternative is unthinkable. Because we simply cannot afford the force structure inherent to '3 planes, 1 name' as a hidden agenda alternative.
And all the 'jargon' and hyperbole of these supposed aviation experts aside; 257 billion to go is what you are looking at for a chance to export VLO technologies to a world already filled with demanding and uncertain friendships all too familiar with the art of aerial assassination by OUR hands.
KPl.
While I can’t speak to much of your Tolstoy-esq post due to lack of specific knowledge and your use of jargon and acronyms and the fact I have a life to live. Your statement regarding America’s national debt you could not be more wrong.
This nation has a total public commerce and real estate debt of 8.8 trillion dollars, 50% of which is leveraged overseas.
This nation has a total consumer debt of 3.6 trillion dollars. 20% of which is leveraged overseas.
This nation has a GDP of approximately 12,485,725 a year. i.e. the 'magic 67%' which would be required, in a single year, to lay off our total debt. BUT. Our non-defense discretionary budget is only ranked 3-5%. This being the best indice of yearly 'operational excess' slush available past the amount required to run government. Right now, Cost Of Government is about 18-19% of GDP. In 2075, that cost will be 23-25%. BEFORE you factor in the Medicare, Social Security and other aging-pop factors by which this nation's last generation of 'truly smart people' CAN NO LONGER CONTRIBUTE to a taxable interest coverage on the overall debt. Indeed, the situation will be so bad that the combination of their being out of the workforce and INTO retirement will take COG to well over 40% (of GDP) at the same time we have NO ONE SMART ENOUGH to drive the economy as more than a 'services' (wage slave) driven marketplace for the megawealthy.
This is a factor which we can no longer afford to ignore because this nation is no longer the dominant powerhouse in ANY heavy industrial or agro or specialist/high tech areas. Indeed there are as many as FOUR competitors in EACH area. The only thing we truly contribute to the global economy is militant force and an irrational hunger for production goods WE CAN'T PAY FOR. Combined with a large median SOL population base living the credit-card precursor to a 'service economy' life and a HUGE wealthy class vamping from the top.
What this means is that we will only be king of all we survey so long as other economies which bolster our existence are healthy and they in turn will only be viable slave-state labor sources so long as transport remains cheap and they have _no one else_ to trade nearer-and-dearer to.
When they are fully stood up as independent economies, when oil hits 90-100 dollars a barrel. When ANYTHING else effects our precarious consumerist-tradeworm ability to be a 'market economy'; our debt will collapse this nations financial stability in a heartbeat. And all of the country's wealthy will rat-off-Titanic taking with them any hope of an immediate reinvestment/recovery without yet more external intervention.
This is China's ultimate goal in waiting to rule the world until we screw ourselves over.
This is what will lead to a World Government by trade alliances standing in for national populist elected regimes.
Uncle Sam sagging like a pricked militarist-egotistical balloon as the world wakes up and realizes that "Hey, after 450, the tributory states didn't really need Rome either!".
CONCLUSION:
Rome had a good run before economic obsolescence and falling national birth rates destroyed her. We have not. We don't need to build the JSF to continue our own marathon because we don't need jets to keep from being overrun by 'barbarian hordes'.
We DO need to recapitalize our existing fleet with a replacement and the Raptor is a jet which is at least twice as capable as the F-35 is and yet costs ony 29 million more each. A jet whose _program costs_ will indeed be **one third as much**. Bashing the Raptor is popular right now because it's a funding cripple. But the alternative is unthinkable. Because we simply cannot afford the force structure inherent to '3 planes, 1 name' as a hidden agenda alternative.
And all the 'jargon' and hyperbole of these supposed aviation experts aside; 257 billion to go is what you are looking at for a chance to export VLO technologies to a world already filled with demanding and uncertain friendships all too familiar with the art of aerial assassination by OUR hands.
KPl.
I’m not sure what to say to you. Speaking about the debt is terms a specific, unadjusted dollar amount is either a demonstration of ignorance or an
attempt at deception.
The ONLY meaningful measure of nation debt is the debt to GDP ratio. As I have CLEARLY shown above America’s current debt is LOWER than most other industrialized nation, is far LOWER than the historical peak and is SHRINKING.
The fact that other countries wish to invest in the American economy is a sign of STRENGTH not weakness.
You mention the SSA liability, but what you fail to mention is the future value of American’s GDP. Again this either an either a demonstration of ignorance or an attempt at deception
Even if oil goes to $100 bb, it will still be only a little above the adjusted historical peak in the mid 1980s. It will represent some short to mid-term pain, but it will no way cripple America’s economy.
The only thing that matters is growth.
And really, could you try to be a little more concise?
[edit on 26-4-2006 by El Tiante]
[edit on 26-4-2006 by El Tiante]
The ONLY meaningful measure of nation debt is the debt to GDP ratio. As I have CLEARLY shown above America’s current debt is LOWER than most other industrialized nation, is far LOWER than the historical peak and is SHRINKING.
The fact that other countries wish to invest in the American economy is a sign of STRENGTH not weakness.
You mention the SSA liability, but what you fail to mention is the future value of American’s GDP. Again this either an either a demonstration of ignorance or an attempt at deception
Even if oil goes to $100 bb, it will still be only a little above the adjusted historical peak in the mid 1980s. It will represent some short to mid-term pain, but it will no way cripple America’s economy.
The only thing that matters is growth.
And really, could you try to be a little more concise?
[edit on 26-4-2006 by El Tiante]
[edit on 26-4-2006 by El Tiante]
Originally posted by El Tiante
I’m not sure what to say to you. Speaking about the debt is terms a specific, unadjusted dollar amount is either a demonstration of ignorance or an attempt at deception.
The ONLY meaningful measure of nation debt is the debt to GDP ratio. As I have CLEARLY shown above America’s current debt is LOWER than most other industrialized nation, is far LOWER than the historical peak and is SHRINKING.
The fact that other countries wish to invest in the American economy is a sign of STRENGTH not weakness.
You mention the SSA liability, but what you fail to mention is the future value of American’s GDP. Again this either an either a demonstration of ignorance or an attempt at deception
Even if oil goes to $100 bb, it will still be only a little above the adjusted historical peak in the mid 1980s. It will represent some short to mid-term pain, but it will no way cripple America’s economy.
The only thing that matters is growth.
And really, could you try to be a little more concise?
[edit on 26-4-2006 by El Tiante]
[edit on 26-4-2006 by El Tiante]
Debt in and of itself is nothing to fear if we are talking of leveraged investments with measurable results, particularly if the interest rates are low, but to finance an obsolete show pony like the F-22 with debt is simply criminal. In fact, we could easily cut our wasteful "defense" spending in half and use our debt capacity to fund things that will truly grow the economy like investments in alternative energy infrastructure, science, education, space exploration, etc... as well as prevent future hits to the economy like flood prevention, global warming, etc...
You're right, when it comes to debt, growth is everything. That's why it should be of concern to all of us when our government borrows in our names to fund dead-end programs.
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