Modern War Planes: An open Opinion.

[Joey D]

You realize the only time the US will ever get in any kind of dogfight would be if we fought China. Ever country we fight now, we just blow their planes up with B-52's and Tomahawks.

 

[DQuaN]

B-52's and Tomohawks are long range ground attack. They wouldn't be very effective against enemy aircraft. That said, you do have many long range missiles and aircraft capable of getting kills from a distance.


*edit* Unless you mean blowing them up on the ground before they get a chance to take off.

 

[Joey D]

Yup blowing them on the ground before they even launch, that's what the US military seems to try and do before any major conflict.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Listen,the F 22 WILL kill.But only when it comes to BVR.
But if we go in the dogfight....http://www.alert5.com/2006/04/fa-18f-guns-down-f-22a-update.html

Now imagine if a MiG-29 or Su-35 instead of the F/A-18.....

I think this proves my point.

If I post a pic of a Vauxhall corsa crossing a finnishing line before a Ferrari Enzo does that mean the Coras is infinetly better? Photos can me described as alot of things. That photo could have just been a test to see if the F/A-18 gun radar could get a lock on the F-22. It could also be a hundred other things.

And if 3rd world war ever happens in near future(if we exclude the "Everyone nukes everyone scenario",) then the F22 will become impractical,because of its price and maintain cost.

I think so because in a real war,you don't wan't th have something that has extremely high cost to maintain....

So the B2, F-117A, Nimitz class aircraft carriers and the such are worthless in a war because they cost so much to maintain. I think not.

Not to mention,the technology to detect stealth planes has probably been developed,or is nearing it's completion somewhere in Russia or China,(yes you can say that I may be wrong,but...)will make the F22's best ace turn into nothing.and yes,the f22 has excellent manouverability,but with upcoming Su-37/47,and Eurofigter(which also has stealth capabilities and comes very close in manouverability),I'd beter find a way of decreasing F22's cost to something less pricey soon.....

The Eurofighter is not a stealth plane. It is 'stealthy' but not officially stealth. Basically, it has a small but not minute radar profile.

Just because stealth detection technology is devepoed doesn't mean it's affective. The Russians for example have huge gaps in their radar coverage because they can't afford to fill the gaps, let alone update them. Same for allll of Chinas radar equipment, it'll cost a hell of alot to replace and update all of iit.

Despite all things that the F22 has,those aren't exactly things that will make it "Invincible".
It may be "invincible" now,but very soon a some aircrafts that will otperform it will come,and they won't be american.

That logic can be put towards just about every piece of technology. From your desktop processor to your new car. Nothing in the 21st century stays the best for long.

 

[///M-Spec]

Re: The F/A-22.

Some of these arguments I see against the Raptor make me smirk. It's all if this and if that. You can "prove" almost anything by stringing up a series of improbable scenarios tailor designed to make your argument look good. I could make a good case for being the father of Jessica Biel's children were we stranded alone on a deserted island after a nuclear holocaust (don't laugh, it can happen).

Let's examine some of the pundits' points.

Reason #1: Effective anti-stealth technology exists and has been deployed against aircraft like the Raptor (or will be soon). Now since any country that wants a snowball's chance in hell of surviving a military conflict with the United States is probably doing some form of research on this issue, I don't have a problem with this idea. Systems exist today and will probably be deployed in signifigant numbers within the near (10-20 years) future.

What I find silly is the notion that once the technology is developed, that it can be tested and deployed in a manner that completely neutralizes aircraft like the F/A-22 and it's cousins.

First off, how would you test such a system? You can't. The Raptor is not available for export. Neither is the F-117A or B-2. Since the technology invested in each aircraft is unique to the US, there is no way for scientists in other countries to create a true copy of the Raptor for testing.

Of course, both China and Russia has been developing their own stealth aircraft for years, so it stands to reason they are testing the countermeasure in parallel. But most defense experts say that's years away. The Raptor is here today.

But let's make that assumption for the sake of argument. It exists and it works. Where and how would such technology be deployed? Why, at a radar/detection site, of course. And how much would this technology cost? Probably a lot. And how long would it take to deploy? Probably a long time. If it were easy and cheap, it would be done already.

Here's a problem with a fixed rader installation. In any conflict with a modern force like the United States, it will be destroyed on the opening night of the hostilities. You can detect stealth fighters with a fixed rader installation: whoop-de-do. Can you detect and stop hundreds of cruise missles launched from stand off range, all targetting the installation itself? Not with SAMs. With a good interceptor, you might have a chance.

