Well, that was quick, Assembly line is now disbanded, people either transferred or laid off, less than 2 weeks til Christmas...

http://gizmodo.com/5868010/this-is-the-last-f+22-raptor-ever

Thanks Obama!

TBH a lot of people want to see a new F-15...

There are plenty of new F-15s around, just take a look.
None in the USAF of course.


The Jedi Master

I'd like to see some F-15SEs also, but our politicians have decided that it better to support the regulatory-welfare state.

Why anyone would want to buy a 40 year old design when newer better aircraft are availabe is beyond me.

Especially when the really old design is like 1/2 cost at best. Buying 2x as many planes is no good if you lose them 4x faster!



The Jedi Master

Because the SE is a good update.

http://www.dailytech.com/Boeing+F15SE+Si...rticle18968.htm

the F-15 airframe rivals the newer designs, and is proven. 300+ to Zero Kill Ratio.

F-22? F-35? Aren't they still in the design/testing phase?

Lol... see you later guys, my Hog is all warmed up and I probably need to talk to a JTAC somewhere...

Was it Obama himself who ordered the production run to end now? I thought the total production run of roughly about 180 units was determined well before Obama took office?

And besides, maybe the number of F-22's built is what the USAF needs and no more?

You know, I'm against "the welfare state" as much as the next guy, but when you're saying "We should have a multi-million dollar sweet ass war-bird instead" I'm not feelin' ya.

When was the last time an F-15 faced a "real" opponent?

Not according to anyone who knows anything about what the USAF needs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/politics/14defense.html

The seven were to keep the line open as the politicians tried get enough political capital to either build more or to be willing to sell to Australia and Japan.

You see, here is my fundamental problem,

"Mr. Obama stepped up his campaign after liberal Democrats like Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts said they supported the purchases, arguing that the program would retain high-paying jobs in many districts nationwide."


The purpose of our armed forces is NOT to create jobs. The purpose of our armed forces is to defend our nation.

This. The biggest threat F-15s went up against were base model MIG-29UBs if I am not mistaken. I am not saying it is an awful plane, but the F-15 has not fought a comparable aircraft with comparable pilots.

So your armed force self assemble itself ? ingenious !
On the SE, doesnt that lower the amount of fuel and weapons delivery ?

You obviously didn't understand my point. My point is that job creation is simply a logical consequence of having a military but the primary purpose of having a military is to defend the nation. In other words, when these F-22's are examined by members of Congress, the determination should be made on whether or not they are actually NEEDED by the military to defend the nation and not because they'll provide lots of jobs for people in their districts and hence of course help with their re-election.

.

F-15s are versatile but they have been plagued with their own airframe problems. Remember when the whole fleet was grounded because they were falling apart in mid-air? I think the design of the F-22 and F-35 are ahead of their times and have no equal, but for us to rest on our laurels can put us in a serious disadvantage in the next 50-80 years like WW2. The Japanese and German aircraft at the time ate our lunch until we got everything revved up industry wise and shifted our focus. In today's world, we wont have that luxury.

The thing is the F-22 design was taken by china and russia so going back to an older F-15 type plane wont be any better. Really we should scrap it and make YF-23 update planes now.

oops, the Kill ratio is 105 to 0, (dunno where i got 300 from).

i think the F-15 waxed the Mig29OVT/Mig35 in close range trials (no BVR engagements) which BVR is against wartime laws now anyway.

that wasnt a design issue it was a part issue, where i think they found a total of 12 planes WORLDWIDE w/ the defective part (longerons), once planes passed the inspection they were returned to active duty.

I hate to see the F-22 come this far to have its production run ended so quickly. The fewer they build the higher the unit cost. Why could they not build them at a slower rate but still with the objective to replace the F-15 fleet which has to be replaced eventually.

I had no idea about this. Is this a Pentagon policy or is it an actual international law?

at least it got built, i'll never forgive the comanche program.....NEVER !
I doubt anyone specially american would respect this bvr stuff during war, why have a stealth fighter if you are gonna get close to id ?

You need to stop while you're not too far behind yet. Neiter can an F-15 easily 'wax' a MiG-29OVT/35, nor has it - at least where guns are concerned. Both would be more maneuverable than an F-15 (although if we throw 9X's into the mix, things start looking different). In any case, I don't recall the MiG-29OVT being anything more than a demonstrator, and I haven't heard of MiG-35's managing to get sold to anyone.

I don't know where you got this BVR thing from, but that's pretty um, wrong

Besides, isn't that what IFF is for? Also with long range air to air radars, you can tell what kind of emitter you are detecting and thus will know if it's friend or foe.

thought i read somewhere that nato or geneva (or someone) voted to approve that all Targets must be visually verified by the pilot before engaging.

but i guess that doesnt mean you cant buzz the pilot at mach 2, wave to him, run away turn around and launch an AIM-120 at him later

Mig29OVT and the MIG 35 are the same plane afaik, and it lost to a handful of fighters (F-15, F-16, F-18, RafaleM, and some other european fighter) in some competition a year or so ago.

