Yf-23 vs F-22: Did the Air Force take 2nd best?

The F-23 is the only F-22 killer!

The F-23 is faster, stealthier and has a more powerful radar then the F-22 and the only reason why the F-22 won the contract is becuase it was simply cheaper and lets face it, ofcourse a aircraft that's better then the F-22 will be more expensive. That's like trying to buy a ferrari for the price of a posch; it just won't happen.

I've heard that the F-22 may be more maneuverable but lets not get wild up. It's not that much maneuverable then the F-23. Lets talk combat. Both aircraft would beat the best of what Russia would try to throw at them whether it's the Su-37, Su-42 Berkut or the Mig-1.44 which is barely in the early stages of developement. At the end of the day though the F-23 would leave all of these aircraft laying in the ground in scattered, mangled metal. The radar in the F-23 would see all of these aircrafts well before they would see it. Yes the F-22 could take out a number of F-15's with ease but the F-23 would take out all of these aircrafts due to its stealthyness and powerful radar alone. It would be a snack for the F-23.

Congress is going to feel like a complete a** if another country should ever be lucky enough to bring down a F-22"though I don't see it happening", or should America lose a airwar to Russia becuase congress felt that the F-23 was too expensive.

The F-23 is just technologicly more advanced then the F-22 and lets face it it just looks that danm badder then the F-22. The F-22 wouldn't have a chance in hell if it was to ever be on the opposing side of the F-23 in real combat. Luckily for Lockeed it would never come to that.

What I don't understand is that the congress and the pentagon wanted an ATF ( Advanced Tactical Fighter) and now that they have one they want to b*tch and moan that it's too expensive. What the f*ck, they think they gonna get these beautiful bad a** machines for pennies. The whole thing just doesn't make sence to me; f*cking dumb.

Furthermore, both aircraft can do way more then the human body could withstand. I mean lets face it, if these aircraft were to use their full aerodynamic potential there would be body parts all over the cockpit the human body could only withstand but so many G's and that's why the furture of air combat will be unmanned.

There's only one thing that puzzles my mind; with the F-22 and especially the F-23 having powerful Pratt & Whitney engines and aerodynamic bodies why can't they easily go mach 3? Can someone anwser that for me?

Originally posted by kilcoo316
The YF-23 was never flown above 25 deg AoA.

Not, as i understand on that day, no:

At high alpha units, compressorbility flow over the Vertical Stabs on the YF-22 only passed the upper 20%, completely over the rudder, whereas on the YF-23, the entire tailboom assemblies moved covering that problem at high alpha, vectored nozzles were not really necessary. I do believe superior flight control surfaces could override the absence of vectored thrust on the YF-23. Lets continue this while I research some more.

allenperos

www.f-16.net...

According to this , and other sources, the YF-23 were capable of achieving very nearly the same AOA as the F-22 WITHOUT thrust vectoring. Since i am no engineer ( and this guy claims to be) you migth be better able to judge it's accuracy.

Well, perhaps Ricconi could do with looking at the laws of physics.
For two equivalent machines, bigger wingspan invariably leads to slower roll responses and rates. I've see the graphs, the F-22 is some way ahead of the F-15, but behind the F-16 in roll performance.

Which is entirely a function of it's vectored thrust, right? Given the far more capable thrust vectoring P&W F100's on the F-15 active wouldn't it handily outperform the larger F-15? Isn't this what Riccioni is trying to say in terms of physics allowing for certain things and not others. Why compare the thrust vectoring aircraft to one isn't then claiming the far more expensive one to represent some kind of miraculous engineering breakthrough?

But they aren't in service are they?

Neither were the F-22 until a few years ago. I fail to understand why you wish to make the distinction when the F-15 active could have been in service ages ago without the additional expenditure of tens of billions of dollars? How can it be argued that LPI radar technology is somehow unique to the F-22? Wouldn't a F-15 active with the standard escort of stand off jammers also have a very significant advantage?

The F-22 is a substantial step over the F-15C!

In practice, yes, and i should have said the F-22 flight characteristics would not have been massively superior to a evolutionary design of a F-15 active type plane by virtue of the very same physics that allows the very capable P&W F119's to give it a thrust to weight advantage and super cruise with the addition of the larger fuel stores in a bigger aircraft. The F-22 is a substantial step over the F-15C by virtue of it having the 'upgrades' and technologies that were never implemented on the basic F-15 airframe.

Originally posted by StellarX
Can it beat 200deg/sec? (@ 0deg AoA)
Can it beat 100 deg/sec (@ 20deg AoA - which is more than double F-15)
Can it beat 70 deg/sec (@ 30deg AoA)
The first maybe, the last two not a chance.
At M1.5, the YF-22 responded like an F-15 at M0.8

Again, presuming it's all accurate and 'impossible to copy in the YF-23, this is not because the F-22 is built from alien metals but due to the very mundane fact that it has very powerful engines ( Each with twice the dry thrust of the standard F-15C P&W ) giving it twice the thrust while only being around 30% heavier with 'standard' load out. Fact is the F-22's empty weight is only two tons more than the F-15C's thus giving it a rather large advantage in a engagement where it has burnt half it's rather larger fuel stores. As Riccioni attempts to explain this is a matter of physics rather than engineering prowess to the tune of thirty billion dollars.

Yes, the YF-23 has lower signatures in both radar and IR - but what I'm saying is the YF-23 is the equivalent of a stealthy F-15.

The YF -23 is admitted to being very nearly as maneuverable as the F-22 without the usage of any thrust vectoring technology. Basically that means that the F-22 is a souped up F-15 with a massive thrust advantage and thrust vectoring with the YF-23 being the closest to a engineering marvel of the three aircraft.

The YF-22 was a kinematic step above the F-15 as well as having lower signatures (but not as low as the YF-23).

Both aircraft are steps above the line F-15C but mostly, and perhaps logically ( if you don't believe in alien technology/metals), due to them having bells and whistles that were not available back in 1980. If such technologies are implemented as per the Su-27 family you could not only have aircraft that are mostly superior to rivals anywhere but also deploy them in the numbers that will allow for effective air dominance, by virtue of nearly always being present ( not just the 5 hours per day F-22's might be around ), in many conflict zones around the world. It is simply HILARIOUS that aircraft are built to reduce 'casualties' amongst pilots when the next world war could lead to the potential death of tens if not hundreds of millions of Americans. No one besides pilots cares if a few pilots die in a air war as compared to their colleagues on the ground they will still having a much better time of it.

Frankly i am very happy that the Pentagon is shooting itself in the foot and if it continues along this path it might soon not have the capability to invade anyone least of all first world powers.

Stellar

Why compare the thrust vectoring aircraft to one isn't then claiming the far more expensive one to represent some kind of miraculous engineering breakthrough?

TVC on the F-22 is not asymmetric. Pitch only - it doesn't help roll. Like I said TVC on the F-22 is primarily for low supersonic trim drag & high pitch rates. F-15, clean, with F100-PW-229, dry, have trouble getting supersonic - so minus low speed handling (whose usefulness is debatable), TVC is useless.

TVC? Waste of time on F-15.

How can it be argued that LPI radar technology is somehow unique to the F-22?

'Cause LPI to the extent the F-22 takes it requires AESA -, which is still maturing now. You're unlikely to get the LPI capability anywhere close to the F-22 until relatively recently. If you put AESA on unstealthy airframe then there's no reason a new airforce could not datalink you... might as well go PESA instead... cheaper.

