F-22

[Ultimetemark4]

I feel safe and assured in our Airforces' capabilities after watching this video. This is a F-22 demostration from Langley Airforce base, if your wondering. Sure as heck beats the Su-32.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUgPscDjf7U

For comparison

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6mu1TTZB6M

Just Kidding on the second one

Someone could move this, it would be much appreciated, I posted here by accident

[SNT1]

Well, We should be comparing the F22 to Russia's latest---Su-37.

But heck, even then, those F-22 maneuvers are rather smooth. Awesome loops and backflips. Seems like they made lot of ground in the maneuverability since the F-15, and caught up, if no surpassed, the russian superfighters.

Nice!

[VR7]

Moved to General Discussion. Please remember to post topics where they belong.

[Ascension]

I could be a pessimist and point out that the maneuvers used in acrobatic demonstrations are generally not all that useful in actual combat.

I could be a pessimist and say that modern air combat rarely involves dogfights.

I could be a pessimist and complain that for the price of a single F-22 we could turn out in bulk planes that would still outclass most of the world's airpower.

I could be a spoilsport and mention that we aren't fighting the Russians anymore, so it doesn't really matter all THAT much how our planes match up against theirs.

However, for the moment, I'm just going to forget all that and say that yes, that is cool.

I'll also point out that in addition to all of its wonderful capabilities we see here, the Transformers movie teaches us that F-22s are capable of reaching escape velocity and operating in space. We are truly unstoppable now!

[Wingnut]

I could be a spoilsport and mention that we aren't fighting the Russians anymore, so it doesn't really matter all THAT much how our planes match up against theirs.

Actually, yes it does. Many other countries are buying their aircraft. Other countries with which we may yet do battle with in the future. Our own planes if engaged in air-to-air combat will most likely be facing these newer Russian built aircraft.

[G.Squirrel]

Well, We should be comparing the F22 to Russia's latest---Su-37. But heck, even then, those F-22 maneuvers are rather smooth. Awesome loops and backflips. Seems like they made lot of ground in the maneuverability since the F-15, and caught up, if no surpassed, the russian superfighters.

I think you might be a little mixed up there: The Su-37 and the F-22 have the same speed capacity, same missle capacity, and pretty much the same manuverability. Radar systems, AWACS, and Secondary Weapon supply are really the only things that are different. Which is pretty good, considering that the Su-37 is older than the F-22.

However, despite what I wrote above, I do not think comparisons are really fair due to the fact that Russia has not rolled out it's own fifth generation fighter aircraft yet. It does have a few prototypes however, such as the S-47 and the MiG 1.44.

[wing zero alpha]

I could be a pessimist and say that modern air combat rarely involves dogfights.

Depends. Stealth and missile technology don't cover everything, so the potential for dogfighting is still out there. Otherwise we wouldn't be outfitting fighters with the Vulcan cannon or short-range missiles.

[Draco Starcloud]

Well, we need a space fighter for when the Zentraedi invade us in 1999....oh wait....what other alien race is scheduled to invade us?

[Wingnut]

Well, we need a space fighter for when the Zentraedi invade us in 1999....oh wait....what other alien race is scheduled to invade us?

There's always the Gunbuster aliens. And there are space fighters in Gunbuster. That's not too far off now.

[VR7]

I'll also point out that in addition to all of its wonderful capabilities we see here, the Transformers movie teaches us that F-22s are capable of reaching escape velocity and operating in space. We are truly unstoppable now!

Yeah, don't you love movies?

The difference between the F-22 and Su-32 is the combat roles they're meant to fulfill. The F-22 is an air superiority fighter with stealth capability, and the Su-32 is a long range strike craft. And when I mean long range, I mean long range. They have a galley, bunk beds and a toilet, and an F-22 does not.

Also, it's still unfair to compare the Su-37 to the F-22, considering the Su-37, a test craft, (it never entered production last I checked) is a multi-role aircraft with no stealth capability. Not that I know of, anyway. A better comparison would be between the F-22 and the Su-47, which actually does keep up with the F-22, as well as other current era American and European fighters, in terms of technology.