Literally because you can.



IFF isn't panacea. There is a lot more to ID than just IFF. Pilots go through a VID matrix to make their decision. It's dependent on the situation, but can include things like, location of targets, declaration from AWACS, airfield they took off from, NCTR, IFF, emitter recognition, flight pattern, baiting techniques etc.

You probably shouldn't be taking snippets of info and making them dogma before verifying such things as facts



They aren't the same aircraft IIRC, but the OVT is the technology demonstrator for the 35. As for it losing those competitions, that really means nothing in terms of its combat capabilities. A lot of the times such competitions are politically charged as well.

I'm not a big fan of the current presidential administration, but, to be fair, the decision to cut the production run of the F-22 happened under the previous one.

That said, the F-35 is a better deal in terms of all-around functionality and mission-capability. I would like to see the Boeing Stealth Eagle get a USAF contract because it is a solid aircraft with a proven track record to point to. It's cheaper, and I'm all about getting more for my money. Yes, it is an older design, but it's the man, not the machine. We train the hell out of our pilots and give them the best we can afford.

The F-22 is awesome, no doubt, but it's a Porsche and we're on a Ford budget. CILOP the existing F-16s to the Block 60 variant (which will keep Lockheed-Martin's assembly lines employed) and give us the Stealth Eagle and the JSF.

We would still be a very capable nation in terms of being able to bring the wood.

Time will tell if the right decision was made, right now it looks foolish but I have a nagging feeling that ALL the 5th generation designs will have short service lives due to the incredible pace of technology.

I'm uneducated on this, how far ahead is America's Air abilities to the rest of the world? Does anyone even hold a candle to us? To keep our Lockheeds and Boeings functioning, would it not be better to look to space? The F16 and f15 might be being out dated, but only by our advances right?

The F-15C Golden Eagle is a 4th gen or 4.5 gen aircraft, even though it isn't a new airframe. That's all I'll say.

There is a /lot/ of growth room in the 22 and 35, growth room which the 15 and 16, and probably the 18 are running out of.

We'll be facing PAK-FAs soon.,

I just hope the F-35 is as good as DAS promises it can be.

IMO a combat aircraft from the mid 2020's on will have to optimized around, not just have provisions for, operations in a nasty directed energy weapon and electronic attack environment, and that will require a clean sheet design.

And the F-22 and F-35 are already designed to carry out that sort of attack. Anyway, I don't foresee anything like lasers on planes as anything resembling a standard any-time soon ... not in the 2020's, either.

We need sharks with freakin laser beams as eyes! Technology cost money and if you want the best stuff you have to pay. The SE is nice and proven design, but have it face off against a F-22 and see how it does.

The problem is, war is expensive it's always been like that and now with these such highly advanced fighters... I think they'd have to create some sort of Eurofighter/F-16 something it could perform many roles and at the same time be cheap to produce. F-22 and F-35 are BEAUTIFUL machines but for a real war it can bankrupt a country and the F-35 is very limited in the amount of payload it can carry...

All that hard work to then the Chinese and Russian buddies copy them, make it cheaper and kick our asses with cheap copy cat stealth fighters.

Besides in this economy we have other priorities...

You foresee a shooting war with Russia in the near future, then?

Not really. Advanced fighters are force multipliers. Cheap fighters are great and all, but you get what you pay for.

Ever heard of exports? They'll be no doubt that in the future we'll be facing the PAK FA or J-20 or something similar in a shooting match somewhere. Question is which aircraft would you rather face it in?

From a maintainer's perspective, I would rather work on an old F-15 any day than the latest technology advanced F-22. The 22 is a nightmare!

Why not face it off against EF-2000 which is probably the upper end of what it would ever face.

F-15SE can do both A2A and A2G, whereas the F-22 errmmmm ..


Just be glad the F-22 doesnt run windows

Re: the F-15 "Silent Eagle". It's LO is optimized for "some" effectiveness against ground based radars only, it offers little if any LO against airborne radars, IE against enemy fighters. It also costs $100 million dollars each. Since the fly away cost of a new F-22 is only $150 million it makes no sense to buy an aircraft with less than half the capability but at only a 33% discount. Does anyone really believe $300 million worth of F15SE's (IE 3 aircraft) are as good as $300 worth of F-22 (2 aircraft)?

To quote any earlier response to another of your wild claims:



The F-22 can deliver A2G ordinance carried internally, while still carrying AIM120 / AIM9 also internally. It can also carry 20,000 pounds of ordinance externally on 4 hard points if stealth isn't required.

then again, its doesnt make sense to continue to build something that is broken, and then modify them later.

