F-22

[don]

An impressive, if albeit in infomercial format, aircraft . . .

http://www.militarytimes.com/multime...0080714_rc_f22

[flintlock]

Re: F-22

Amazing capabilities. I just wonder if the F-22 offers the kind of capability bang for the buck that is needed today. Dogfighting maneuverability, though impressive, is probably not as important as it used to be. Something like 10 hours of maintenance per flying hour is required. Will such high tech weaponry be viable in a "real" shooting war they were intended for. At $150 million a pop( some claim $412 million!!!!), can you keep enough flying to protect the bases, logistics chain, etc required to run these things. They are $150 million paper weights when sitting in a maintenance hangar. Just sayin. Some say they are like the battleships in 1939. Impressive but built for the last war. Don't know about that.

A customer of mine wrote software for the F-22. I had to fill out forms saying I only hired American citizens before I could work on his home. Guess they didn't want any nasty Canadian spies lurking around.

[wayiwalk]

Re: F-22

Pretty neat stuff. When I was out a flight test in the 1980s and watched the Grumman F-14 fly, it always looked so, unnatural, so remarkable. Yeah, I know, it is a man made object, it should be unnatural. But the flight shape of the craft is so diffrent than conventional aircraft we're all used to seeing. Something about the shape of these aircraft, their speed, maneauverabilty.

Watching the vid of the F-22, especially that maneuver early in the video, I guess the aircraft has some serious abilty to move flaps and use thrust vectoring, it is really amazing what they've managed to create. How much per plane?

Nice find.

[c1ue]

Re: F-22

This is interesting given what Rutan said about the state of aircraft today: he basically said that nothing new has been created in 40 years. Everything is just bells and whistles added on to a basic framework.

He even made a joke that all aircraft were stealth before radar became common.

[GRG55]

Re: F-22

This is interesting given what Rutan said about the state of aircraft today: he basically said that nothing new has been created in 40 years. Everything is just bells and whistles added on to a basic framework.

He even made a joke that all aircraft were stealth before radar became common.

So what has Rutan himself been doing for the past 40 years? Bells and whistles?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: F-22

Amazing capabilities. I just wonder if the F-22 offers the kind of capability bang for the buck that is needed today. Dogfighting maneuverability, though impressive, is probably not as important as it used to be. Something like 10 hours of maintenance per flying hour is required. Will such high tech weaponry be viable in a "real" shooting war they were intended for. At $150 million a pop( some claim $412 million!!!!), can you keep enough flying to protect the bases, logistics chain, etc required to run these things. They are $150 million paper weights when sitting in a maintenance hangar. Just sayin. Some say they are like the battleships in 1939. Impressive but built for the last war. Don't know about that.

A customer of mine wrote software for the F-22. I had to fill out forms saying I only hired American citizens before I could work on his home. Guess they didn't want any nasty Canadian spies lurking around.

F22s are completely useless in the recent conflicts. It would be like using a Ferrari Enzo to drop off trash at the dump.

The F22 was designed for air dominance against peer threats.

The cost per hour of operation I think is somewhere around $40-50k, possibly much higher.

I think the value of the F22 will become easier to see as the US shifts it's focus towards the Pacific.

While the F22 is capable of winning dogfights in a traditional "merge" due to its incredible aerodynamics and engines, its sensor network integration across other platforms, it's stealth characteristics, its EM emissions(or lack of them at times due to integration) combined with the aforementioned performance allows it to dictate the engagement.

The predecessor to the F22 is the F15......which a generation+ ago faced the same criticism of cost/performance/need and has over the last 30+ years of operation with US/Israeli/Saudi forces has achieved an unequalled record of performance.

I'm of the opinion that the F22 actually expands the performance gap for the foreseeable future against any other peer or near peer air threat.

What's interesting is that China has in the last 12 months put two entirely new fighter plane prototypes in the air.

Anyone with an interest in this should consider reading up on the Soviet MIG25 Foxbat story when Viktor Belenko defected with one to Japan.

The US had an incredible opportunity to scrutinize the Soviet superplane...which turned out to be far less than super and was basically a one-trick pony that largely paled against the likes of such a stellar aircraft like the F15 Eagle which was designed to counter it.

My concerns with the F22 lie in the fact that it may well represent the apogee of American military dominance.

How long can the US continue to afford to be the dominant military power on the planet?

In order for the US to be able to afford to develop and purchase such amazing capabilities, it needs a healthy, productive, and sustainable economy to support it.

To me it's a bit like a family that owns the flashest house in the neighborhood with a Ferrari F22 in the garage...unfortunately there's two mortgages on the house, and a high interest no money down loan on the Ferrari F22.....with one of the mortgages held by the Chinese family across the street living freehold and driving a Camry they paid for with cash.

