How to shoot down an F-22

[Stealhead]

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The F-22 is a relic of Cold War thinking that is no longer valid if you ask me.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

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.

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.

[MH]

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.

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.

[Stealhead]

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.

[MH]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

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.

.

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

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.


..........

[krashkart]

Originally Posted by MH

[...]stealth pigeons.


..........

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

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by MH

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

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.


..........

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.

[MH]

So be it....
i did not serve in air force(been green mud dweller) but simply like airplanes a lot.The politics behind them does not interest me.
So far it seems that F22 does what it is supposed to do.

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

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.

well, it depends how you USE the fighter. We have dogfighters in our arsenal for sure. all you would need to do is send a mixed group of fighters up.

Give the agile fighters instructions to go in to a dogfight with the enemy, and have the very hard to detect F-22 Provide Top cover.

The minute somebody tries to disengage with those agile little vipers is the F-22's moment to shine. Its fast and stealthy, a perfect hit-and-run fighter.

This is a pretty old tactic and has been used since WWI (in this case the slow but agile Dr.I and Albatross)

[Oberon]

The thing is, if and when the US can make its RC channels completely secure (ho-hum) then will the F-22 be the last human operated aircraft in the USAF arsenal? Is the drone the future? Cheap (ish), no human cost, and able to maintain station for lengthy periods without the risk of human fatigue running into it (one pilot gets tired, you pull him out of the chair, put him by the pool and get another pilot to put a quarter in), heck if the work on the micro-batteries pans out then solar powered UAVs could stay in the air indefinitely.

The biggest hurdle at the moment is securing control links.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Originally Posted by Oberon

The thing is, if and when the US can make its RC channels completely secure (ho-hum) then will the F-22 be the last human operated aircraft in the USAF arsenal? Is the drone the future? Cheap (ish), no human cost, and able to maintain station for lengthy periods without the risk of human fatigue running into it (one pilot gets tired, you pull him out of the chair, put him by the pool and get another pilot to put a quarter in), heck if the work on the micro-batteries pans out then solar powered UAVs could stay in the air indefinitely.

The biggest hurdle at the moment is securing control links.

I don't see how you could make control links secure enough. Only way I see to completely remove manned fighter aircraft from the equation is by developing very smart AI which can take pilot's place.

I'm not sure do I want to do that.