The F-22 Raptor is not ready for WWIII

By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has ordered the Air Force to restrict flights of its new F-22 stealth fighters because of continuing problems with the aircraft's oxygen system. At least 22 pilots have suffered from oxygen deprivation while in flight since April 2008. Panetta on Tuesday ordered that all F-22 flights remain within a "proximate distance" of an airfield in case a pilot should suffer from a hypoxia event and be forced to land. That will force an immediate end to F-22 patrol missions over Alaska. Panetta also ordered the Air Force to accelerate installment of a backup oxygen system in all F-22s and provide monthly progress reports on efforts to identify the problem with the current oxygen system. The Air Force does not expect to begin installing automatic backup oxygen systems until December of this year.

MSNBC

The war's not gonna start anytime soon. They need those Raptors and you can't attack Iran if your pilots aren't getting enough oxygen...

The F22 isn't the only aircraft usable in this task - take some F15s and F18s, that should be enough. I really don't see that many points for this horribly overpriced status symbol.

Given that the F22 was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, I'd say that WWIII is not ready for the F22.

After the initial cruise missile strikes on enemy airfields, I doubt there would be much left for it to do that other aircraft couldn't handle.

You guys would be better off with investing in some Eurofighter Typhoons anyways. F-22's are over-hyped and FAR too expensive. Todays modern wars need agility, F-22's aren't very capable in a dog fight

Originally posted by jrmcleod
Todays modern wars need agility, F-22's aren't very capable in a dog fight

Come again? i will not attempt to argue superiority over other current generation fighters but the F-22 is nothing if not an agile dog-fighter. It is a top dollar (as you pointed out) air superiority fighter.

Cheers!

Originally posted by jrmcleod
You guys would be better off with investing in some Eurofighter Typhoons anyways. F-22's are over-hyped and FAR too expensive. Todays modern wars need agility, F-22's aren't very capable in a dog fight

The Typhoons?

They are not even capable against OBSOLETE American fighters!!

Jeez.

Not that I know what Iam talking about but I do not beleive this is a problem with the O2 system.
This is a problem with the engine design and human interface.
Ive read that mechanics are feeling the same effects while working on a grounded F22 with the engines fired up and breathing ambient air.
Just a gut feeling I have about this problem is that it is vibrational or sonic in nature and not mechanical or an altitude problem.
Hopefully easilly corrected with a small design change to the engine exhaust system. Cause it would be a lot harder to redesign us, as we do have limited capabilities by design.
I believe that dissorientation can be confused with lack of oxygen and can be caused by certain vibrational frequencies (or sounds (audible vibrations)) and therein lies the problem.

Originally posted by HangTheTraitors

Originally posted by jrmcleod
You guys would be better off with investing in some Eurofighter Typhoons anyways. F-22's are over-hyped and FAR too expensive. Todays modern wars need agility, F-22's aren't very capable in a dog fight

The Typhoons?

They are not even capable against OBSOLETE American fighters!!

Jeez.

ok you just showed how ignorant you are of the facts.

Your implication that the Typhoon is “crap” is hilarious however, as is suggesting that the F/A-18E/F is a decent air superiority fighter. Its upper g-limit is 7.5, which is fine, except, that at weights of over 51,000, this falls to under 6.2 (cited NATOPS -200), which is not; high drag indices exacerbate this. Other limitations are its low thrust: weight ratio, its pathetic fuel capacity and the fact that it can be out flown by a ‘70s interceptor and the legacy Hornet (see Flight Journal, Feb 2002 for citation).

Admittedly the lack of an EASA radar makes the typhoon vulnerable to 5gen fighters, however the raptor has a "Fixed" EASA radar giving a detection angle of 120degrees from left/right and up/down making it vulnerable to fighters with non fixed EASA with a much larger detection angle of targets and dangers, the non fixed EASA is due to be fitted to the typhoon starting in august 2012 and to be in active service on all aircraft by 2015, the outbreak of hostilities would speed up the process.
Currently the typhoon is undergoing thrust vectoring tests with a test model to see how a variant can be adapted for this theatre requirement.