Well, either that or the new Chinese stealth fighter.

[SNT1]

I could be a pessimist and complain that for the price of a single F-22 we could turn out in bulk planes that would still outclass most of the world's airpower.

Wikipedia has something to say about that:

In early 2006, after an exercise involving just eight F-22s in Nevada in Nov. 2005, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hecker, commander of the 27th Fighter Squadron (FS) at Langley AFB, Virginia, commented "We killed 33 F-15Cs and didn't suffer a single loss. They didn't see us at all."[25]

In June 2006 during Exercise Northern Edge (Alaska's largest joint military training exercise), the F-22A achieved a 144-to-zero kill-to-loss ratio against F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s simulating MiG-29 'Fulcrums', Su-30 'Flankers', and other current front line Russian aircraft, which outnumbered the F-22A 4 to 1 at times.[14][26] The small F-22 force of 12 aircraft generated 49% of the total kills for the exercise, and operated with an unprecedented reliability rate of 97%.[22]

The Raptor has very advanced avionics, which obviously couldn't be shown at air shows...


regarding the Mig 1.44 and Su-47, they are a much better comparison, but then again they're just technical demonstrators / prototypes for now, so I did not want to compare aircraft that likely won't get into production

[Ascension]

I could be a pessimist and say that modern air combat rarely involves dogfights.

Depends. Stealth and missile technology don't cover everything, so the potential for dogfighting is still out there. Otherwise we wouldn't be outfitting fighters with the Vulcan cannon or short-range missiles.

Note I said rarely, not never. I'm certainly not about to make the mistake of the early model Phantom IIs and say "Oh, looky, we've got missiles now! We don't need any silly guns or anything!" I'm also not going to say what I've heard some people saying... "We're in the era of the terrorist now. We'll never get into another conventional war, we'll never fight anyone with fighter planes again unless it's China, so we should just focus on attack planes and forget about fighters." In fact, I'm a big supporter of keeping us as advanced in military technology as possible. What I said up there, other than the line about acrobatic maneuvers, was in jest. I'm just miffed we don't have an MBT with an auto-loading cannon yet.

[razgriz]

ahhh finally a thread in my special area

sadly as amazing as the su-47 and the mig 1.44 are SNT1 had it correct when he mentioned they are tech demonstrators and not combat ready aircraft, despite what ace combat has shown us hehe. however they are paving the way for what is known for now as the PAK-FA, im not going to translate russian for u but its basically russia's true next gen fighter aka raptor/lightning ii competitor. funny if you look this wunderjet up, it definitely has a raptor-ish thing going. i guess especially for the russians, reverse engineering is the sincerest form of flattery, it wouldnt be the first time definitely that the russians were inspired by the west. e.g. look up b-29 and tu-4.

[wing zero alpha]

Note I said rarely, not never. I'm certainly not about to make the mistake of the early model Phantom IIs and say "Oh, looky, we've got missiles now! We don't need any silly guns or anything!" I'm also not going to say what I've heard some people saying... "We're in the era of the terrorist now. We'll never get into another conventional war, we'll never fight anyone with fighter planes again unless it's China, so we should just focus on attack planes and forget about fighters." In fact, I'm a big supporter of keeping us as advanced in military technology as possible. What I said up there, other than the line about acrobatic maneuvers, was in jest. I'm just miffed we don't have an MBT with an auto-loading cannon yet.

Yare yare, no need to take offense, I wasn't sure if it was sarcasm or not. As for the last quote, I'm sorry to say that seems to be the direction the military is heading, as noted with the Navy converting all of its air squadrons from VF to VFA and the focus on aircraft like the Hornet and the Lightning II.

I'll also point out that in addition to all of its wonderful capabilities we see here, the Transformers movie teaches us that F-22s are capable of reaching escape velocity and operating in space. We are truly unstoppable now!