In practice, yes, and i should have said the F-22 flight characteristics would not have been massively superior to a evolutionary design of a F-15 active type plane by virtue of the very same physics that allows the very capable P&W F119's to give it a thrust to weight advantage and super cruise with the addition of the larger fuel stores in a bigger aircraft.

You're going to need far more fuel - then you've got a practically whole new aircraft much like the Super Hornet - not exactly cheap. Isn't a F-22 without VLO pretty much exactly what you're proposing?

It is simply HILARIOUS that aircraft are built to reduce 'casualties' amongst pilots when the next world war could lead to the potential death of tens if not hundreds of millions of Americans. No one besides pilots cares if a few pilots die in a air war as compared to their colleagues on the ground they will still having a much better time of it.

To run a war, you're firstly going to need public support. You're not going to get support when your brand new fighter jets get shot down in a 3rd world nation. The F-22 needs less airlift support than the current F-15C - if you're deploying large amounts of Super Eagles you need additional airlift capability, something we do not presently have - they're already stretched thin. You're also going to need dramatically more tanker support. New C-17s & KC-30 are what? 150 million each? Price is ballooning.

I also think it's safe to say that if hundreds of millions of Americans are dead, there is going to be NO logistical support or much of an airforce left.

And with the F-35, F-22 you're likely to obliterate any countries Air Force that presently exists today & in near future. All the Russians have is Mig-29SMT / Su-27SM. India? MKI, Mig-35 & Mig-27. China? J-10, J-11, F-17, Flankers. Is that enough of a 'threat' to buy substantially more aircraft & logistics despite the current plan will outclass them all? I sure don't think so.

Basically that means that the F-22 is a souped up F-15 with a massive thrust advantage and thrust vectoring with the YF-23 being the closest to a engineering marvel of the three aircraft.

Wouldn't the F-23 be a souped up F-15 with a massive thrust advantage, slightly better RF stealth (compared with F-22), & significant IR stealth? I always thought the F-23 was rejected because it was more risky of the two and needed a more costly redesign. I've heard it carried less fuel, less weapons & the compressor blades could be exposed from certain angles...

[edit on 28/8/2008 by C0bzz]

Originally posted by StellarX
According to this , and other sources, the YF-23 were capable of achieving very nearly the same AOA as the F-22 WITHOUT thrust vectoring. Since i am no engineer ( and this guy claims to be) you migth be better able to judge it's accuracy.

Sorry, but that is simply incorrect.

The F-22 can retain complete controllability at sustained AoAs of 60 degrees and higher.


When your at stupidly high AoA - you've little in the way of useable airflow, and need the leverage provided by TVC - even if only to trim the aircraft and allow your control surfaces to move themselves into an optimal neutral position to provide control authority for when the pilot requests manouvres.


The only other aircraft to have similar levels of controllability all have TVC - MiG-35, X-31, F-16 MATV or F-15 ACTIVE to name a few.

Originally posted by StellarX
Which is entirely a function of it's vectored thrust, right?

No, not for roll... well not directly anyway. The F-22 and F-15's engines are too close to be used for roll coupling (unlike say, the Su-30 MKI)

But the TVC will be used to trim the aircraft longitudinally so the elevators and ailerons can be used in conjunction to provide maximum possible roll moment. However, that doesn't begin to happen until higher Mach numbers, where the F-22 already has a substantial lead over the F-15.

Originally posted by StellarX
Neither were the F-22 until a few years ago. I fail to understand why you wish to make the distinction when the F-15 active could have been in service ages ago without the additional expenditure of tens of billions of dollars?

My original statement was:

The F-22 is far and away the most manouverable aircraft in service right now.

I have already pointed out things like roll control where the F-22 is ahead of the F-15 which is not directly influenced by TVC.

Originally posted by StellarX
In practice, yes, and i should have said the F-22 flight characteristics would not have been massively superior to a evolutionary design of a F-15 active type plane by virtue of the very same physics that allows the very capable P&W F119's to give it a thrust to weight advantage and super cruise with the addition of the larger fuel stores in a bigger aircraft. The F-22 is a substantial step over the F-15C by virtue of it having the 'upgrades' and technologies that were never implemented on the basic F-15 airframe.

So the bigger airframe can outmanouvre, out gun and out last the smaller one...

And you insist it is not because it is simply better?

Originally posted by StellarX
Again, presuming it's all accurate and 'impossible to copy in the YF-23, this is not because the F-22 is built from alien metals but due to the very mundane fact that it has very powerful engines ( Each with twice the dry thrust of the standard F-15C P&W ) giving it twice the thrust while only being around 30% heavier with 'standard' load out. Fact is the F-22's empty weight is only two tons more than the F-15C's thus giving it a rather large advantage in a engagement where it has burnt half it's rather larger fuel stores. As Riccioni attempts to explain this is a matter of physics rather than engineering prowess to the tune of thirty billion dollars.

See that in bold.

Along with internal stores and improved aerodynamics - thats the engineering prowess that gets you those advantages.


If fighter aircraft were all about engine power, then the Foxbat is the best thing ever.

Originally posted by StellarX
The YF -23 is admitted to being very nearly as maneuverable as the F-22 without the usage of any thrust vectoring technology.

Where it was tested... in the lower end of the flight envelope - where TVC is not so much an issue.

The YF-22 got through a much more complete Dem/Val program than the YF-23.


Quantitative data on the YF-23 is very hard to find, only qualitative statements.

Originally posted by StellarX
Basically that means that the F-22 is a souped up F-15 with a massive thrust advantage and thrust vectoring with the YF-23 being the closest to a engineering marvel of the three aircraft.

You keep believing that. Your very wrong.

Originally posted by C0bzz
Pogo report was rather outdated / since mostly proven wrong.

Everest E. Riccioni
Col. USAF, Ret.
Revised August 10, 2000
www.pogo.org...

Not new and in my reading still quite accurate?

Perhaps they bought the expensive F-22 because it's cheaper yet more capable than 62 billion dollars worth of updated F-15s?

Isn't the question rather 'capable of what'? I mean what would 180 F-22's do better than 1000 - 2000 F-15's with LPI's, thrust vectoring , very modern engines and generally updated avionics and electronics? Which air force would they 'dominate' more with 180 F-22's than with a additional one thousand thrust vectoring F-15's and 100 odd extra tankers to offset their slightly smaller legs?

Operating costs are lower, logistics costs are lower, training costs are lower, less people in harms way... et cetera...

Operating costs are projected to be lower ( by virtue of smaller footprints or what do you mean?) in the same way that maintenance is projected to be lower due to having learnt from past experience. I don't see why newly manufactured F-15 actives or the like need to be greatly more maintenance intensive per plane than a F-22 or why the very inefficient USAF aircrews ( compared to many NATO allies) can not be trained to the standards in other air forces. As for less people in harms way no one gives a rat's ass about a few hundred pilots when a cold war ground war would have involved tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties per day.

The tactics I've seen devised to conquer the F-22 are, 4 vs 1, with updated Flankers. No such force even comes close to that.

Well the Russians do have enough flankers and Foxhounds to match the F-22 4 to 1. My point is simply that the USAF could have matched those flankers at four to one rates with F-15 active type airframes.