The Eurofighter consortium claims their fighter has a larger sustained subsonic turn rate, sustained supersonic turn rate, and faster acceleration at Mach 0.9 at 20,000 feet (6,100 m) than the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, Dassault Mirage 2000, Dassault Rafale, the Sukhoi Su-27, and the Mikoyan MiG-29.
In 2005, a trainer Eurofighter T1 was reported to have had a chance encounter with two U.S. Air Force F-15Es over the Lake District in the north of England. The encounter became a mock dogfight with the Eurofighter emerging "victorious".

In the 2005 Singapore evaluation, the Typhoon won all three combat tests, including one in which a single Typhoon defeated three RSAF F-16s, and reliably completed all planned flight tests.

Eurofighter claims that their aircraft will be able to defeat a generic stealth fighter through the use of IRST and by flying a wall formation, which would ensure that at least some of the Eurofighters are not facing the minimum nose-on radar cross section that stealth fighters have been designed for.

So as you can see OBSOLETE aircraft are just that, OBSOLETE.

Originally posted by soulshn

Originally posted by jrmcleod
Todays modern wars need agility, F-22's aren't very capable in a dog fight

Come again? i will not attempt to argue superiority over other current generation fighters but the F-22 is nothing if not an agile dog-fighter. It is a top dollar (as you pointed out) air superiority fighter.

Cheers!

edit on 5/18/12 by soulshn because: evidence

The F-22 is only good at "out-of-sight" fighting. In that situation, yes it would defeat the Typhoon, but in close quarters the F-22 wouldnt stand a chance. The only main advantage the F-22 has is its thrust vectoring, which Typhoon are looking into. The US Gov are spending BILLIONS upon BILLIONS on this craft, yet they arent selling them outwith the US. They have already produced more off the production line than you guys can afford to buy.

It'll be a flop.

IT might be over budget and years late but the Eurofighter Typhoon has shown that it can shake off America's best fighter plane and shoot it down. A chance encounter over the Lake District between a Eurofighter trainer and two F-15 aircraft turned into a mock dogfight, with the British plane coming off best - much to the surprise of some in the RAF. The episode was hushed up for fear of causing US blushes. For a project 10 years late and $8bn over budget, it is a welcome piece of good news. The 'clash' took place last year over Windermere when the two-seater RAF Eurofighter was 'bounced' from behind by the two F-15E fighters. The US pilots intended to pursue the supposedly hapless 'Limey' for several miles and lock their radars on to it for long enough so that if it had been a real dogfight the British jet would have been shot down. But much to the Americans' surprise, the Eurofighter shook them off, outmanoeuvred them and moved into shooting positions on their tails. The British pilots themselves were almost as surprised at winning an encounter with an aircraft widely regarded as the best fighter in the world

"more recently, there have been repeated reports that two RAF Typhoons deployed to the USA for OEU trails work have been flying against the F-22 at NAS China Lake, and have peformed better than was expected. There was little suprise that Typhoon, with its world-class agility and high off-boresight missile capability was able to dominate "Within Visual Range" flight, but the aircraft did cause a suprise by getting a radar lock on the F22 at a suprisingly long range. The F-22s cried off, claiming that they were "unstealthed" anyway, although the next day´s scheduled two vs. two BWR engagement was canceled, and "the USAF decided they didn´t want to play any more .

- When this incident was reported on a website frequented by front-line RAF aircrew a senior RAF officer urged an end to the converstaion on security grounds"

Critics have suggested that the Eurofighter is only useful for air-to-air combat, and not for supporting troops on the ground. And they have complained that it was not designed to evade radar, like the latest generation of US stealth fighters. In fact the Eurofighter was designed from outset to be a fighter-bomber that could switch from dog-fighting in the air to attacking targets on the ground all during the same mission. Some observers have claimed that many criticisms of the fighter plane have come from US aerospace companies alarmed at the prospect of losing customers to the Eurofighter. Also, designing a fighter to be stealthy can sometimes mean tradeoffs when it comes to manoeuvring performance. So what will be the Eurofighter's main competition? The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), which the US is developing in co-operation with the UK, is due to enter service after 2012. But this project has hit serious technical problems and is under threat in the US Congress. The US Air Force has already begun to take delivery of another superjet, the F-22 Raptor. This is very stealthy but costs twice the price of the Eurofighter, and reports suggest that RAF's Eurofighters have flown highly successful missions against the F-22 during recent exercises in the US. It also is competing with the French-made Rafale, which is very similar to the Eurofighter and may be on the UK's Royal Navy shopping list

Lots of good facts American patriots often forget or dont know

Good thing WWIII isnt happening anytime soon!!