Fix the issues that are grounding them, then send the changes to Lockheed so they are manufactured with the changes.

The Assembly Line and everything are being kept on stand-by.

*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT*

The F-15SE is a STRIKE aircraft. It isn't an air to air fighter. The F-22 is an air-to-air fighter, and it utterly dominates that arena. F-15C's will do conceivably better than F-15SE's at air to air - why? Because that's all they do, and that's what the pilots are trained for. They don't haul unnecessary weight for other stuff.

You should have stopped a while ago, but you didn't, so I'll explain it to you this way:

In a fight F-22's are fewer than F-15C's, the pilots are less experienced, and stealth is removed by the means of radar reflectors, F-22's barely lost - they took out a lot of F-15's, and it was hard fighting.
When the reflectors were removed, the F-15C guys didn't even know what hit'em.

Do you get it now?


The F-15SE is a nice stop-gap while waiting for an F-35, and not a bad plane for first-day-kick-down-the-door work, as well as the follow-up, but it's neither an F-22 nor an F-35.

What, you mean F-15's? Oh snap, wait, you're getting ahead of yourself again ... you meant F-22's, which are not only not broken, but also being upgraded constantly.

Primary Role is Air Superiority. its not a true M.R. aircraft. if it was it would have been used in combat and the Iranians would have hacked one by now.

I assume that they will eventually try to replace more aircraft with UCAVs. IIRC they are somewhat cheaper than manned aircraft, and if one goes down you don't lose a pilot, just hook another UCAV up to the data link and send it up.

UCAVs can't replace everything; they're just not 'there' yet.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are starting to do more recon and air to ground,

air to ground is easier, less manuevering, less requirements on the airframe.



as for the F-22, have they completely Fixed the Oxygen issue yet?
(i haven't seen anything in my RSS feeds about that since late October when they were grounded again..)

All such groundings are done out of an abundance of caution. You're reading too much into it.

Good riddance.

The air force is completely out of touch with the threat picture and asking them to tell you what to buy them is like asking an alcoholic what to get them when you're down at the supermarket.

Its nice we have the ones we've got. Its nice we've got the design to return to production in the need. But the chances of us getting into a massive air war with an enemy fielding uberplanes of the F22's caliber is fantasy.

The F-22 has got 99 Problems ... But a Glitch aint one....

That was pretty funny though a few years back, the glitch with flying over the I.D.L. and the P.M.

if they get the F-22 to a level its supposed to be... and we have a a beneficial use for them besides airshows,
build a couple hundred more...

if not.... well... i have nothing..

And if that happened, and the USAF had nothing to fight such a war with, would you eat your hat?

You had and have nothing . The F-22 is there to do a particular job. It'll do it really well, despite criticism from clueless people. Better hope that a day when the F-22 is needed doesn't come though, 'cause there's probably going to be a lot more to it than kicking down some door somewhere else.

Like most people, you probably couldn't have possibly known that all modern fighter jets still have issues that needed ironing out when they first enter service. Like most people, you also couldn't have possibly known that the USAF schedules and phases capability upgrades.

i dont hate the F-22, its job is to be an Air Superiority Fighter, or in the present time, a Threat Deterrent.

And its doing its job well, .... for now.... from the ground, from the homeland, outside of conflicts.

But the PAK-FA/T-50/FGFA/Su47 (whatever they are calling it right now) is a few years away from delivery, to Russia 1st, then India, then Vietnam and China and open to other countries to buy..

Buy then Im sure we'll have upwards 250-300 F-22s if they re-open production lines or the F-22s and the F35s working in Tandem.

I know all the crap about the planned routine upgrades and issues.... even my beloved tomcat had PLENTY of issues early.

That is why I said eventually. I'm not sure what the expected service life of the F-15 still is, but I am assuming its still another 10-15 years at least. Plus you still have the manned F-22 in the meantime and the F-35 can do A2A as well.

Yeah. You can expect to see the F-16's and F-18's to continue serving for a while as well. The Strike Eagle variants will last long. The F-15C used by the USAF is getting some pretty crazy upgrades. They couldn't make it an F-22 on the outside, so they're turning it into an F-22 on the inside, basically.

SkateZilla, GrayGhost has already stated all that needs to be stated in reply to your clueless posts. I just want to go on record that he is right and you are absolutely wrong. And to say that the peculiar thing is that everything you posted here in reference to the F-22 has been posted here before, much of it by you, and completely debunked already. And yet you still post this crap. And I suppose the next time the subject of the F-22 is brought up you will do it all over again.

Why is that?