The F-22 does however, act as force multiplyer for existing aircraft / can suppress double digit SAMS.

It does act as a force multiplier in even it's small numbers and what i am suggesting is that it could or would have multiplied it even more if the money were spent elsewhere. As for the claim of 'beating' double digit Sam no one has so far flown combat missions against them so i will presume that the speculation related to 'beating them' will be as accurate as the USAF speculation in general.

No F-15 could even match this capability, unless of course, you want to sacrifice hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment, countless lives, --- NOT acceptable in this day and age.

No F-15 in service can but it could have been different if the F-15 were developed along the same lines as the Su-27. War is in the end all about 'sacrifice' ( what else would you call Vietnam and Korea and even much of the USAF effort in world war two) and attrition and wars of attrition is clearly not something the F-22 were built for. If you want to talk about saving lives you could have taken a F-22 ( current price + development = 340 odd million USD) and instead deployed 50 Abrams tanks with about a hundred million dollars left to keep them serviced and deployed for a good many years. Lets not fool around and suggest that the best way to protect lives is to build horrendously expensive aircraft.

Even if we took that path, and even if there was an enemy that great, I see no reason they couldn't make that many SAMS? F-15 has a huuuge RCS, why have LPI when they can datalink / SAM you?

The LPI is to reduce your own signature when engaging enemy aircraft as per AWACS direction. The F-15 does have a comparatively massive RCS but obviously you still have the same EW aircraft supporting you thus in theory allowing you to get close enough to the Sam complex ( Export versions costs around 150 millions USD per battery) to do damage. It's just not a good thing when the F-22 is even outnumbered, in terms of price, by double digit Sam batteries that each have somewhere between 16 and 64 READY to fire missiles. What's worse is that they have their own LPI engagement radars as well as passive and active search radars and can set up or pack up and be gone in five minutes . These things are not too be trifled with and especially not when they are supported by far cheaper Sam systems that are mobile enough to literally paint the sky and engage targets while moving. It makes sense to not want to fight these things head on but when your countermeasure system starts to cost the same as a navy destroyer you have to know that your risking a a whole boat load of stuff in your attempt at a stealthy approach.

TVC is primarily used for airshow tricks, impressive supersonic pitch rates, low supersonic trim drag... I'd like to see a F-15 go supersonic with stores + dry thrust... not even the -229 can it do that.

Id like to see what a the F-15 airframe can do with P &W's that can give twice the thrust coupled with thrust vectoring. Either way going supersonic, and certainly staying that way, is a largely a function of the fuel fraction and thus not something even a F-15 with the -229 is going to do often . Since i am not familiar with the dimensions of the F119 i will just take a guess and presume that you could equip F-15's with them without breaking the bank to the tune of many billions of dollars provided a new production run of F-15's.

What I'm trying to get at is all these upgrades are likely to dramatically increase cost without adding capability - removing them we eventually we get back to the stock standard F-15 which we have now.... in massive numbers..... which increases long-term cost.... while enemies find a way to defeat the outdated aircraft....

I don't see why many of these systems can not be integrated with modern miniaturization methods at a fraction of the cost inherent in a totally new airframe containing exotic materials and the like. What you say have certainly been the case for the F-16 as so many of these additions are introduced that the plane can't go anywhere carrying much anything thus keeping it from playing the role it could be virtue of desperately trying to keep attrition rates artificially low. If you have no public support or legal mandate this makes a great deal of sense but to presume that the third world war will be won by those who are trying hardest not to lose men and systems is in my opinion ludicrous. Every war is 'high tech' in the respect that one side tries to deploy 'better' equipment to enhance it's capabilities and as before it wont be any guarantee of success.

Why not have F-22 / F-35 which can realistically dominate all threats, while being cheaper, with less logistics, with less support, while putting less people in harms way?

Well if that was all true it would make a great deal of sense. When some work has been done to substantiate a few of those claims then we can easily agree that it makes the most strategic sense.

This is one of the prime reasons we JUMP generation rather than continually update old aircraft.

Where? When?

Imagine what would of happened in Korea if we brought massive numbers of Reno Air Racing P-51s.... or the first Gulf War with.... 5000 Super Sabres with canards, TVC, AMRAAM, AESA..... Even if we won, I'm sure people would be ranting on about how outdated our aircraft were.

That's not fair! The USAF could have easily deployed twenty thousand Super Sabre's in the gulf. Did the USAF leave Europe when Me-262's took to the skies or did the simply build and deploy more Mustangs? Yup.... With reference to the 'outdated' aircraft the idea is to win the wars you are forced to fight ( unlike, Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq and so forth) and to win them no matter how 'uncool' you look doing it.

Btw, sorry for the 500 edits I did.

If that's how long it takes that's how long it takes.

Stellar

what is the price of yf23?

Originally posted by C0bzz
TVC on the F-22 is not asymmetric. Pitch only - it doesn't help roll. Like I said TVC on the F-22 is primarily for low supersonic trim drag & high pitch rates. F-15, clean, with F100-PW-229, dry, have trouble getting supersonic -

I don't understand( maybe because i'm simply ignorant so feel free to explain it in more detail) how that can be the case when a slightly adjusted and striped down eagle set so many to altitude records at the time? Why are Eagle's quoted as being mach two capable ( presumably without external stores)? Who said anything about dry thrust any ways when the F-22 can according to it's builders only do about 1/4 out of a 800 odd km , admittedly suspiciously short, combat range at supersonic speeds? You don't think the F-15 can do that with the more efficient -229's? The F-22 is larger ( weight) by the same margin it's internal fuel capacity is increased so beside for a supposedly far less efficient design , according to you, what is going to make the F-15 such a total clunker with twice the dry thrust and the same fuel fraction?

so minus low speed handling (whose usefulness is debatable), TVC is useless.

TVC? Waste of time on F-15.

2 D thrust vectoring is never useless as it allows for trim thus reducing drag.

'Cause LPI to the extent the F-22 takes it requires AESA -, which is still maturing now. You're unlikely to get the LPI capability anywhere close to the F-22 until relatively recently.

There have been AESA equipped F-15's for some time now and their development were not dependent on the F-22 program.

If you put AESA on unstealthy airframe then there's no reason a new airforce could not datalink you... might as well go PESA instead... cheaper.

The whole point of AESA and similar developments is to reduce the useful information the enemy can gain about by means of your radar emissions. They do not have to be coupled to stealthy aircraft to give large advantages.

You're going to need far more fuel - then you've got a practically whole new aircraft much like the Super Hornet - not exactly cheap. Isn't a F-22 without VLO pretty much exactly what you're proposing?

No. I am talking about a evolutionary design of the same F-15C/D models that cost you 30 odd million dollars each in 1998. If you want to double that cost for making the alterations that would allow for -229's and AESA and thrust vectoring that's fine with me. Since the F-22 isn't VLO you can accuse me of talking about a similar airplane to the F-22, a F-15 basically, sans the tens of billions of dollars spent to make it ' stealthy' in the forward aspect.

To run a war, you're firstly going to need public support.

No you don't as world 'leaders' have proved time and time again for millenia. Bush proved it twice in less than three years so please sell that nonsense elsewhere! If you want to argue that you need to reduce casualties as much as humanly possible to fight aggressive wars for personal against nations that never attacked you , threatened to attack you or have any real known capacity to endanger you then yes, you may need to do all those things to maintain your public support levels at somewhere around 10% presuming you control the media and can intimidate the rest of the world to stay out of it.

