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  • #76
    Originally posted by Chogy View Post
    Apparently, it is. Visual fights are a yawn for the F-22 against all legacy fighters. They don't need to work vertical, conserve energy. They simply maneuver in the plane of motion of the target, and the Raptor turns are smaller, with less energy loss. It's like an agile dirt bike (raptor) maneuvering against a pickup truck (legacy fighter). And when you consider all the armament in the Raptor is internal, it's going to accelerate like crazy, so any energy loss can be gained right back.
    One of the first interviews I read from a "plank owner" F-22 pilot was, literally, "BFM is boring"; the F-22 is so manueverable that "I can fly to the center of his turn circle and keep my nose and weapon on him all day. Whatever he tries to do, I can just point my airplane. When I was flying defensive BFM, he simply couldn’t enter into my turn circle. Even if he flies his weapon to the best of its capabilities and I make errors, he cannot win. It’s almost too easy." Similar stories from other pilots who went up against the Raptor at Red Flag, including some of the best RAF pilots.
    "There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you're not there any more." -Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge

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    • #77
      Late 1980's, the competition between the F-15 and the F-16 communities was very intense. They were convinced that they had the ultimate fighter, and were irritated that they were "forced" to spend so much time dropping bombs, mostly dumb ones. Since they had no BVR missile, any 4 V 4 or similar for them had only one real goal... get to the merge untargeted and unseen, and wreak havoc. As a result, they came up with a laundry list of pre-merge maneuvers designed to ruin a sort. Weird decoys, drags, splits, stacks, you name it. There was some evidence the Soviets were doing similar things, but nothing to the extent the F-16 guys did. They even had names for them, like the Polish Heart Attack, the Chernobyl Glower, Cut & Run, high/low & Up the Ass.

      We'd take our shots, cry "foul" in the debrief, while they focused on post-merge stuff. We'd ask "Would you really do that in combat" and they'd answer "No... but we have to do it with you guys." And they'd time it to perfection, knowing the exact ranges where certain things occurred, such as the final lock and shoot.

      We had an F-15 guy who was selected to be part of the new F-16 aggressor squadron when they transitioned from the F-5E. He came back to our old squadron, and we grabbed him and took him into a briefing room, and asked him "Fess up... what is better, the F-15 or F-16?" He thought a while, and said "There's no excuse for an F-16 to lose a visual fight. But if I had to pick one to go to war in, it'd be the F-15."

      I was on the receiving end of the F-15 sort and shoot when I was in the AT-38B at Holloman. Our normal mission was instructing brand new UPT grads in the fighter biz, but we also had a goodly number of CT sorties, all IP, no students. Since I was an ex F-15 guy, I made 4 ship DACT lead fairly quickly, and I did the exact same thing to the Holloman Eagles. I understood why it was needed... it got really old, fast, to get killed over and over and never get to do anything fun. Our little jets were visually invisible outside of 3 miles, so if we could slip in unseen, we could do damage. And knowing exactly what my "enemy" was doing, made me pretty good at it.

      Those types of missions are dying in the sense that time and technology has moved on. I'm thinking DACT in 2012, with all the gee-whizardy available, is going to be pretty sterile in comparison. We'd occasionally declare "guns only" which took us back to Korean war technology... not realistic, but a lot of fun. I wonder if today the AIM-120 / AIM-9X jets ever take a step back in technology during training just for the fun of it.

      Of all the YouTube vids, I've only found one with a good representation of the comm we worked so hard at. From about 1:10 onward, some good comm of an Eagle CAP working with AWACs. The rest of the video is pretty good; it's a typical squadron "pump-up" hero video.

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      • #78
        Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
        I've seen some ink spilled recently about how the F-22 is only an "average" dogfighter or some such like that.

        Sounded like a crock to me.
        I saw an F-22 demo flight at Edwards AFB. It did some amazing things. It could hover! Seriously! With nose pointed staight up. It turned at an unbelievable angle. The best description would be like an arm punching you from the most bizzare angle possible, like it didn't have bones or joints. It simply didn't move like an airplane that we're used to seeing. It also "climbed the stairs" where it went straight up, leveled, then pulled straight up, then leveled again, then straight up...all at very slow speeds. Any other fighter would have stalled.
        "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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        • #79
          Originally posted by gunnut View Post
          I saw an F-22 demo flight at Edwards AFB. It did some amazing things. It could hover! Seriously! With nose pointed staight up. It turned at an unbelievable angle. The best description would be like an arm punching you from the most bizzare angle possible, like it didn't have bones or joints. It simply didn't move like an airplane that we're used to seeing. It also "climbed the stairs" where it went straight up, leveled, then pulled straight up, then leveled again, then straight up...all at very slow speeds. Any other fighter would have stalled.
          What's fun to watch is all the control surfaces, including the VT nozzles, moving as the DFCS maintains the F-22's stability at weird AOA's.
          "There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you're not there any more." -Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge

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          • #80
            Originally posted by Stitch View Post
            What's fun to watch is all the control surfaces, including the VT nozzles, moving as the DFCS maintains the F-22's stability at weird AOA's.
            Sorry dude, I couldn't see that far that day. No binocs...
            "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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            • #81
              Originally posted by gunnut View Post
              Sorry dude, I couldn't see that far that day. No binocs...
              YouTube videos ;)
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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              • #82
                Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                YouTube videos ;)
                That's just not the same...
                "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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                • #83
                  Originally posted by gunnut View Post
                  That's just not the same...
                  Then wait 20 years or so and enter the cockpit :red:
                  No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                  To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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