F-22: No Dogfighting Advantage Over Eurofighter
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Apparently it's really hard to close on the F-22...but if you can get within dogfighting range, the Raptor ($420 million each) has no real advantage over the Typhoon ($200 million each).
I guess thrust vectoring isn't as effective as I'd been led to believe.
And I hear that the Typhoon has an oxygen system that actually works. Which is a plus...
Apparently it's really hard to close on the F-22...but if you can get within dogfighting range, the Raptor ($420 million each) has no real advantage over the Typhoon ($200 million each).
I guess thrust vectoring isn't as effective as I'd been led to believe.
And I hear that the Typhoon has an oxygen system that actually works. Which is a plus...
posted by Winston Smith at
9:00 PM
11 Comments:
Sure, its ability to destroy fighters from a distance is overwhelming, and no one can see it, but, if the exercise is restricted to eliminate its advantages, it's roughly even!
CALL TEH PAPARZZ!
Remember how we spent all that money so that the F-22 could be the world's greatest dogfighter? Remember?
No... As I recall, it was for air superiority, which it has delivered unquestionably. I do not recall its purpose as being the world's best dogfighter.
Source?
Source: common knowledge.
Yes, it's an air superiority fighter...and typically and in this case, that includes being a good dogfighter...and the F-22 was supposed to be the best.
Which is, just to be perfectly clear, not to say that it doesn't emphasize kills BVR. Still, it was supposed to kick monstrous ass up close...which is why people poo-pooed Sprey's (predictable, but cogent) objections to it.
Man, from what I can tell, you are consistently weird when it comes to the F-22. Yes, a fighter designed for air superiority should be able to dogfight in the same way a soldier should be proficient with his sidearm, and the F-22 has proven that it can do that. However, this isn't the purpose of its design. It achieves air superiority largely separately from dogfighting altogether.
To my knowledge, the purpose of the F-22 was to deliver first-look, first-shot, first-kill. That is how it defeats enemy fighters. It does not engage in dogfights; it resolves the issue of opposing air force before that is ever even possible. The fact that it has these capabilities and can, in addition, prove at least equal to the Eurofighter, which is designed specifically for dogfights, when restricted to such encounters is pretty amazing, if you ask me.
A Typhoon sortie would bite the dust before ever even knowing where a Raptor was. It seems like you're critiquing a sniper for his merely on-par performance with his pistol when pitted against enemies who train only with pistols.
Dude, seriously. YOU ARE THE ONE who's weird about the F-22 which you love so much I don't know why you don't marry it and have lots of stealth ponies.
AS I ALREADY SAID AND AM NOW SAYING IN CAPS, the F-22 was built to do a LOT of damage BVR and before it is ever targeted (hence the stealth).
But when we were being sold the F-22, the chatter was largely about its maneuverability and dogfighting capabilities--hence the talk of thrust vectoring, thrust vectoring, thrust vectoring...
Now, look...I'm under the impression that an F-16 that gets in on and F-15 has an advantage, though the latter is probably overall a better fighter. Heck, I'm under the impression that an *F-5* that gets in on an F-15 could give it trouble (note: possibly false).
AND it's really not clear how often the Typhoons were winning against the Raptor...initial reports sounded pretty bad, but maybe that was exuberance at having gotten any of them. Reports from F-15 pilots at Red Flag basically make it sound like you *can* shoot down an F-22, but you have to really know what you are doing, look for certain kinds of mistakes by the F-22 driver, and you have a small window to exploit. If that's basically all we're talking about--Typhoons can *sometimes* get in on Raptors and then *sometimes* beat them in dogfights--then that seems disappointing, but within specs to me. If the Typhoons were cleaning their clocks whenever they got in on them however ("We had Raptor salad for lunch" as one Luftwaffe pilot put it)...well, that's another thing.
Another possibility is that the F-22s were restricted from doing certain things because of the oxygen problem. They ARE under some kinds of restrictions.
I don't hate the F-22. But it's been something of a disappointment, I think, and I have little faith in the F-35.
1) I didn't see your little BVR post before I wrote mine. I was in the process of writing mine in response to the post you made before that when you posted.
So there.
2) FINE, you don't hate it. You sure do sound consistently negative, though.
3) I don't love it; I barely have an opinion because I know so little. I just keep being prompted to engage in research at the sight of your critiques and you keep seeming wrong..
4) I must've missed this chatter to which you refer.
5) Basically, I don't think either of us know enough to be talking about this at all, but you keep posting like you're Major General Webelo Aeronaut Extreme, provoking me with your negativity to investigate and get into incompetent discussions which degenerate from your initial, general, and concisely worded negativity to a verbose worry over a quasi-plausi-maybe disappointment.
NATTERING NABOB, YOU ARE. NATTERING NABOB!
"Basically, I don't think either of us know enough to be talking about this at all"
Well, you're half-right...
My stealth ponies and I stand in salute of Major General Webelo Aeronaut Extreme Winston Smith.
At ease, mystical stealth ponies.
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