You're not going to get support when your brand new fighter jets get shot down in a 3rd world nation.

You don't get any support for fighting third word nations that never attacked you. When third world nations really do attack you overtly such as at Pearl harbor you basically need to beat back the volunteers from swamping the recruitment offices presuming that you managed to obscure the fact that you created a embargo that would result in said other country's industry grinding to a halt shortly.

The F-22 needs less airlift support than the current F-15C - if you're deploying large amounts of Super Eagles you need additional airlift capability, something we do not presently have - they're already stretched thin.

You don't need airlift capacity if your defending your own shores from hostile aircraft. Don't burden me or the F-15 with the added demands of imperialist.

You're also going to need dramatically more tanker support. New C-17s & KC-30 are what? 150 million each? Price is ballooning.

You only need dramatically more tanker support if you wish to stage aggressive operations far from home soil or deep in enemy airspace. Since such can be accomplished with ballistic and cruise missiles i'm not convinced. Either way tankers can be built for a fraction of that cost if your not trying to stimulate industries to make them more profitable than rival producers overseas. Basically your funding Boeing's 'dreamliner' and 747's production lines by massive 'military' cash infusions. I'm not fooled but i suppose many are.

Between 1993 and 2003, the amount of KC-135 depot maintenance work doubled, and the overhaul cost per aircraft tripled.[12] In 1996 it cost $8,400 per flight hour for the KC-135, and in 2002 this had grown to $11,000. The Air Force’s 15-year cost estimates project further significant growth through fiscal year 2017. For example, operations and support costs for the KC-135 fleet are estimated to grow from about $2.2 billion in fiscal year 2003 to $5.1 billion (2003 dollars) in fiscal year 2017, an increase of $2.9 billion, or over 130 percent, which represents an annual growth rate of about 6.2 percent.[13]

The USAF has decided to replace the KC-135 fleet. However, since there are over 500 KC-135 these planes will be replaced gradually, with the first batch of about 100 aircraft to be replaced in the current buy. The effort to replace the KC-135 has been marked by intense controversy.

Initially the first batch of replacement planes was to be an air tanker version of the Boeing 767, leased from Boeing. In 2003, this was changed to contract where the Air Force would purchase 80 KC-767 aircraft and lease 20 more.[14] In December 2003, the Pentagon froze the contract and in January 2006, the KC-767 contract was canceled. This followed public revelations of corruption in how the contract was awarded, as well as controversy regarding the original leasing rather than outright purchase agreement. This was also designed to be a cost-cutting measure and is part of a larger reorganization and redefinition of the Air Force's mission that includes the retirement of the E-4B fleet, the cancellation of the Boeing 767-based E-10 MC2A program, as well as the elimination of all but 58 B-52 Stratofortresses. Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld stated that this move will in no way impair the Air Force's ability to deliver the mission of the KC-767, which will be accomplished by continuing upgrades to the KC-135 and KC-10 Extender fleet.

en.wikipedia.org...

Tankers are exceedingly cheap as compared to fighter aircraft and they are relatively easily configured for at least partial dual usage for cargo transportation. Lets not pretend that the F-22 will be any less fuel hunger ( legs as short as that of the F-15 if you would believe the official data) than the F-15 so basically the only reduction can and will come from having to serve far fewer planes that are supposedly massively superior to F-15's in other regards.

I also think it's safe to say that if hundreds of millions of Americans are dead, there is going to be NO logistical support or much of an airforce left.

And that's where you are utterly wrong. That's the point where you make fighters no matter the human cost and lose them by the hundreds on a weekly basis. The USAF/AAF sustained 90 thousand killed and kept going in the second world war and suffered not insignificant attrition in Korea and Vietnam. To suggest that Americans won't sign up to fight, and die like people all over the world, when their country is actually under attack is just uninformed. Both the Swiss, North Koreans and Russians have shown that you can take your air forces underground and protect yourself very well from all but direct nuclear hits. A nuclear exchange will not prevent a well organized and prepared country from emerging from their bunkers and fighting on having sustained but a small percentage ( 4-5%, estimate for USSR in the 80's) of casualties.

Continued

And with the F-35, F-22 you're likely to obliterate any countries Air Force that presently exists today & in near future. All the Russians have is Mig-29SMT / Su-27SM. India? MKI, Mig-35 & Mig-27. China? J-10, J-11, F-17, Flankers. Is that enough of a 'threat' to buy substantially more aircraft & logistics despite the current plan will outclass them all? I sure don't think so.

That is not my point. My point has always been that the US could deploy sufficient firepower to fight any one of these nations ( legacy fighters with evolutionary technology upgrades; when the Russians start building hundreds of tanker aircraft then it may be time to get worried) and still retain a very large proportion of the funds invested in the F-22 and F-35 programs. Such funds can be invested towards a national ABM defense ( The current Russian ABM/SAM defense network, in terms batteries deployed, probably has a export value of less than 50 billion dollars which is about a sixth of the cost of the JSF program. Such defenses will probably be sufficient to blunt all but a all out nuclear strikes from Russia. Fact is the US can become exceedingly well defended with a shelter ( with food stocks for a year, filtration/sanitation ) under every house and national emergency supplies ( trucks, food, strategic supplies etc) tens of thousands ABM missiles or similar direct energy weapons for less than the JSF will eventually cost.

The expenditure on the war in Iraq and on programs such as the JSF and F-22 makes a mockery of claim that this is being done to protect US citizens from 'terror' when that terror is created by disarming Americans at home so that the empire can fight for profit elsewhere.

Wouldn't the F-23 be a souped up F-15 with a massive thrust advantage, slightly better RF stealth (compared with F-22), & significant IR stealth? I always thought the F-23 was rejected because it was more risky of the two and needed a more costly redesign. I've heard it carried less fuel, less weapons & the compressor blades could be exposed from certain angles...

The YF-23 were very similar in basic performance but could apparently attain a higher max speed ( not sure if this was demonstrated or just 'proved'), were further ranging and could accommodate a slightly larger payload.According to all sources it was also altogether more stealthy in all aspects against the common IR/Radar tracking. The YF-23 and F-22 thus both exceeded the performance requirements ( if not the weight demands which had been adjusted for both as the program advanced) so it largely came down to politics and projected costs where it was apparently decided that Lockheed had a better record and could deliver on time and on budget. Since Northrop were already sufficient employed elsewhere C-17, F/A-18 and B-2 this might simply have been done to keep the aero industrial base occupied and diversified.

Stellar

Originally posted by kilcoo316
Sorry, but that is simply incorrect.
The F-22 can retain complete controllability at sustained AoAs of 60 degrees and higher.
When your at stupidly high AoA - you've little in the way of useable airflow, and need the leverage provided by TVC - even if only to trim the aircraft and allow your control surfaces to move themselves into an optimal neutral position to provide control authority for when the pilot requests manouvres.

Well here is a more source like source which you may use to verify or at least reconsider. As widely admitted that F-22 were not more manouverable by any wide margin so it would be surprising if the AOA difference were in fact as large as your suggesting.

