F-22 Raptor Makes Its European Debut

Keith

Moderator
I'm not an aviator but I am a fan of military aircraft. Looks sensational, but what's it for exactly?
 

Keith

Moderator
Yes, but superiority against what, who? Like Typhoon it's obsolete before it flies, at horrendous public expense.

Lovely piece of kit but almost totally useless..

IMO :)

Bring it on.....
 

Terry Oxandale

Skinny Man
Personal opinion only, but there are fewer and fewer things we do in this country that's better than anybody else (except the time-honored tradition of making as much money, in as short a time, with little regard to what's "right" any more. With that said, I'm damn proud we are spending a little money to show we've still "got it" (to some degree anyway).
 
Can somebody tell me when the last time was that one of our state-of-the-art tactical fighters actually was involved in serious "dogfight" type aerial combat with a hostile aircraft?
 
Can somebody tell me when the last time was that one of our state-of-the-art tactical fighters actually was involved in serious "dogfight" type aerial combat with a hostile aircraft?

That's the type of engagement advanced avionics and munitions eliminate - fire & forget, BVR etc...


Chris
 
Can somebody tell me when the last time was that one of our state-of-the-art tactical fighters actually was involved in serious "dogfight" type aerial combat with a hostile aircraft?

You'd really need to address that question to the Israeli Air Force :D
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
Just more kit to eventually park in the Mojave desert. In the mean time, we all marvel at it's wonderful tricks and gismos while it purports buys a bit of peace for a while.
It's too nice to waste in the current theatres of war as there is no oppostion in the air anyway, so with the return of terrorist attempts on aeroplanes, it could assume the duties of guarding major cities and doing the occasional 'fly-over' to let the tax payers know where their millions and millions of dollars were spent.
As an aside, very soon, to fly anywhere, we will need to check in the day before.
I hear the enroute map facility on the screens has been withdrawn. Hello - if I'm eight hours fifteen out of a nine hour flight and the power is reduced - are we starting a descent and at eight hours forty five minutes into a nine hour flight and my ears are popping - are we about to start an approach. What plonker decided that would be a useful anti terrorist thing to stop ! Cut one Raptor and one Typhoon from the defence budget and spend it on profiling of passengers. It's getting really crazy again. As a 62 year old man I have to walk through the security with my shoes, belt, watch, and loose change in a box in a scanner. Smell the coffee. My name is not Abdul al whatever . I have not applied for a student visa. I have not visited the yemen in the last forty years.
Sorry - I digressed.
Sid - I don't think the Israeli air force have been dog fighting since they defeated Egypt during Yom Kippur. Sure, they let off chaff and mag flares as they fly overhead and roundly defeated the Lebanese air force in 1982 but that wasn't really competition - shooting down old Migs could be likened to a load of old ducks with a punt gun - and their tax payers can see what good chaps they are - but 'one on one' ? - not for a long time now. They do bombing, rocketing and strafing quite sucessfully especially when there is nothing coming the other way ie no opposition.
 
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Daryl,
The previous generation American air superiority fighter, the F15 has 104 kills to 0 losses.
 

marc

Lifetime Supporter
Given the current flow of govt, I actually would rather see us buy/build something for money than just give the money away. F-22 is built for many reasons. If you show you have a big stick AND not afraid to use it, those that would harm you find something else to do.
The F 22 gives us bang for our buck. The jobs that are created by doing this build economic value beyond the cost of the plane. The manufacturing of the airplane happens here, not in china or other foreign manufacturers.
Paris AS is the place to show you have something down low and you better not make me use it.

Soap box alert!
I just saw Avatar, what a crock. Hollyweird has once again proven that it wants the US and any other civilization to go back to the stone age. See! They can prove it. The military, technology and a neocon attitude shown (as they call it) are pathetic. This is another sad excuse by the entertainment world that they think they teaching
us knuckle draggers they are superior, their stuff dont stink, and they should be running everything.

I so pissed that I had to go to that mess because my wife has a loony sister.

Soap box off.
 

Keith

Moderator
What Dave says and if you scrapped 6 Typhoons (or didn't build them to start with) and used the money elsewhere, perhaps British soldiers would not be blown to pieces by stone age chemicals in wooden boxes aka, IAD's. That's why they can't detect them according to my 3 Para mates. (not 3 mates but 3rd Parachute Regiment = hard bastards).

Putting your (increasingly) limited resources at the sharp end is where we should be at, limited by virtue of the fact that unlike Hitlers nightmare scenario of a war on 2 fronts, we are effectively fighting a war on a thousand fronts - quite why we spend billions on obsolete devices that will only see duty at air shows is beyond me. Do you think Ahmed with his dirty bomb in a suitcase (I'm profiling here, so sue me) is going to be deterred by a Raptor and quake with fear at a low Mach 2 flyover? I think not.