What's interesting with the F22 is that security of it's capabilities is VERY closely held.

The F15 sold quickly to Israel in the late 70's.....as well as to Japan, Saudi, and also Singapore and South Korea.

Some countries, a few very closely aligned to the US such as Australia and Israel, have requested consideration for purchasing the F22 and all have been knocked back.

The F22 has also had it's own teething problems, including a life support system issue that made it onto 60 Minutes and likely was the cause of a loss of one of these irreplaceable(since the production line is closed) aircraft and the loss of a pilot.

The troubled F35 program that will ultimately be far larger $$ wise also represents further improvements/advancements in cross platform sensor network integration to better achieve information dominance.

[ASH]

Re: F-22

Amazing capabilities. I just wonder if the F-22 offers the kind of capability bang for the buck that is needed today. Dogfighting maneuverability, though impressive, is probably not as important as it used to be. Something like 10 hours of maintenance per flying hour is required. Will such high tech weaponry be viable in a "real" shooting war they were intended for. At $150 million a pop( some claim $412 million!!!!), can you keep enough flying to protect the bases, logistics chain, etc required to run these things. They are $150 million paper weights when sitting in a maintenance hangar. Just sayin. Some say they are like the battleships in 1939. Impressive but built for the last war. Don't know about that.

A customer of mine wrote software for the F-22. I had to fill out forms saying I only hired American citizens before I could work on his home. Guess they didn't want any nasty Canadian spies lurking around.

I think systems like the F-22 are intended to disincentivize the type of shooting war to which they'd be relevant. By the time we need an F-22 to do something that an F-15 can't -- and we still care to have that fight -- things will be pretty bleak. Hifalutin multirole fighters with a significant ground-attack capability, like the F-35, are probably helpful to deal with the better anti-aircraft defenses that small regional powers like Syria or Iran can buy. But the F-22 is a straight-up air-superiority fighter (famous for never having been used in the recent wars), and if we end up fighting the sort of adversary where air-to-air combat becomes a real issue, it's a very different sort of war than we've fought recently.

As I understand it, the $412M unit price includes enormous development costs, whereas the $150M figure is without the NRE. The program is already outrageously expensive, and when production numbers get cut because we really don't see a potential foe with a fleet of aircraft that we'd need the F-22 to counter, we lose economies of scale and the unit price goes up further. I think it's debatable whether a gold-plated fifth-generation human-piloted Cold War style air-superiority fighter was worth developing, but having developed the damn thing and built a small run, we've at least wrung a lot of the production and operation bugs out of system (you know, small things like whether the pilots can breath). So I guess one could argue that if we did see a potential adversary building up a fleet of aircraft that we'd need the F-22 to counter, we would be well-positioned to ramp up our inventory.

The ITAR software thing reminds me that I keep reading that the Chinese J-20 stealth fighter may have benefited from cyber-espionage of extensive design information for the F-22 and F-35 that was lost from subcontractors to Lockheed Martin.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: F-22

Good to see you back ASH.

China's military aviation industry has had an incredibly busy year:

J20:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-20

J31:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-31

Y20:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012...ant-transport/

I have no idea where China sits in terms of sensor capability and network integration.......but it sounds like they're woefully behind in both commercial and military jet turbines....having to rely on Russian engines as indigenous knockoffs have not faired well so far.

[ASH]

Re: F-22

Good to see you back ASH.

Thanks! I've missed reading your posts.

China's military aviation industry has had an incredibly busy year:

J20:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-20

J31:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-31

Y20:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012...ant-transport/

I have no idea where China sits in terms of sensor capability and network integration.......but it sounds like they're woefully behind in both commercial and military jet turbines....having to rely on Russian engines as indigenous knockoffs have not faired well so far.

I keep hearing mixed things about China. It's like they're aggressively investing in -- and stealing -- a lot of the right things, yet are hampered by internal organizational dysfunction and corruption. It seems like the single-party system results in some pretty coherent strategic thinking and planning, and rapid execution, but then again, I've heard they've got a great constitution and solidly-written laws that protect individual rights and property... which go unenforced. It's like they have the right plan and would eat our lunch if a lot of Party officials weren't more interested in patronage and graft and sinecures. But I'm not a China expert -- this is just the flavor I get from what I've read in the open media.