The two YF-23As that were built were more like bare-bones demonstrators than true prototypes. In order to save money, the main landing gear members were modified F-18 components and the nose gear was from an F-15. The cockpit was from an F-15, and big-screen monitors were not fitted. Northrop had not redesigned the aft end of the aircraft when the USAF dropped the thrust-reversal requirement, and the rear fuselage of the prototypes was broader and deeper than that planned for production machines. The prototypes did not have any radar, nor did it have any of the complex electronics that would have been required on a production aircraft. Northrop/McDonnell Douglas did built a complete prototype avionics system which was test flown in Westinghouse's BAC-111. Northrop did not plan to do high-angle of attack maneuvers with the prototype, nor did it intend to fire any missiles. However, wind tunnel tests at NASA Langley showed that the aircraft could perform tail slides and had no angle of attack limits and could self-recover from any spin except in those situations when the weapons doors were open.

home.att.net...

The only other aircraft to have similar levels of controllability all have TVC - MiG-35, X-31, F-16 MATV or F-15 ACTIVE to name a few.

And the YF-23.

No, not for roll... well not directly anyway. The F-22 and F-15's engines are too close to be used for roll coupling (unlike say, the Su-30 MKI)
But the TVC will be used to trim the aircraft longitudinally so the elevators and ailerons can be used in conjunction to provide maximum possible roll moment. However, that doesn't begin to happen until higher Mach numbers, where the F-22 already has a substantial lead over the F-15.

Substansial lead how? Can you check my response to Cobbz and help me to understand the aspects of the F-15 aerodynamics/planform that makes high speed flight and manouvering so completely different?

have already pointed out things like roll control where the F-22 is ahead of the F-15 which is not directly influenced by TVC.

If you want fast turning aircraft build F-16's? Are we making a long range hostile airspace penetrating interceptor or a dogfighter? Don't you understand that i am just inquirng as to the priorirties when all these things suddenly become 'important' when it's compared to the F-15 but not so when the YF-23 emulated the F-22's TVC performance ( without TVC) thus proving your point as well as it does mine?

So the bigger airframe can outmanouvre, out gun and out last the smaller one...
And you insist it is not because it is simply better?

Yes i do because all those performances are a function of design with flight performances margins copied in the far, far cheaper modernized Su-27 line of aircraft. Sure there is novelty but it's mostly required to regain the performance margins lost due to the demands made by in terms of high stealth. Considering what it cost to manage this manouverability at that size class i'm not overly impressed but admittedly that may be my ignorance speaking.

See that in bold.
Along with internal stores and improved aerodynamics - thats the engineering prowess that gets you those advantages.
If fighter aircraft were all about engine power, then the Foxbat is the best thing ever.

Yes well my mistake. That was the empty weight of the dem/val model and the current operational model is in fact " 19,700 kg" which is 7 tons heavier than the F-15C at 12,700 kg and five tons heavier than the test versions. As you can see the F-22 of then isn't much like the one currently in operation with it's internal fuel significantly being reduced from around 25 000 pounds to 18 000. The Foxbat isn't the isn't the best thing ever but it sure goes far, fast

Where it was tested... in the lower end of the flight envelope - where TVC is not so much an issue.
The YF-22 got through a much more complete Dem/Val program than the YF-23.
Quantitative data on the YF-23 is very hard to find, only qualitative statements.

In fact both exceeded the generously adjusted specs set for the dem/val. If you have no reason to suspect that the performance margins exceeded by both were in fact just for low altitude tests.so if you do please post it.

You keep believing that. Your very wrong.

And until i become either better informed myself or you can provide your sources it will keep believing, rightly or wrongly, what i currently do.

Thanks
Stellar

Not new and in my reading still quite accurate?

Perhaps for some other time in a new thread.

Isn't the question rather 'capable of what'? I mean what would 180 F-22's do better than 1000 - 2000 F-15's with LPI's, thrust vectoring , very modern engines and generally updated avionics and electronics? Which air force would they 'dominate' more with 180 F-22's than with a additional one thousand thrust vectoring F-15's and 100 odd extra tankers to offset their slightly smaller legs?

Well first of all, how are you going to get 1000 - 2000 upgraded F-15s. In 1998 the cost of the F-15C was a cheap 29.9 million dollar aircraft. The F-22 was 339 for $64.2B or 189 million dollars per aircraft. If you think it should be been cancelled on these terms alone then fine, I don't disagree. Now, the figure is closer to $108.2 million for an F-15E Strike Eagle, & 338.8 for the F-22 (FY06). You may be abled to field 750 updated F-15, at best.

Moreover, that's not the point. The job of the USAF is to minimize risk for the United States & its interests. Now, the real world, for a given budget, would it be more risky to send in volleys of F-15s or a few F-22s, when attacking a third or second world nation perhaps with a bunch of S-300 or S-400? In this scenario, what would 1000 - 2000....750.....F-15s offer?

Operating costs are projected to be lower ( by virtue of smaller footprints or what do you mean?) in the same way that maintenance is projected to be lower due to having learnt from past experience. I don't see why newly manufactured F-15 actives or the like need to be greatly more maintenance intensive per plane than a F-22 or why the very inefficient USAF aircrews ( compared to many NATO allies) can not be trained to the standards in other air forces.

The block 10/15 F-16 started out with a unscheduled Maintenance Man-Hours per Flight Hour (MMH/FH) of 5.9, which was reduced to 4.5 with the Block 50/52. F-15 to F-22 had similar margins with cargo space. If you get 1000 - 2000 F-15 then you're going to need some drastic changes in the design of the aircraft, to reduce footprint by...say... 70%? That's likely not good enough considering you're going to be airlifting your entire war machine... currently they are stretched thin. 70%, do you think that's possible? It may be, F-35 is supposed to be:

Enhanced Mobility
• 73% Less Logistics Footprint (Volume)
• 43% Fewer Pallets for
30-Day Deployment
• 47% Less Logistics Footprint (Weight)

norway.usembassy.gov...

But it's adding price & reducing your gap...

As for less people in harms way no one gives a rat's ass about a few hundred pilots when a cold war ground war would have involved tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties per day.

I'm not talking about a cold war ground war. More, a median of all the conflicts the USAF is likely to be involved in. Let's take Q flight in the first gulf war for example, conventional jets were banned from flying over Baghdad after a few F-16s were shot down. F-117 only... let's say the F-117 never existed. Would it be in Americas best interest to let a few dosen F-16s be shot down, or, allow a few hundred soldiers die? As gruesome as it sounds, nobody gives a rats ass about a few people on the ground.

Well the Russians do have enough flankers and Foxhounds to match the F-22 4 to 1. My point is simply that the USAF could have matched those flankers at four to one rates with F-15 active type airframes.

We have enough F-16s, F-15s, F-22s,& F18s to outnumber the Russian airforce 4 to 1.

As for the claim of 'beating' double digit Sam no one has so far flown combat missions against them so i will presume that the speculation related to 'beating them' will be as accurate as the USAF speculation in general.

Ok, and I'll presume all speculation regarding the effectiveness of double digit SAMS as accurate as all speculation about Russian anti-stealth claims & mythical Russian weapons like microwave tipped KS-172.

It does act as a force multiplier in even it's small numbers and what i am suggesting is that it could or would have multiplied it even more if the money were spent elsewhere.

Like I said I think the F-22 is too expensive so I don't disagree on this point.

No F-15 in service can but it could have been different if the F-15 were developed along the same lines as the Su-27. War is in the end all about 'sacrifice' ( what else would you call Vietnam and Korea and even much of the USAF effort in world war two) and attrition and wars of attrition is clearly not something the F-22 were built for.