Yeah, don't you love movies?

You guys do realize that this happens in every Transformers media, way back to the original Starscream and his F-15 form, right? (I know it's jest, but I thought I'd point that out too :p).

Well, we need a space fighter for when the Zentraedi invade us in 1999....oh wait....what other alien race is scheduled to invade us?

There's also the ID4 aliens; love to see how they'd take on Raptors when compared to the older F/A-18C Hornets and the like.

[Antares]

I'm a military hardware geek as well, but I just noted how it is kind of funny how a discussion of air superiority fighters like this is formulated as a competition (with the Russians).
In Europe there is the Eurofighter but I suppose that is about it. I mean there are upgrades, but the Hornet is still considered a rather ok fighter. Getting up to the level of a F-22 is not even really considered. I wonder, the Russians used to have cheaper production costs on theirs, but I think the fifth gen is as expensive as "western" models.

[razgriz]

i think the russians changed the policy of quantity over quality when it became apparent in the late 80s how truly craptastic their frontline fighters and interceptors; mig-23,25, su-19s, etc were when they had to face the most up to date western fighters in the various middle-east conflicts. then along came the mig-29 and su-27 and everything changed

[wing zero alpha]

I'm a military hardware geek as well, but I just noted how it is kind of funny how a discussion of air superiority fighters like this is formulated as a competition (with the Russians).
In Europe there is the Eurofighter but I suppose that is about it. I mean there are upgrades, but the Hornet is still considered a rather ok fighter. Getting up to the level of a F-22 is not even really considered. I wonder, the Russians used to have cheaper production costs on theirs, but I think the fifth gen is as expensive as "western" models.

You mean the Typhoon? Eh, from what I heard it's a well performing fighter and has more advanced technology than anything Russia has produced, but it's not league with the Raptor, and it also lacks some of the nicer assets like thrust vectoring. There's also the Dassault Rafale that's even a partial stealth fighter (I think it's the first navalized stealth fighter, assuming it came out before the F-35C), but again not as good as the Raptor.

As for the next big Russian fighter, there's the MiG-35 that's being considered for international sales, although it's little more than a dressed up "Fulcrum" with technology ripped from the "Flanker" types. I think that's going to be the closest answer unless Russia finds a way to mass produce the Su-37, Su-47 or MiG-1.44.

[razgriz]

they already plan to WZA, google or yahoo sukhoi pak-fa. and although the mig-35 is sorta analoguous to the super hornet, theres no denying its one nice lookin fighter. the 3d thrust vectoring makes it especially potent. the typhoon can definitely go toe to toe with just about anything in the air at this point, but its described as a more finesse fighter than the brute force of the f-22. its definitely versatile tho, it can carry a much heavier payload than the raptor with a major sacrifice in stealth. although it can supercruise

[Antares]

razgriz said:

i think the russians changed the policy of quantity over quality when it became apparent in the late 80s how truly craptastic their frontline fighters and interceptors; mig-23,25, su-19s, etc were when they had to face the most up to date western fighters in the various middle-east conflicts. then along came the mig-29 and su-27 and everything changed

True, by the end of the 80s they were coming apart from the seams either way. My understanding is that now their military is rather well funded again, and quality jets are expensive no matter where they're manufactured so I guess you're right. Mass-producing theirs is still a bit testy though, I understand. Ah, I still remember the days of the ol' Fishbed which dropped out of the sky on its own accord.

wza said:

Eh, from what I heard it's a well performing fighter and has more advanced technology than anything Russia has produced, but it's not league with the Raptor, and it also lacks some of the nicer assets like thrust vectoring.

That kind of was my point that there is a limit to what the Europeans are willing to R&D and manufacture (i.e. fund) in both quality and quantity. That's why it does look like a competition between two major players as it was back in the day.

[razgriz]

in both military and civilian lines, pay attention to airbus vs. boeing, its getting really ugly.