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Originally Posted by WECIV
I would hardly call the F14 a premo air-to-air platform. It bleeds energy like it is going out of style. If there is something that is incorrect in the article...then point it out. However, I do agree that objective air-to-air exercises would be a good idea. That is what happened when the F15 was fielded in the early 70's. The F15 was tested against everything from F4's to T37's. Why not now?
W
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I'm not going to point out every problem with that article, but I'll hit a few high points. Also, the Raptor flies against other fighters every day that flight operations are taking place. I dont understand why people dont think it does. This thing is not a hanger queen. They dont even park it indoors unless its undergoing maintainance (at one base, anyway).
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(1) pilot training and ability; (2)
obtaining the first sighting and surprising the
enemy; (3) outnumbering enemy fighters in the
air; (4) outmanoeuvring enemy fighters to gain
a firing position; and (5) consistently converting
split-second firing opportunities into kills.
The F-22 is a mediocrity, at best, on (4) and
(5). It is a liability on (1), (2) and (3)
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Lets address mediocrity first:
4: Raptors regularly fly vs F-15s and F-16s. In fact, they do it pretty much every day. And they win almost every time, both in BVR and WVR engagements. They have little/no problem maneuvering into position. Flying against certain threats (HMS and AA-11) could pose problems, but I've heard the first block upgrade will include the JHMCS, which will help nix that problem.
5: I'm not sure how they came to this conclusion at all. Firing a missile from an F-22 is no more difficult than firing one from an F-15. Its a button, for crying out loud.
And now for liability:
1: The best F-15 pilots are the primary choices to upgrade into the F-22. Its that simple. These guys are among the best IPs the AF has to offer. And they regularly whoop on their former squadron buddies "stuck" in the Eagle.
2: This makes absolutely no sense at all. The F-22's radar is so beyond the APG-63 that I honestly dont understand the logic behind their statement. In any case, the USAF doesnt send fighters in without AWACS support, so even if they were right, it wouldnt matter. MiGs arent going to see the Raptor first. Period.
3: This is kind of a concern, but not much. Obviously you want to outnumber the enemy, but frankly the Raptor doesnt even need to. It slaughtered F-15s in a 1v5 engagement. The Eagles NEVER SAW HIM until he flew over them after they were all dead. This isnt hype, I worked for that F-22 pilot and he's not a bullsheeter.
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Great pilots get that way by constant dogfight
training. Between 1975 and 1980, at the Navy
Fighter Weapons School (‘Topgun’), instructor
pilots got 40 to 60 hours of air combat manoeuvring
per month. Their students came from
squadrons getting only 14 to 20 hours per month.
Flying the cheap, simple F-5, the robustly trained
instructors consistently whipped the students in
their ‘more capable’ F-4 Phantoms, F-14 Tomcats
and F-15 Eagles. Today, partly thanks to
the pressure on the air force’s training budget
from the F-22’s excessive purchase and operating
costs, an F-22 pilot gets 12 to 14 hours of
flight training per month. For winning future air
battles, this is a huge step backward.
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Comparing the Top Gun program to a standard flying training squadron in the Air Force is absolutely disingenuous. The F-22 pilots get a similar amount of training compared to the F-15 pilots. If you want more flight hours (which everyone does) write your Congressman. The Air Force doesnt have a program like Top Gun at all...Red Flag is about the closest we've got. Oh by the way...NAS Miramar, the home of Top Gun, is closed. NSAWC is not the same.
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For half a century, the air force has been
attempting to get the jump on enemy fighters
through expensive, complex technology. Billions
of dollars were spent trying to perfect
long-range radar missiles to achieve ‘beyondvisual-
range’ (BVR) kills. Extraordinary kill
rates, as high as 80 to 90 per cent, were promised
when projects were being sold. Success rates in
actual combat were below 10 per cent. Simple,
more agile, shorter-range infra-red missiles and
guns were far more successful and effective.
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Oh boy. "Below 10 per cent" probably refers to the Sparrow back in the old days...the first generation of US BVR semi-active radar A2A missiles. The Sparrow is not used anymore. There are a few on the shelves probably, but not for long. The AIM-120 is vastly superior, and is combat-proven. Hell, in the Sparrow's defense, most of its misses in Desert Storm (the AMRAAM was barely being fielded by a handful of F-15s at the time) were because the pilots fired them off as soon as possible, at the absolute fringes of the engagement envelope.
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Worse, the ‘Identification Friend or Foe’ (IFF)
systems that must distinguish enemies from
friends before launching BVR missiles failed in
every war. As recently as Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’
in 2003, misidentified allied aircraft were
lost to US systems. The air force now tells us the
only way to get the jump on enemy fighters supposedly
launching BVR missiles is with stealth.
But stealth solves neither the problem of less
effective, high-cost BVR radar missiles nor the
IFF conundrum. Moreover, stealth has failed to
make our fighters invisible to radar and it brings
crippling disadvantages.
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IFF problems have, in fact, led to a handful of aircraft losses. Primarily to US Army Patriots. Not to the Air Force. Once again, the article selectively chooses its point, and ignores the facts that dont support it. Like for example, no American pilot launches a missile without a target being declared "hostile." Simple fact. To do otherwise is to enjoy a lengthy stay at Fort Leavenworth, a less-than-pleasant place from what I'm told. Part of my job is to run the ID process necessary to make the hostile declaration. This process was completely revamped after the Blackhawk shootdown in 1994, and iit takes a bit more effort to declare someone a hostile the way its implemented nowadays.
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In Operation ‘Desert Storm’ in 1991, according
to the Government Accountability Office,
so-called stealthy F-117s were significantly less
effective bombers than the air force described
publicly – there is anecdotal evidence that ancient
Iraqi radars detected them. In the war against
Serbia in 1999, non-stealthy F-16s had a lower
loss rate per sortie than the F-117s. The F-22 will
not be invisible to radar in real combat, where it
cannot control detection angles and radar types.
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Oh for crying out loud. Its no secret that "ancient" long-wave radars are more effective at picking out stealth aircraft under certain conditions. The difference is that just because they can see them in search doesnt mean they can lock onto them worth a damn. If you cant actually TRACK a target, you cant SHOOT that target. Detection and tracking are NOT the same thing, and the authors of that article absolutely know it, but they choose to ignore it. In Serbia, the F-16 flew more sorties than the F-117. They also flew much safer routes. If the Viper took over for the cockroach and used the same tactics, we'd lose more than 1.
Ok, I've had enough of that. That's a little more than half the article, and it holds about as much water as a strainer.