USAF is unlikely to fight an attrition war again, so I don't see use discussing it.

If you want to talk about saving lives you could have taken a F-22 ( current price + development = 340 odd million USD) and instead deployed 50 Abrams tanks with about a hundred million dollars left to keep them serviced and deployed for a good many years. Lets not fool around and suggest that the best way to protect lives is to build horrendously expensive aircraft.

Fair point and I don't disagree (fully). Now... priorities. It is a better investement to get a jet to bomb the crap out of a third word nation with little or no losses, or... a bunch of Abrams that would likely never see combat. Which one minimizes risk to USA national interests? Which one retains the USAs strike capabilities?

The LPI is to reduce your own signature when engaging enemy aircraft as per AWACS direction.

Just for clarification, every aircraft in the sky right now has LPI - it's done using techniques such as frequency modulation. AESA takes it a step further allowing groups of Transmit / Receive modules to transmit independantly of one another - on there own, independant, frequency. It shall be noted this has significant range penalty. They all can go quiet and be cued by AWACS / AEW&C.

What's worse is that they have their own LPI engagement radars as well as passive and active search radars and can set up or pack up and be gone in five minutes

Do you mean datalinking? Because I am unaware any SAM system had LPI techniques - most are PESA - easy to detect even with LPI techniques.

These things are not too be trifled with and especially not when they are supported by far cheaper Sam systems that are mobile enough to literally paint the sky and engage targets while moving. It makes sense to not want to fight these things head on but when your countermeasure system starts to cost the same as a navy destroyer you have to know that your risking a a whole boat load of stuff in your attempt at a stealthy approach.

They do outnumber the F-22s on price, yes. They do not, I repeat, they do NOT, outnumber the entire airforce. With the F-22 & AN/APG-77v1, you can paint an image of the ground from 120km+ away. Most AESA radars have this capability, and IF the F-35 is delivered as it is supposed to, we will have over 2000 aircraft that can paint a 20cm resolution image of the ground from 120km out, sharing the information with eachother & then the aircraft in the right position can SDB, JASSM, or JSOW the threat. EOTS, DAS, AESA, in theory, SHOULD, in theory, detect missile launches. These are truely forces which should not be trifled with.

The SAR map of a school showed the fence and light posts around a baseball field, along with baselines and the pitcher’s mound.

At Aberdeen, the targets could be seen at up to 80 mi. Within a lineup of eight armored vehicles, a radar SAR map picked out the 155-mm. and 8-in. howitzer barrels with ease. The radar monitored an average of 25-30 aircraft in the area while it was building the map.

After landing, officials provided some details of the F-35’s radar.

The APG-81 on the flying testbed weighs less than 500 lb., it has a mean time between failures of more than 700 hr. (including the processors), and it has a mean time between critical failures of 1,200 hr. (which means the aircraft can’t complete the mission).

“The aperture itself has an MTBF that’s double the flight life of the aircraft,” says Teri Marconi, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of combat avionics systems. “The aperture won’t have to be opened during the lifetime of the airframe.” Company officials predict a 98.7% fault detection accuracy with 0.5 hr. mean time to repair.

The radar has a 129.7-mi. view radius on the BAC 1-11 and by next summer will have a 16 times increase in SAR map size.

integrator.hanscom.af.mil...

Block 30 F-22 are being delivered now. Includes the AN/APG-77 radar which includes SAR developed by other progammes including AN/APG-81.

It makes sense to not want to fight these things head on but when your countermeasure system starts to cost the same as a navy destroyer you have to know that your risking a a whole boat load of stuff in your attempt at a stealthy approach.

While your proposal may have these same advantages we're not risking everything in the same boat. We have phenominal sensor suites, & stand-off munitions.

Id like to see what a the F-15 airframe can do with P &W's that can give twice the thrust coupled with thrust vectoring. Either way going supersonic, and certainly staying that way, is a largely a function of the fuel fraction and thus not something even a F-15 with the -229 is going to do often . Since i am not familiar with the dimensions of the F119 i will just take a guess and presume that you could equip F-15's with them without breaking the bank to the tune of many billions of dollars provided a new production run of F-15's.

In Australia we had proposals for a modified F-111 re-engined with F-119 engines. They currently have the TF-30 & the replacement for the TF-30 was the GE-F110 - which powers the F-15.

It might indeed be possible, but in a tactical fighter aircraft changing the engines is not a simple thing. A couple of different engines were proposed in some of those options. The one out of the F22, to my understanding, is not directly compatible with the F111 because of the way it mounts things like generators and hydraulic units and so on. That would essentially require a substantial redesign of the air frame-engine combination, and I think that is a very big deal. There are other engines, such as the GEF101, which probably offer some greater compatibility. For example, the GEF101 is the current engine being delivered in the F15 and F16. It was designed as a replacement for the TF30, so it is possible to use it.

www.aph.gov.au...

That is on 25 F-111s, so it may be diferant for a whole new built of F-15 - but you'll still have to pay to develop a fitting engine. Keep in mind the -229 was developed from the F119.

I don't see why many of these systems can not be integrated with modern miniaturization methods at a fraction of the cost inherent in a totally new airframe containing exotic materials and the like.

Perhaps, but you still have to develop these systems in the first place - systems which have inflated the F-22 price.

What you say have certainly been the case for the F-16 as so many of these additions are introduced that the plane can't go anywhere carrying much anything thus keeping it from playing the role it could be virtue of desperately trying to keep attrition rates artificially low. If you have no public support or legal mandate this makes a great deal of sense but to presume that the third world war will be won by those who are trying hardest not to lose men and systems is in my opinion ludicrous.

Range of the F-16 has gone up as has payload & sensor capability, while maintainence has gone down - likely extremely useful programmes as shown during the Gulf Wars. Should they of cancelled these programmes,and in the name of attrition for WW3 continued building a few thousand more AMRAAM incapable F-16s? My point was that adding these things, like TVC, to an F-15, may be infact a useless 'investment', as I'll discuss bellow.

Every war is 'high tech' in the respect that one side tries to deploy 'better' equipment to enhance it's capabilities and as before it wont be any guarantee of success.

Perhaps in world wars. But in a war they're actually likely to fight in, like Iran, or perhaps, Taiwan, if they have a numerical and technological advantage, like the USA does, then they're almost guaranteed success. Do we need to counter the (non-existant) threat of WW3, or wars that may actaully happen?

Where? When?

Perhaps I used the wrong wording. My point was the US doesn't continually upgrade generations (i.e. 4.5 generation, Eurofighter). Any guess which is more capable at invading countries...Eurofighter or JSF (At say, 83 million for the F-35, THEN YEAR USD, &, 118.6 million for tranche 2)...? Or F-35 vs F-15E at 108.2 million 2006 USD?

That's not fair! The USAF could have easily deployed twenty thousand Super Sabre's in the gulf. Did the USAF leave Europe when Me-262's took to the skies or did the simply build and deploy more Mustangs? Yup.... With reference to the 'outdated' aircraft the idea is to win the wars you are forced to fight ( unlike, Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq and so forth) and to win them no matter how 'uncool' you look doing it.