I have to say that Raptor is a beautiful and extrordinarily sophisticated machine and represents the absolute pinnacle of US skill and technology and I predict will be the last of it's breed.

Please do not think because I diss the philosophy I am dissing the achievement as I am detecting whiffs of jingoism here.

All I can say is, quite apart from the fact that he lumped me as a Brit together with the term "Liberal" which, if he did it here would get him a good telling off, I totally agree with Mr MadMax (a very apt handle I have to say) that the only way to make an effective counter strike is to cut the head off the snake.

But not from 40,000 ft at Supercruise BVR with a F&F missile & invisible to radar, camels and grazing goats, but up close, dirty and personal.
 

marc

Lifetime Supporter
I don't believe that all Brits are Liberal, as we have too many Liberals, not Brits here in america.
The Paris Air Show is where you can get the closest look at your enemies top secrets that they are willing to show to the public. This is where the Hugo Chavez and such come to realize that they need to stay in there corner of the world and bluster away. America shows this advanced weaponry to his ilk to deal with the big problem governments. Al-Quaida is a terrorist organization that has no ability to obtain much more than hand held weapons. That is why they are so hard to deal with in a traditional country vs country based "war".

I do believe that the Islamic/Terrorist ideology need to meet me and my 12 gauge for some eye to eye reality. I don't threaten, I just pull the trigger. As my brothers in Israel.
 
As a Lt Col (pilot) in the US Air Force, I can tell you that the F-22 is a wholly irrelevant and wasteful expense for the wars that we are fighting today.

Just as a fire truck is wholly irrelevant and wasteful expense, when there are no houses burning down. Think about it--that fire truck is damn expensive, plus you need to have some place to put it, and you need to spend more money paying people to know how to operate it--and for what? If there aren't any houses burning, what a bloody waste!

Ah, but what happens when somebody leaves a pot unattended on the stove and the food catches fire and lights the curtains on fire, which soon gets the walls and ceiling going and then the whole building faces the potential of being engulfed in flame? Suddenly that extravagant fire truck starts looking awfully necessary--particularly if it's your house!!!

Yes, the guy with the explosives in his underwear isn't affected by the F22 one bit--any more than he's bothered by our nuclear submarines, etc. But as certain powers shrink from their onetime standing the world, other powers are ascendant, and not all of them are benign. Picture a future scenario where North Korea, staggering under years of starvation and isolation, believes it is facing extinction, and comes to believe that its only recourse is to invade and capture a greatly weakened South Korea. The south has far more natural resources, and the terrain in the south is far more conducive for agriculture, plus there is a cultural tie there as well.

So, one of the world's largest armies sweeps across the border, overwhelming the opposition, which has been gutted and drastically weakened by many years of military cutbacks, political compromises, and the distraction of wars elsewhere in the world.

As the northern forces push southward, the US (perhaps backed by some UN allies) determines to halt the advance, reinforcements arrive, and eventually succeeds in pushing them back. At some point, China becomes threatened, and rolls into the conflict, ostensibly to protect its own interests and ensure a viable communist buffer state on its southern border.

That is almost exactly what happened during the Korean war in the 1950s, and it could easily happen again. Should we find ourselves fighting on the Korean peninsula, we will likely be outmanned on the order of 100-1, and the Chinese would bring a fair degree of sophistication to the aerial battlespace. Under those circumstances, it is the F22 fire truck that would be the only thing preventing a complete rout. As long as aerial superiority can be maintained, then our forces on the ground would have a huge advantage in terms of combat air support, aerial logistics supply etc. which would hopefully more than offset their huge disadvantage in pure numbers.

And that is why the F22 exists. Do we need to buy hundreds more of them? No, arguably, a smaller-than-optimal number is the most reasonable course of action. After all, you don't need a fire truck parked on every block in the city.

The military has an awfully difficult challenge before it right now. While we still need to be trained and equipped to handle the big threat (conventional war with a near-peer power), we also have to contend with the asymmetric warfare that we're embroiled in now--arguably a much more difficult task, and one that historically we haven't succeeded in (witness the ultimate success of the illiterate peasant Viet Cong).

It's fascinating to me to see how we are leveraging our strengths technologically (with armed Predator drones etc.) in an attempt to offset our huge disadvantages, i.e a profound lack of understanding of the local culture, language, etc. While doing so has enabled us to emerge victorious from virtually ever tactical encounter, strategically we still have a very long way to go, and ultimately it will be the responsibility of our almost completely hollowed-out state department and intelligence agencies to secure anything resembling a victory. Whether that will occur anytime before my retirement in 2018, is anybody's guess....
 