The thing I've specifically heard about China with respect to modern sensors is that a very large fraction of the graduate students studying laser radar at the University of Dayton's LADAR and Optical Communication Institute -- an Air Force "center of excellence" for graduate work on LADAR by dint of its proximity to Wright-Patterson AFB -- are Chinese. I'm sure this is just a subset of the bigger "Chinese or Indian grad student in the sciences" phenomenon, but for as much as the DoD frets about our technological crown jewels leaking overseas, it seems they don't pay too much attention to whom they're training.

[jk]

Re: F-22

hey ash! good to see you back. i've been missing you.

[ASH]

Re: F-22

hey ash! good to see you back. i've been missing you.

Hey JK! I've missed reading your comments, too. Hope you and yours are well.

[shiny!]

Re: F-22

I've missed you too, ASH. Group Hug!

Nah. Forget I said that...

[ASH]

Re: F-22

I've missed you too, ASH.

Thanks, shiny! It's great to "see" you again, here on the board.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: F-22

Thanks! I've missed reading your posts.



I keep hearing mixed things about China. It's like they're aggressively investing in -- and stealing -- a lot of the right things, yet are hampered by internal organizational dysfunction and corruption. It seems like the single-party system results in some pretty coherent strategic thinking and planning, and rapid execution, but then again, I've heard they've got a great constitution and solidly-written laws that protect individual rights and property... which go unenforced. It's like they have the right plan and would eat our lunch if a lot of Party officials weren't more interested in patronage and graft and sinecures. But I'm not a China expert -- this is just the flavor I get from what I've read in the open media.

The thing I've specifically heard about China with respect to modern sensors is that a very large fraction of the graduate students studying laser radar at the University of Dayton's LADAR and Optical Communication Institute -- an Air Force "center of excellence" for graduate work on LADAR by dint of its proximity to Wright-Patterson AFB -- are Chinese. I'm sure this is just a subset of the bigger "Chinese or Indian grad student in the sciences" phenomenon, but for as much as the DoD frets about our technological crown jewels leaking overseas, it seems they don't pay too much attention to whom they're training.

Yeah, I'm a bit unsure how to perceive China......I think I'm not too far off your perspective.......immense potential.....combined with immense corruption.

The only comparison I can think of is the Soviet Union.

And the Chinese seem to have studied the collapse of it about 1000 times more the Russians have.

I think they represent both a greater and lesser threat than the Soviet Union did........greater economic threat...but less of a direct military threat(for the foreseeable future).

I'd like to think that a big chunk of the foreign born people working on quite sensitive projects in the US are, and will remain, loyal.

I do have some indication of the level of effort and aggression used by intelligence services in developing sources.

The SU possessed a VAST technological espionage effort directed against the West, and had some success(such as extremely high tolerance machining tools for Sub prop blades...I think that was Toshiba).

Superficially, I would think China's efforts would be significantly broader, deeper, and easier to achieve.

While the US spends incredible amounts of money to try to defeat "bolt from the blue" terror attacks, it's Southern Border remains poorly controlled, and I suspect the huge number of FBI and other 3 letter agencies than have full/partial responsibility for national counter intelligence and federal mass financial crimes have been taken off task to supposedly play defense against a guy living in Mogadishu and Yemen...instead of Chinese intelligence officers and domestic chief financial officers.

The result is mass financial crime has had ZERO indictments let alone prosecutions, if you are an American banking overseas you have global financial leprosy/AIDS, the Southern border is still a sieve, and Chinese technological espionage is likely facing far less defense than it deserves.

I recall a LONG time ago when I was in the semiconductor industry, the requirements throughout the entire supply chain for anything DOD related was pretty intense and comprehensive.

Performing a vendor security audit or approving a DOD technology vendor today must be an absolute nightmare with the global supply chains.

[Ghent12]

Re: F-22

This is interesting given what Rutan said about the state of aircraft today: he basically said that nothing new has been created in 40 years. Everything is just bells and whistles added on to a basic framework.

He even made a joke that all aircraft were stealth before radar became common.

Well that's fundamentally untrue, but I suppose one might believe it depending on how one defines "bells and whistles." As my advisor in my Aerospace Engineering undergrad program said, "After the draw your rough draft of the layout, look at it. If it looks like an airplane, then it's probably capable of being an airplane." There have been some advances and/or studies in some very non-traditional aspects of Aerospace Engineering that could never fit into the category of "bells and whistles" because they are so fundamentally different but, by and large, the improvements in aircraft design have largely been a race for diminishing returns in efficiency ever since the height of the Jet Age.

That doesn't mean there isn't room for innovation. There is the lightly-explored area of Magnus Effect utilization in aircraft and some significant room for play in propulsion, both in type and in design. The "Next Big Thing" may not even be possible until something like a major breakthrough in propulsion takes place and gets large-scale adoption, such as the Sabre Engine developed by Reaction Engines.