That was a world war scenario which we are not faced with - now, the USA and its allies, has a massive technological and for the most part numerical advantage. We have a choice to build these aircraft, they did not. Furthermore, the US likely did a risk analysis programme - build super expensive aircraft designed to fight wars that are in the realm of possiblity, i.e. proxy wars, or, build for the the non-existant attrition war with huge numbers of cheaper aircraft, or, a compomise. I suspect it was a compromise, perhaps more towards the earlier proposal.



[edit on 16/9/2008 by C0bzz]

I don't understand( maybe because i'm simply ignorant so feel free to explain it in more detail) how that can be the case when a slightly adjusted and striped down eagle set so many to altitude records at the time? Who said anything about dry thrust any ways when the F-22 can according to it's builders only do about 1/4 out of a 800 odd km , admittedly suspiciously short, combat range at supersonic speeds? You don't think the F-15 can do that with the more efficient -229's?

Let me start of by stating the obvious, the F-15 cannot, or just barely, supercruise while on a clean F-15, - It must use burners. So, in a best case scenario where the aerodynamics of the F-22 & F-15 are the same, with similar fuel fraction, as Riccioni suggests, then it's only logical the 'dry' F119 / F-22 will be more efficient, particularly as it's designed from the outset for 'supercruise' on dry thrust. Afterburners typically double TSFC, or even triple TSFC. F-100 has time limits on afterburners. Furthermore, if you load external munitions you mess up the area ruling which ruins performance.

Pratt Whitney F100-PW-229 F-15E/I/S, F-16C/D DRY: 17,800 WET: 29,100 DRY SFC 0.726 WET SFC 2.060

www.jet-engine.net...

Even if you half the delta the F-22 lands up top, by a significant margin.

That saves us a lot of gas and opens up a whole host of things when you start talking about dropping bombs. You can imagine if you are 60,000 feet doing mach 1.9 (about 1,400 mph) and these bombs are flying out of your airplane, the swath of hell you can produce going through a country saying "I'll take that target, and that target."

aimpoints.hq.af.mil...

The F119 engine develops more than twice the thrust of current engines under supersonic conditions and more thrust without afterburner than conventional engines with afterburner.

The process, called afterburner, gives the aircraft a rocket-like boost as the fuel ignites in the exhaust chamber. The tradeoff is higher fuel consumption, a greater amount of heat and consequently, greater visibility to the enemy.

www.globalsecurity.org...

Level acceleration in military power or less is sprightly at all altitudes but downright astounding in full afterburner. I wish I could state some acceleration times, but they remain classified.

...

Accelerating through Mach in military power in the Raptor feels similar to accelerating in full afterburner in an F-15. The Raptor accelerates in full afterburner in one continuous-speed feed. A slight buffet occurs between about Mach 0.97 and 1.08. After that point and to max speed, the aircraft accelerates smoothly and continuously.

...

The best seat in the house for supercruise is from a chase F-16 or F-15. Remember, we fly both these chase jets with just a centerline fuel tank to give them a fighting chance to play with the Raptor. Still, the F-22 usually leaves these aerodynamically “slick” chase airplanes in the dust. The F100-110, -129, and -229-powered F-16s don’t fall very far behind the Raptor in the initial acceleration through Mach. But the race is really no contest at the higher Mach numbers and once on cruise conditions. Nothing can sustain supersonic conditions with the persistence of a Raptor. Load those chase F-16s and F-15s with combat-representative stores and they would not stay with the Raptor during acceleration or sustained cruise.

...

Aerodynamics and overall drag are at a minimum near the design speed of 1.5 Mach at 40,000 feet.

www.codeonemagazine.com...

Same for F-15? I don't think so.

The F-22 is larger ( weight) by the same margin it's internal fuel capacity is increased so beside for a supposedly far less efficient design , according to you, what is going to make the F-15 such a total clunker with twice the dry thrust and the same fuel fraction?

F-15 has relatively similar dimensions as the F-22. It is significantly heavier, but is drag THAT much higher than the F-15? Remember you have to load ordinance onto the outside of the F-15. Is the differance really that big? Regarding fuel capacity, not fuel fraction, the F-15 carries 3 1/2 tons less fuel. F-119 was designed from the outset for the F-22, not the smaller F-15, a similar effect would be pairing GE-90 to the 737. Same fuel fraction with either engine... right? You could add external or conformal tanks to the F-15, but they destroy area ruling principles so supersonic performance could be reduced.

Picture here

2 D thrust vectoring is never useless as it allows for trim thus reducing drag.

No, it does not.

Both the F-15 and F-22 are unstable aircraft which means there is no trim drag - both the wings and elevators are producing lift. At supersonic speeds the centre of pressure shifts aft, turning the aircraft into a stable one again - requiring the aircraft some up elevator pushing the tail of the aircraft down, creating drag. Unless you're going supersonic often then it's pointless. Furthermore, TVC minimises the loads on the elevator - the F-22 for example has 40% increased pitch rates when supersonic, over non-TVC.

There have been AESA equipped F-15's for some time now and their development were not dependent on the F-22 program.

Pioneering with AESA was the AN/APG-77 fitted on a 757 testbed in 1997. Developers? Northrop Grumman & Raytheon. Raytheon designed the APG/APG-63(2), put on the F-15 in / around 1999. Given the AN/APG-63(3) is a (2) with software from the AN/APG-79 on the Super Hornet, & AN/APG-81 was developed from AN/APG-77, it's extremely improbable if not impossible there development were not tied.

The whole point of AESA and similar developments is to reduce the useful information the enemy can gain about by means of your radar emissions. They do not have to be coupled to stealthy aircraft to give large advantages.

Correct, but if they can get a significant radar return they're likely to I.D & IFF the aircraft - AN/APG-63 on the F-15 could I.D aircraft. This is becoming increasingly true & more capable in the future.

The new generation of active, electronically scanned array (AESA) sensors can detect small, distant targets with far more detail than a cockpit display can reproduce. Yet, advanced processing of radar returns can reveal those clues with the clarity needed for instantaneous identification of objects that could otherwise baffle aircrews.

...

“Green squares are target detections, the first contact,” Eide says. “Hit it a couple of times [with the AESA’s radar beam] and it turns orange. You’ll immediately know what it is and where it’s going.” But more importantly, “hovering on [or prolonging the observation of] a target produces specialized, pop-up target parameters” that were absent from the display for this flight. The tactical operator on the aircraft may use the information, but “data pulled off the radar [also] can be integrated with information from other mission system to help with faster, more accurate target recognition, for example.”

While Northrop Grumman officials will not discuss the specialized clues, specialists say they include engine vibrations, infrared signatures, the movement of manual radars inside radomes, identifiable reflections from specific radars and a large range of electronic emissions.

integrator.hanscom.af.mil...

Why can't this technology be integrated with SAMS?

[edit on 16/9/2008 by C0bzz]

No. I am talking about a evolutionary design of the same F-15C/D models that cost you 30 odd million dollars each in 1998. If you want to double that cost for making the alterations that would allow for -229's and AESA and thrust vectoring that's fine with me.

Well the delta between the F-22 / F-15 is far smaller than you have been led to beleive, furthermore, the modifications / upgrades you're talking about firstly, not all they're cracked up to be, and secondly, likely to dramatically increase price.

Since the F-22 isn't VLO you can accuse me of talking about a similar airplane to the F-22, a F-15 basically, sans the tens of billions of dollars spent to make it ' stealthy' in the forward aspect.