But what happens when you scramble your interceptors to shoot down the Tomahawks? That's right. You get shot at by the Raptors and Eagles that are out of range of your fixed SAM and radar installations. So unless this country has thousands of state of the art interceptors at it's disposal, it will not do an adequate job of eliminating the cruise missle threat. In addition, any interceptor that takes off to do battle with the Raptor will be destroyed as soon as it leaves rader coverage of it's home country.

Once the Tomahawks eliminate/disrupt the anti-stealth radar network, your entire air defense network is compromised. After that, it's just a matter of time.

The F/A-22 is not designed to fight a war all by itself. It was designed as part of an integrated system.

Reason #2: The F/A-22 is a less capable dogfighter at visual range than X plane. Of course this is like saying a Corvette is going to lose a drag race to an M3 if the Vette is allowed the use of only the first 3 gears while the M3 can use all 6 (it would need 4).

Let's put aside the debate of whether or not the Su-37 is better in a close dogfight. (Someone said Su-35... which never entered service) Exactly when do you suppose a Raptor pilot will allow this tactical situation to even occur? In what sort of scenario would a section of F/A-22s be flying around, see some fighters 100 miles away and then CHOOSE to close to visual range before starting a fight?

Nonsense.

Vietnam you say? Won't happen ever again. The policy makers at the Pentagon today were the pilots that flew there in the 60s and early 70s. Those types of ROE are long gone.

Someone posted a link of a Super Hornet gun cam with an F/A-22 in the sights. No explanation of how it got there. Hello??? Ever heard of pilot training? Guess not. Maybe a greenhorn was getting qualified on the Raptor and was bested by a veteran pilot in an inferior airplane?

Take a guess. I'm sure in 1974 someone got a gun camera shot of an F-15A from the hotseat of an F-4E. Maybe the airforce should have kept all those F-4s?


You never assess a fighter plane in isolation. Fighters are part of an Airforce, which in turn is part of a larger armed forces. The Me-109 was a superior fighter to the Spitfire in many ways, but it was the Spit that won the Battle of Britain. The MiG-15 was a close match for the F-86, but the Sabre dominated MiG Alley. The MiG-19 was a superior close dogfighter over the less manuverable and gun-less F4, but the Phantom still had superior K/D ratio in Vietnam.

Tactics and training often make the difference.


M

 

[YSSMAN]

+1 ///M-Spec!

No one will ever actually be able to prove what these planes can do untill two of them actually go at it in a real combat senario. Being that US fighters have only knocked gloves with the likes of the small Iraqi airforces and way back to the North Vietnamese, you really can't call anything here. Migs have gotten better, so have the Saabs, Eurofighters, etc, etc.

Of course, we could just simulate all of this in Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War (LOL)...

I look at it this way. It's going to come down to the pilot, the given situation (bombing, defending, ammount of fuel, ammount of weapons left), and where exactly this fight is going to occour.

The United States along with Great Britan take great pride in their Air Forces, and we easily have the best trained fighters in the world, bar none. There may be some good aces in Russia, China, India, etc. but they are going to be few and far between.

Also, like BX said, if the US or the UK are going to start a war, we are going to start it with cruise missles and B-52s... It's not worth our time to put planes in the situation immediately, and we have to do our best to destroy as much millitary infestructure before the war actually stars.

Do yourself a favor Electric.... Watch a few hours of the History Channel or the Millitary Channel and you might learn a thing or two about how warfare has been conducted over the past 100 years...

 

[Electric.......]

:

First off, you never mentioned that the F22 is the ONLY plane in the world capable of Sustained Super-Sonic Flight WithOut AfterBurners.

I just wan't to add that the Eurofigter Typhoon is also capable of that.

 

[Joey D]

M-Spec said it best, the American air arsenel is the best in the world. The Eurofighter might be able to cruise at supersonic without afterbuners, but it's not stealth nor does it have things the F-22 has. Face it, America has the best weapondery in the world.

 

[Kent]

I stand corrected.
The Typhoon can do supercruise at 1.5mach without weapons and 1.3 with a full weapons load (my half-butt research).

None the less, the F22 still manages a solid 1.7mach without payload and to my knowledge has an unknown supercruise speed with a full payload (more research).
(the supercruise speed with payload may be found if anyone wants to take the time... I simply didn't look very hard).