They did not anticipate the technology explosion of enemy drones which will be faster an more manuraveable than the f22. Robotic aircraft can down the f22 soon in the future. F22 developers are saving face

The F22 project is very disappointing to say the least when you consider the old age of many of our "state of the art" aircraft.

I read an article awhile ago about an AF pilot who flew the same F15 that his father flew 30 years earlier. The equipment from the Reagan era build up is getting old and the F22 was the best that we could do?? Wow!!

Here it is...

When Lt. David A. Deptula II, an Air Force pilot, climbed into his fighter plane at Kadena Air Force Base in Japan in 2008, it wasn't the first time a pilot named David Deptula had been at the controls. Lt. Deptula's father flew the very same F-15 when it was fresh off the McDonnell Douglas Corp. assembly line 30 years earlier.

"We have a geriatric Air Force," says the senior David A. Deptula, a retired three-star general. When flying that F-15 in 1999, he had to make an emergency landing in Turkey after disintegrating wiring caused a bunch of cockpit ...

online.wsj.com...

We can sit and debate its price or short comings, but once all the kinks are worked out one F22 should be worth more than a few enemy fighters. And can we say the F35 is going to fair much better in WW3? Albeit it is designed to be a multi-role fighter, where the F22 is just a rape machine...

Not one of these threads again about the raptor...... where people stress how they think the raptor operates, not actually how it does.

Faults of the oxygen subsystem aside, the F22 is the pinnacle of air superiority currently. None of the legacy fighters can touch it.

Eurofighter is probably equal footing with the SU-30 MKI as the next best thing if considering pure air to air.

Then its the rest of the Eurocanards and legacy fighters.

Eurofighter is not currently swing role. Where Eurofighter falls down is lack of a credible air to ground capability. Its current abilities in that regard are desperate in comparison to Rafale or pretty much any legacy fighter in the US fleet. Not because of any problem with the design but because the integration of the air to ground weapons is undermined by slothful multi-european consortium decision making.

Originally posted by jrmcleod
You guys would be better off with investing in some Eurofighter Typhoons anyways. F-22's are over-hyped and FAR too expensive. Todays modern wars need agility, F-22's aren't very capable in a dog fight

You obviously haven't seen what the f-22 is capable of. A single F-22 could down 5 typhoons.

Oh dear, are we *again* in "WE HAVE THE BESTESTEST FIGHTER IN ALL WORLDS!!!"-region?

How about some economics? Price-performance ratio? Or simply: if the current fighters are enough and no-one on earth is developing a newer fighter, why build it yourself? Money down the drain, I think.

Only good enough to show off on the next NATO-meeting..

Originally posted by justwokeup
Faults of the oxygen subsystem aside, the F22 is the pinnacle of air superiority currently. None of the legacy fighters can touch it.

Eurofighter is probably equal footing with the SU-30 MKI as the next best thing if considering pure air to air.

Then its the rest of the Eurocanards and legacy fighters.

Eurofighter is not currently swing role. Where Eurofighter falls down is lack of a credible air to ground capability. Its current abilities in that regard are desperate in comparison to Rafale or pretty much any legacy fighter in the US fleet. Not because of any problem with the design but because the integration of the air to ground weapons is undermined by slothful multi-european consortium decision making.

That slothful consortium arranged back in 2008 for the fitting of EASA radar as of august this year, to be fitted to all of the british Eurofighters by 2015, the Ground attack systems are also being implemented in this upgrade.
The Eurofighter also has a radar cross section of around 1sq/m, this is not too disimilar to the RCS of the F22.