And that disregards the clear avionic, sensor, kenematic, advantage the F-22 has - which is truely head and shoulders above the F-15, unless you add technology that was designed and included in the F-22 development cost. If you don't think the F-22 is VLO, that's fine with me. Not a single reputable defense analyst agrees. Furthermore, we don't know, it is classified, people who DO know call it VLO. Therefore, I call it VLO.

If you want to argue that you need to reduce casualties as much as humanly possible to fight aggressive wars for personal against nations that never attacked you , threatened to attack you or have any real known capacity to endanger you then yes, you may need to do all those things to maintain your public support levels at somewhere around 10% presuming you control the media and can intimidate the rest of the world to stay out of it.

Glad you agree with me?

You don't get any support for fighting third word nations that never attacked you.

Yes, you do.

By February 2003, 74% of Americans supported taking military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power

en.wikipedia.org...

You don't need airlift capacity if your defending your own shores from hostile aircraft. Don't burden me or the F-15 with the added demands of imperialist.

Since when is America going to be defending its own shores from hostile aircraft?

Either way tankers can be built for a fraction of that cost if your not trying to stimulate industries to make them more profitable than rival producers overseas. Basically your funding Boeing's 'dreamliner' and 747's production lines by massive 'military' cash infusions. I'm not fooled but i suppose many are.

Tankers are exceedingly cheap as compared to fighter aircraft and they are relatively easily configured for at least partial dual usage for cargo transportation.

And is America going to procure weapons like they are and have, or your way?

You only need dramatically more tanker support if you wish to stage aggressive operations far from home soil or deep in enemy airspace.

Firstly, you need tankers to get your airforce to the other side of the planet. Tankers have proved there worth in real operations. Ballistic missiles are not used in every war, even significant ones. Cruise missiles... ok.

And that's where you are utterly wrong. That's the point where you make fighters no matter the human cost and lose them by the hundreds on a weekly basis. The USAF/AAF sustained 90 thousand killed and kept going in the second world war and suffered not insignificant attrition in Korea and Vietnam. To suggest that Americans won't sign up to fight, and die like people all over the world, when their country is actually under attack is just uninformed. Both the Swiss, North Koreans and Russians have shown that you can take your air forces underground and protect yourself very well from all but direct nuclear hits. A nuclear exchange will not prevent a well organized and prepared country from emerging from their bunkers and fighting on having sustained but a small percentage ( 4-5%, estimate for USSR in the 80's) of casualties.

I know. I restore World War two aircraft, they can more or less be made in your garage. F-15s are not World War two aircraft - to suggest that when your industrial base is destroyed, F-15s are going to spring out of the ground, is what I call uninformed. Neither happened during World War 2, to the Americans or even the British.

A nuclear exchange will not prevent a well organized and prepared country from emerging from their bunkers and fighting on having sustained but a small percentage ( 4-5%, estimate for USSR in the 80's) of casualties.

If 95% of a county has been destroyed, it's not exactly high on your priority list to round up the remaining 5% of people to build a bunch of airplanes to fight an enemy ten thousand miles away. Furthermore, a Nuclear war is not just a Nuclear exchange. It's likely to be many. US Boomers use tactics which 3-4 months after the way they reign down another few hundred nukes on the enemy. Russians would be similar.

Regardless, I don't really care because that's not my intent. There is no cold war, & Russians are not building hundreds of jets. If it came true, they would likely do exactly what you're saying. But it didn't. Better to fight what exists, eh?

That is not my point.

I've made my point clear.

The expenditure on the war in Iraq and on programs such as the JSF and F-22 makes a mockery of claim that this is being done to protect US citizens from 'terror' when that terror is created by disarming Americans at home so that the empire can fight for profit elsewhere.

so it largely came down to politics and projected costs where it was apparently decided that Lockheed had a better record and could deliver on time and on budget.

I would say the need for the F-22 diminished after the cold war so they just chose whatever was lower risk, that's the job of the USAF procurement, to lower risk.


reply to post by StellarX

Its flight envolope is very large, alphas as high as 60 degrees were demonstrated in the YF-22 program, and some roll maneuverabiliy was retained at that extreme pitch angle. At alphas of 15 degrees and above, the F-22 rolls at least twice as fast as the F-15, and the gap widens until the F-15 hits 30 degrees alpha and can no longer roll at all.

The F-22 is able to get around its envolope quickly. Maximum pitch rates, boosted by vectored thrust, are up to twice as fast as the F-16. Infact, the F-22's pitch rate is so fast that is it inhibited by a soft stop.

link here

Read the previous quotes too. As indicated them, high speed high altitude flight gives an even bigger advantage to the F-22.

I suppose you're going to argue a F-15 with TVC could match this. No. it. Couldn't. An unstable design is not helped by thrust vectoring as long as the design still has airflow / effectiveness. Even pulling 9g's the horizontal stab is still creating lift and TVC would only counteract this. If you don't understand I'll see what I can do.


[edit on 16/9/2008 by C0bzz]

reply to post by kilcoo316


you sid:

The F-22 is far and away the most manouverable aircraft in service right now

i much disagree as the typhoon can out turn the raptor

reply to post by C0bzz


I appreciate the effort you went to in that response and i have 'awarded' you with the possibly very dubious distinction of being one of my 'foe's'. Either way i will get back to you as soon as i can spare all the additional research time talking about aerodynamics will take.

Thanks again.

Stellar

reply to post by kilcoo316


wikipedia has stats and developmental info on both aircraft the yf 23 was superior, on the load out there are newer weapons, on the f22, of course because of gaining the contract, so the better weapons were afixed after the competition, it was lighter, loaded and unloaded, had a faster speed, used parts from f15 so already trained f15 pilots could merge with systems inmediatelly, imagine your moving from a v6 camaro rs, to the same car with a v8 supercharged with a blower better suspension/stability and tires to mach the better performance with a transmition that would make an italian auto designer green with envy, and you would know what the test pilot coming from the F15 world to a YF23 felt like.

my father was a big time northrop engineer back then (still is) and he may just have been spreading northrop propaganda but hes always told me hes wanted to write a book about the program

he said the yf-23 was better than the f-22 in every required field (save maneuverability) and had much better potential in the long run. for all intents and purposes it was a better plane. there were multiple testing trials as opposed to the seemingly popular belief there was one big decision sometime. on more than one occasion, lockheed couldnt even fly the f-22! it couldnt have met the requirements at the time of the particular trial and instead presented the USAF with computer generated diagrams to be matched against northrop's actual flights.

but as we all know, the best man rarely wins. he was familiar through his own dad with the AF officer in charge of the selection (his name escapes me) and politics were the deciding factor with the selection. the place the f-22 parts were being built and lockheeds yf-22 headquarters were all based in the officers hometown


if he was telling the truth it makes perfect sense that the f-22 won. i dont believe for a second that it should have....but # happens

reply to post by Ghost01


The reason why is because of the shape and design. The su-27's specific double delta design wings and high stability were what made it capable of the cobra, and the black widow just doesn't have the lift, even with it's powerful engines, to pull it off. And just to tell you, but I don't think the f-22 couldn't pull the cobra off if it didn't have thrust vectoring, so I doubt that the black widow can do it either

Too bad Northrop and Lockheed couldn't get together and incorporate the best qualities of both aircraft into one super stealth fighter.