In any case, I'd say M-spec nailed it.
Points to you M... Rep points that is (given as of now).

Btw, my favorite plane is definately the F14.
Sure it's old and cliche, but I love the swing wings, the appearance, and the performance. 👍

(oh, and points went to exigeexcel and blazinextreme as well)
(what can I say... You say what I like but didn't think to say- you get rep points 👍 )

( Oh! and DQuan gets positive points as well for his informative Concorde comment... I didn't know about the concorde being capable of supercruise, although I did know about it being supersonic) 👍

 

[High-Test]

///M-Spec - (+1)


Pah. The Foxbat was a copy of the top secret Canadian Avro Arrow project of the 50s. THe Arrow would have given Canada the best interceptor in the world that was light-years ahead of its time, but they suddenly scrapped the project and destroyed the machine tools. Why? there was a leak somewhere to the KGB. Several years later, the Russians revealed a plane astonishingly similar to the Arrow in the form of the MiG-25. Sure, it's freaking sweet, and probably the fastest interceptor to see service, but it's not an original idea. It's just another example of the inability of Soviet designers to have a creative thought.

Arrow:

MiG-25:

While they're nowhere near exact copies, there are distinct similarities in the two. Long nosecone, largely flat top surfaces, boxy intakes, etc.

 

[Small_Fryz]

I dont know much about any plane.

But my favourite is the SR-71 Blackbird

To my knowlegde it has never been shot down. How cool is that? Its insanly fast and can fly very high, all this and it was made back in the 1960's!!!, plus it only became classified in the 1990's?

It is my favourite! 👍 Nothing that i know of can touch this plane. Im sure the military has something, but we dont know about it.

 

[DQuaN]

( Oh! and DQuan gets positive points as well for his informative Concorde comment... I didn't know about the concorde being capable of supercruise, although I did know about it being supersonic) 👍

Thanks Kent.

I may be wrong, but I think that the Concorde engines are the most efficient ever created (that we know of anyway). No other engines (past or present) could propel an aircraft that size, that fast, that far.


Wiki actually has a list of aircraft capable of supercruise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise

F-4 Phantom II?????

 

[ExigeEvan]

The Me-109 was a superior fighter to the Spitfire in many ways, but it was the Spit that won the Battle of Britain.

No it didn't, the Hawker Hurricane did

The Eurofighter might be able to cruise at supersonic without afterbuners, but it's not stealth nor does it have things the F-22 has. Face it, America has the best weapondery in the world.

But the Eurofighter can be seen as superior to the F-22 because it costs alot ,but does much similair, and is a true multi-role aircraft. America does have the best military in the world, but if you want to go into real detail you'll find there are many exaples of nations that have better weaponry in certain departments.

 

[YSSMAN]

Certainly the US isnt the most superior in every situation. The British Challenger in some ways can be considered better than the American Abrams, the Russian AK-47 (and all of it's variants) are far better than that of the American M16 (and all of it's variants), the British Harrier obviously had an effect on the US Marines, etc...

I haven't seen or read much on the Eurofighter (it is mentioned often on the Millitary Channel), but I would presume it to be an equal to the F-22 in most situations simply because it is a Western European product that took a lot of influence from previous American and European designs.

 

[ExigeEvan]

the Russian AK-47 (and all of it's variants) are far better than that of the American M16 (and all of it's variants)

That's the only one I disagree on

 

[Joey D]

The AK-47 used to be better, back in Nam it was a far better weapon to have, but now the M-16 is awesome, and so is the smaller M4.

 

[///M-Spec]

My thanks, to all you kind sirs for the pointage. I call it as I see it; good, bad or indifferent.

No it didn't, the Hawker Hurricane did

Fair enough, the Hurricane did account for the majority of air to air kills throughout the summer of '40.. but that's because they spent most their time chasing bombers, instead of engaging fighters that outclassed them.

The AK-47 used to be better, back in Nam it was a far better weapon to have, but now the M-16 is awesome, and so is the smaller M4.

Yeah, but the M-16 will never have as cool an endorsement as the AK got from a certain Samuel L. Jackson.


