TBH, I thought that's what it was primarily designed for anyway :hmmm:

Mind you, reality often interferes. The F-4 was designed much around the same logic, and yet in actual combat wasn't able to follow through, largely because the situation dictated it having to go over enemy territory, and its missiles turned out to be not what they were made out to be. The F-22 has every chance of falling into the same type of reality in combat.

Some sources say 'yea' some say 'nay'.

The F-15 could for example carry AIM-120s and tanks on its external pylons. That pylon had a tank with two LAU-128 hardpoints, the F-22 uses the same hardpoints for its external AAMs.

The USAF might not be doing it now, but they could do it very easily.

Well in this case, wouldn't the f22's high speeds (I believe the only fighter with a supersonic cruise speed?) allow it to avoid enemy fighters better than the f4? especially considering that the f4 never had a crushing speed advantage over other fighters.

Or, would it be a good tactic to send other fighters with good short range performance to protect the f22?

If only we had some kind of light weight stealthy fighter-bomber to assist the F-22. Something with a highly networked computer system allowing it to operated as part of an integrated team...

:hmm2:

This. Personally i agree that the f-22 is a huge mistake. unless they can seriuosly scale down the price, its way, way, way, WAy too expensive to buy an F22. We could buy 55-60 abrams, a battle proven monster of a tank, or we can buy 1 unproven, overpriced, high tech machine that is 100% better than it needs to be. I dont trust anything that completely collapses under technology failure. Because technology fails. Technology fails often. and technology fails at the worst possible moments. The only thing we can, and should do with the F-22s we already have, is send one or two in formation with other aircraft like the F-15C, and youve got yourself one hell of an air superiority force.

What the USAF needs, i believe currently, is NOTHING. we have aircraft now being mothballed that are PERFECTLY GOOD, able, and incredibly cheap in comparison. In the future, we need to revert back to the teachings of the F-15, and build a maneuverable, low-cost, reliable airplane designed specifically for air to air combat. trying to do everything presents one of two problems (if not both). You either have no money left for the rest of your military, or you dont do anything particularly well and the plane gets swatted by planes designed for a specific role.

The F-15 is not a cheap warplane. Far from it. If the F-15 was cheap, there would be no reason at all for the existense of the F-16. Which is actually a better dogfighter than the F-15 and almost any other plane in the world. The F-15 is being updated, or should I say rebuilt as the Silent Eagle. A stealthy version of the F-15. A cheaper alternative to the F-22 and F-35.

Correct the F-15 is by no means a low cost design it is/was very expensive there is a reason why only a handful of air forces fly them.The F-16 is easily the most cost effective fighter in the USAF inventory the A-10 is having its day in the sun (for the second time) because it just so happens that the current conflict suits the Hog very well (no enemy air assets to challenge it).

There are two basic versions of the F-15 the C/D and the E the C is there for air superiority the E is a strike aircraft actually a replacement of sorts for the TAC F-111.The "Silent Eagle" F-15SE is a proposed upgrade of the F-15E thus far the USAF has not interested it is actually marketed towards the foreign F-15 operators.

For TLAM you are 100% correct on you theory 8th post feature pictures of the F-22 with drop tanks(I think the poster is 100% wrong about the IDF ever getting F-22s) http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-16656.html

I do not know if they plan on making a pylon that can carry ordnance as well as tanks at the same time as is done with the F-15s I am thinking not. My guess is for the F-22 it will either carry ordnance on external pylons or tanks on a given pylon not both on the same pylon.

well yeah the Knife fight Is a different thing. If we were going by that, a close In dogfight would be DOMINATED by the new thrust vectoring flankers. but modern Air combat is more than that...and and Aircraft that is so hard to hit at range, but has technology that allows it to hit you at that same range is, well quite scary. By the time a flight would make it to merge I bet heavy losses would already be there, making up the "maneuverability difference"

Only thing is as with other weapons of war stealth will be countered it only takes a matter of time I think this is why many air forces are not as interested in stealth due to its high cost and to the fact that is will be countered at some point.

Another issue is unless they completely change how the AIM-120 is locked onto a target the F-22 will give away its presence as soon as it fires one or even begins the target acquiring process they must use radar to lock on and the radar waves can be detected I think USAF has a lot of faith that they would be able to get a successful first attack and destroy most of an enemy force and make the others retreat ideal thinking.Trouble is a little thing called murphy's law.Vietnam taught us that we should not place all of our faith into one style of combat.

What you posted Gimpy is pretty much what they said back in the late 50's and early 60's and they where wrong "Our better missiles will win the day dog fighting is a thing of the past old boys".Today we are saying the same thing with the F-22 with even more advanced technology than what was available in the old day and just as likely to perform less than ideally in the real world.

The F-22 is a relic of Cold War thinking that is no longer valid if you ask me.

At my understanding Russians' new PAK-FA will have both X band and L band radars: L band for improved stealth detection and X band for targetting and other purposes. Russian tech seems to be (almost) always for sale at right price atleast in some version so it will be interesting to see what happens if Russians' prove that concept works. :hmmm:

So far the kill ratio f22 has is very impressive in the exercises.
In dogfights the raptor loses on some rear occasions mostly due to ROE that put it in disadvantage.
The f22 seems to be very effective against 4th generation fighters.
It might be currently an overkill with high price but it seems to be good at what it was designed to do...in the far future who knows.

You can make anything look good in an exercise in an exercise you are not actually firing a real life missile for starters.Any person that puts their faith in
something based on supposed performance in an exercise clearly has not spent a day in the military or is a bit naive.The US military is always fighting under un favorable ROE why will the F-22 be an exception? So the F-22 has an impressive pretend kill ratio.Honestly I simply distrust the military industrial complex in the US.

What matters is real combat of which the F-22 has seen none until a piece of military has seen the harshness of front line conditions and the reality of real combat it has not been truly tested.You also never assume that the ROE will be in your favor.Vietnam is a good example of this in 1965 there was an incident where an F-4 shot down another F-4 with an Aim-7 after this the ROE was that a boogie had to be visually IDed before and engagement.

As far as i can tell training contributes a lot...hope it is the same in USA.:03:

Red Flag exercise usually puts blues in favorite position yet i had been reading that F22 engagements usually make sense if Raptor is at disadvantage.
But hell...with American industrial military complex its wonder why you don't have stealth pigeons.:haha:


..........

Shh! :stare: We're not supposed to talk about those. :shifty:

What you say is true and untrue.In my experience some training was good and some was not very good at all.The tech school training for my job was not very effective they taught us good basics but very little to prepare us for the actual job.The USAF also cut the number of training hours for F-22 pilots due to operational costs .Also you have never severed in the United States Air Force if you did you'd have a different opinion.

What I am saying is that if certain interests want a bit of hardware bad enough they will get it.The F-22 overall is just far too expensive to truly warrant any advantage that it might have in certain situations.We still think with a Cold War mindset while our enemies think differently why fight our powerful military when they can simply cyber attack our banking system? We should be spending 150 million dollars on cyber warfare not the F-22 or what ever it costs I have seen as high as 400 million per unit claimed.