JHMCS, APG-63v3 AESA and some other internals.

i think the USAF is keeping 175 F-15Cs active, 3 on reserve, and all 220+ f-15Es will remain active through 2015

'some other internals' ... hehe. There's a whole lot more to it than that, including IRST, MLWS, cockpit changes, processing units replacements, sensor fusion, and all kinds of other fun things.

Why is it that every single thread about the F-22 that has been on SimHQ eventually turns into a flame war?

there was too many for me to list off the top of my head, thanks for doing all the hard typing work for me.

I really doubt you knew any of that

Because the F-22 is the unltimate thread dominance aircraft

Because some people insist on repeating statements / charges that have already been proven wrong over and over again.

flame war <-> heated debate/conversation.

its all good until someone hurts a kitten.

seeing as we are discussing raptors and eagles, the kittens are safe...

nope.. didnt know all of that...

INcidentally, accident report for the crashed F-22 that caused the initial grounding:

http://usaf.aib.law.af.mil/ExecSum2011/F-22A_AK_16%20Nov%2010.pdf

do i need security clearance to read this?

ok I wanna make sure I read and understood this correctly, How would you summarize this?

The Pilot lost air from his OnBoard oxygen system (as a result of all the cautions going in prior)(but shoulda had enough air in the line to continue past the crash time),
and either forgot to activate/or was unable to activate emergency oxygen (possibly because of the gear he was wearing),
which led to restricted breathing and possible hypoxia like symptoms (which they found unlikely)
As Pilot either struggled to restore oxygen (looking for the EOS Ring), or struggled to breathe,
he possibly hit the control inputs and put his aircraft into a dangerous position/attitude,
pilot eventually noticed his position and tried to correct / recover too late?

So basically the pilot kinda sorta wasnt paying attention while trying to restore his oxygen, by time he noticed his position and attempted recovery it was too late?

DEW technology seems to be maturing pretty rapidly.

I'm sure there were plenty of folks back instead the the '50s who doubted that AAMs would soon become the primary AA weapon of most fighter aircraft.

The thing is, I believe an aircraft will have to be designed around a directed energy system, and not just incorporates one as a podded afterthought as seems to the plan with the F-22 and F-35, for it to be effective.

Even given that it might require a much larger aircraft than a fighter sized one, miniaturization forces more compromises than anything.

remember how big it was in "real genius"?

The Encironmental Control System shut off all bleed-air serviced equipment by shutting the bleed-air valves. It did so because it detected a bleed hot air condition - this air is about 800deg c, and while the engine can take it, the rest of the airframe it would just burn though, or start a fire.



The pilot should have activated the EOS right away upon loss of cabin pressure and other indications of lack of oxygen. He tried to fly his plane first instead, which is normally the right thing to do, but as he became hypoxic, he probably forgot about the EOS. After this, whatever it is he tried to do we couldn't possibly tell if it was reaction to his attitude due to hypoxia, or him trying to pull the ring (motor control also goes to hell when hypoxic). Now having said this, it seems like hypoxia was not the cause, but rather an attempt at preventingit had the pilot looking elsewhere with limited vision, and he didn't realize his aircraft attitude had changed. He wasn't paying attention to flight any more.

As you can probably see, there's no clear indication that the F-22 is broken, rather, things seem to have functioned as they should have.

I'll add that hypoxia is truly a severe and sudden condition. You might not realize you're experiencing it, and you'll die not ever having known what happened, or that anything was in fact happening. This is why you must prevent hypoxia, rather than just waiting to react to it ... past a very short time (20-30 sec), you're done. You're no longer able to think or make decisions. If you do restore oxygen on the edge of this time, it takes a while to fully recover again, possibly as long as a minute.

Yet another F-22 thread where people are only talking about the PLANES the F-22 will face, which is NOT the primary threat. The primary threat are SAMs, have been since the 60s began. I don't know of a site with stats, but I'll bet in every year since 1960 the US has lost more planes to SAMs than to enemy aircraft (at least in unclassified incidents).
You can't build an air dominance fighter to sweep the sky of enemy planes if it can't survive without massive EW support from numerous jamming-dedicated planes. The F-22 was designed to be the best plane, into the middle of this century, to take on and defeat enemy airplanes in SAM-DENIED airspace. It doesn't matter if the enemy has nothing better than modernized MiG-21s firing Magic 2s if they can sit back while their SA-10/11/20/22/etc swat our planes from the sky, does it?

The F-22 and F-35 and B-2 are made to go in there on those opening days and take those sites down/out so the older ones can come into the fight.


The Jedi Master

This.

I remember how during Allied Force, the F-15C fleet required an extravagant level of SEAD/EW support in order to operate over enemy territory, against an opponent with a third rate air defense system. Of course there's nothing saying that the F-22 and F-35 won't struggle against air defense systems specifically designed to counter them.