M

 

[High-Test]

"Eh-kay fouwty seven. da best dey is. when you absolutly, positively gotta waste erry m********** in the room, accept no substitutes."


back on topic,

I'll have to agree with ExigeExcel on that, the Hurricane was far more plentiful than the Spitfire, but the Spitfire got all the glory. Plus, the Mighty Bf-109 got denied by a plane half covered in canvas.

 

[Joey D]

Speaking of AK's, I must include a quote from one of my favorite movies..

Of all the weapons in the vast soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947. More commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It's the worlds most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound algemation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn't break, jam, or overheat. It'll shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars.

But anyways with the planes, anyone know when the JSF is supposed to enter service?

 

[High-Test]

I honestly think that the AK-47 and Zippo lighter would win a tie as the single most reliable object mass produced in the 20th century.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Speaking of AK's, I must include a quote from one of my favorite movies..




But anyways with the planes, anyone know when the JSF is supposed to enter service?

2011 says Wikipedia. About the same time as the new 'super' aircraft carriers the UK are getting.

 

[YSSMAN]

Are these "super" aircraft carriers based of the US Nimitz-class design?

 

[ExigeEvan]

Are these "super" aircraft carriers based of the US Nimitz-class design?

Noooo. They're called super-carriers because they're the biggest ships the Royal Navy will ever have and they're not like the 'pocket' aircraft carriers of the Invincible class.

And anyway, most the major aircraft carrier technology on the Nimitz, and most other aircraft carriers, is British anyway

 

[Small_Fryz]

SR-71
"The aircraft flew so fast and so high that if the pilot detected a surface-to-air missile launch, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate. No SR-71 was ever shot down."

"The SR-71 also holds the record for flying from New York to London: 1 hour 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds, set on September 1, 1974. (For comparison, commercial Concorde flights took around 3 hours 20 minutes, and the Boeing 747 averages 7 hours.)"

This plane could cruise at over mach 3.2!

I find these facts amazing, i dont think a F22 could shoot this down

 

[a6m5]

Blackbird definitely is one of the important planes in the aviation history, no doubt. It never got shot down, but it couldn't shoot anybody down either though, it's just an unarmed spy plane. Sorry Fryz!

I went to a aviation meseum in Washington(they are just above Oregon) while back, and they have a actual cut-out cockpit of SR-71, where you can sit in, and the actual plane hanging from the ceiling. Very cool. I took bunch of pictures, but all my pics were destroyed when my computer had to reformatted.

 

[Keef]

I live near Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, and they have an SR-71 inside the Airforce Museum on the base. I love that museum. Anyway, the Blackbird is my favorite plane by far, just because of its shear power and speed. No other jet comes close. Maximum speed: Mach 3.35; 2,193 mph at 80,000 ft (3,530 km/h at 24,000 m).

Originally Posted by Wiki
On July 28, 1976, an SR-71 set two world records for its class: an absolute speed record of 2,193.167 mph (3,529.56 km·h-1) and a US "absolute altitude record" of 85,068.997 feet (25,929 m). Only the Soviet MiG-25 'Foxbat' high-altitude interceptor broke the record, reaching an altitude of 37,650 m on August 31, 1977 (MIG-25). Several planes exceeded this altitude in zoom climbs but not in sustained flight.

Okay, so the MiG went higher, but it cheated: it actually has percievable wings. Those things hanging off the back of an SR-71, well, those are just to make sure the thing goes straight, like the fins on an arrow. J/K.
I think they should bring back a Blackbird or two fro record-breaking purposes. Or at least to make the current record even higher. There are all sorts of tiny aero mods that they could do to the body to et more speed. That'd be neat.

 

[YSSMAN]

I had the pleasure (or possible displeasure?) to see/hear an SR-71 in flight a few years ago at an Air Show, and sweet Jesus that thing is crazy-loud. Still one of the coolest planes ever made, hell, it was even modified to become the X-Men's X-Jet in the comic book series (lol).

 

[High-Test]

Plus, the SR-71 has two Pratt & Whitney J58 (or are they GE?) Turbo-ramjets. THe fact that they're ramjets and turbofets at the same time is freaking amazing, not to mention that they're among the largest jet engines ever.

 

[Small_Fryz]

I belive that once they heated up, the engines got more efficient.

It truely is quite amazing, let alone the fact that it was made 40 years ago!!!!.

Just makes you wonder what secret planes the military have now

 

[High-Test]

Hmm.... An SR-71, with NOS and a Type-R sticker?


I think Old Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works boys have had long enough to cook up something..