Posted on 07/31/2012 9:26:07 AM PDT by moonshot925
The United States has spent nearly $80 billion to develop the most advanced stealth fighter jet in history, the F-22 Raptor, but the Air Force recently found out firsthand that while the planes own the skies at modern long-range air combat, it is "evenly matched" with cheaper, foreign jets when it comes to old-school dogfighting.
The F-22 made its debut at the international Red Flag Alaska training exercise this June where the planes "cleared the skies of simulated enemy forces and provided security for Australian, German, Japanese, Polish and [NATO] aircraft," according to an after-action public report by the Air Force. The F-22 took part in the exercise while under strict flying restrictions imposed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in light of mysterious, potentially deadly oxygen problems with the planes - problems that the Pentagon believes it has since solved.
The Air Force said the planes flew 80 missions during the event "with a very high mission success rate." However, a new report from Combat Aircraft Monthly revealed that in a handful of missions designed to test the F-22 in a very specific situation - close-range, one-on-one combat - the jet appeared to lose its pricey advantages over a friendly rival, the Eurofighter Typhoon, flown in this case by German airmen.
"We expected to perform less with the Eurofighter but we didn't," German air officer Marc Grune said, according to Combat Aircraft Monthly. "We were evenly matched. They didn't expect us to turn so aggressively."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I met a pilot who has flown every fighter aircraft in the US inventory except the F-22. When asked, he said he had flown against them.
I asked him what that was like to fly against an F-22, and his exact words were: “It was like being a baby seal.”
As this Air Force Colonel explained, if the F-22 pilot gets too aggressive in post-stall maneuvering, he is a sitting duck. I can see how a Raptor pilot could get in that situation with the tight-turning canard-equipped Typhoon.
No, the Raptor isn't invincible, and without even the modern basics like a Helmet Mounted Cueing and Sighting System, it is even more crippled in the WVR dogfight.
The T-34/85 was a great tank and is, I think, still in service some cessppit third world nations who think of tanks as a means of “crown control.” The Soviets also took scads of them to the Soviet/Chinese border and buried up to their turret rings in concrete and dirt to create pillboxes.
The F4 Phantom was designed to shoot down enemy planes at extreme range. Then in Vietnam, LBJ set the rules of engagement so that they had to visually identify the target, which meant they had to get to within dog-fighting range. And the designers never gave the F4 a gun.
It would be neat if we could have an expendable UAV, with just a radar emitter to paint targets for our planes.
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