David Morton

Lifetime Supporter
Eloquent comments Mike. There has to be a balance and your argument almost defines it. If only our agencies can live up to their reputation and act in good time on the intel they receive, right should prevail.
Happy New Year and Happy Landings.
Dave M
 

Pat Buckley

GT40s Supporter
I'm for cheaper firetrucks - and more of them - that way we can hire more firefighters!

As far as China goes, they own us lock, stock, and barrel so I don't think that analogy works anymore....they have a vested interest in keeping us just prosperous enough to buy the crap they make.

Maybe we can buy cheap firetrucks from the Chinese!
 
As a Lt Col (pilot) in the US Air Force, I can tell you that the F-22 is a wholly irrelevant and wasteful expense for the wars that we are fighting today.

Just as a fire truck is wholly irrelevant and wasteful expense, when there are no houses burning down. Think about it--that fire truck is damn expensive, plus you need to have some place to put it, and you need to spend more money paying people to know how to operate it--and for what? If there aren't any houses burning, what a bloody waste!

Ah, but what happens when somebody leaves a pot unattended on the stove and the food catches fire and lights the curtains on fire, which soon gets the walls and ceiling going and then the whole building faces the potential of being engulfed in flame? Suddenly that extravagant fire truck starts looking awfully necessary--particularly if it's your house!!!

Yes, the guy with the explosives in his underwear isn't affected by the F22 one bit--any more than he's bothered by our nuclear submarines, etc. But as certain powers shrink from their onetime standing the world, other powers are ascendant, and not all of them are benign. Picture a future scenario where North Korea, staggering under years of starvation and isolation, believes it is facing extinction, and comes to believe that its only recourse is to invade and capture a greatly weakened South Korea. The south has far more natural resources, and the terrain in the south is far more conducive for agriculture, plus there is a cultural tie there as well.

So, one of the world's largest armies sweeps across the border, overwhelming the opposition, which has been gutted and drastically weakened by many years of military cutbacks, political compromises, and the distraction of wars elsewhere in the world.

As the northern forces push southward, the US (perhaps backed by some UN allies) determines to halt the advance, reinforcements arrive, and eventually succeeds in pushing them back. At some point, China becomes threatened, and rolls into the conflict, ostensibly to protect its own interests and ensure a viable communist buffer state on its southern border.

That is almost exactly what happened during the Korean war in the 1950s, and it could easily happen again. Should we find ourselves fighting on the Korean peninsula, we will likely be outmanned on the order of 100-1, and the Chinese would bring a fair degree of sophistication to the aerial battlespace. Under those circumstances, it is the F22 fire truck that would be the only thing preventing a complete rout. As long as aerial superiority can be maintained, then our forces on the ground would have a huge advantage in terms of combat air support, aerial logistics supply etc. which would hopefully more than offset their huge disadvantage in pure numbers.

And that is why the F22 exists. Do we need to buy hundreds more of them? No, arguably, a smaller-than-optimal number is the most reasonable course of action. After all, you don't need a fire truck parked on every block in the city.

The military has an awfully difficult challenge before it right now. While we still need to be trained and equipped to handle the big threat (conventional war with a near-peer power), we also have to contend with the asymmetric warfare that we're embroiled in now--arguably a much more difficult task, and one that historically we haven't succeeded in (witness the ultimate success of the illiterate peasant Viet Cong).

It's fascinating to me to see how we are leveraging our strengths technologically (with armed Predator drones etc.) in an attempt to offset our huge disadvantages, i.e a profound lack of understanding of the local culture, language, etc. While doing so has enabled us to emerge victorious from virtually ever tactical encounter, strategically we still have a very long way to go, and ultimately it will be the responsibility of our almost completely hollowed-out state department and intelligence agencies to secure anything resembling a victory. Whether that will occur anytime before my retirement in 2018, is anybody's guess....

Mike, I agree with almost all of your points and was beginning to formulate a response until I saw your post. I like firetrucks.

The one point I disagree with is this:

"While doing so has enabled us to emerge victorious from virtually ever tactical encounter.."

Maybe I am interpreting this wrong but I do not think we have or will ever be successful in Iraq or Afghanistan. Sure, maybe in most individual firefights we come out winning but there is little clear solution to the overall war. Therefore I don't think we will emerge victorious.

I do like the F-22, I like that we continue to push the envelope and advance technology. I am a bigger fan of spending money on defense and infrastructure than giving money away for social programs that equate to little return.

Kevin
 
Kevin, I believe Mike was referring to individual tactical engagements and not an "overall" picture. I totally agree with him BTW.
 
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