Franticfrank
New Member
An of course once you get into a WVR engagement, it comes down to pilot skill. I remember F18 pilots were boasting about simulated victories over the F22. It really can't be compared to a real life engagement.
Stealth Discussion
- Thread starter MiG-29
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Broccoli
Senior Member
Hyperwarp
Captain
No big deal, with the amount of excise, there are bound to be losses on both sides. This F-18 is just bad sportsmanship by painting the F-22 on the hull. Just think about the the hundreds of jets that F-22 shut down in excises, and if F-22 decide to paint them all, there would be no space left.
Kurt
Junior Member
The F22 is supposed to kill everything. If one of the trashcans strikes back, the underdog feels entitled.
Let's take a different approach, you want to bomb someone. You send lots of false information to his radars under intense electronic warfare conditions with select strikes on active radar emission sources. The F22 is meant to fly in that messy information environment with a very low radar return for flying radars (that have the highest surviveability because they quickly shift locations). Low energy return means that the available energy of EW emitters can be used to create several times more wrong perceptions, a whole mess on the enemy radar screens. The training is conducted in peacetime environments and full EW would have adverse effects on a lot of electromagnetic waves used for civilian purposes.
Europe's passive radar approach can utilize lots of inexpensive and hard to kill sources. That's good if you want to defend homeland, but how do you use that to fight an enemy who controls his emissions?
Let's take a different approach, you want to bomb someone. You send lots of false information to his radars under intense electronic warfare conditions with select strikes on active radar emission sources. The F22 is meant to fly in that messy information environment with a very low radar return for flying radars (that have the highest surviveability because they quickly shift locations). Low energy return means that the available energy of EW emitters can be used to create several times more wrong perceptions, a whole mess on the enemy radar screens. The training is conducted in peacetime environments and full EW would have adverse effects on a lot of electromagnetic waves used for civilian purposes.
Europe's passive radar approach can utilize lots of inexpensive and hard to kill sources. That's good if you want to defend homeland, but how do you use that to fight an enemy who controls his emissions?
Engineer
Major
A successful kill on the F-22 has little to do with stealth. All those aircraft that got a WVR kill on the F-22 have been guided in by ground controllers specifically for WVR engagements. The F-22 itself also carries corner reflector to make itself visible to others.
What this exercise and many others in the past have illustrated is that TVC doesn't make a plane turn better. TVC doesn't provide lift, yet lift is essential for a turn. When the aircraft is already squeezing out the last drop of aerodynamic performance from the airframe, engaging TVC will not help. Instead, TVC will just put the plane into a stall, which results in massive drag. The aircraft loses speed as a result, making it ripe for the opponent to go in for a kill. This situation has happened to the F-22 during exercises when the plane first went into service. . Now, it happened again in this recent exercise with Eurofighter.
The advantage of TVC is post-stall maneuverability, but you don't want to be in a stall when you are trying to shake your opponent. So, the moral of the story is this: TVC might as well be useless.
What this exercise and many others in the past have illustrated is that TVC doesn't make a plane turn better. TVC doesn't provide lift, yet lift is essential for a turn. When the aircraft is already squeezing out the last drop of aerodynamic performance from the airframe, engaging TVC will not help. Instead, TVC will just put the plane into a stall, which results in massive drag. The aircraft loses speed as a result, making it ripe for the opponent to go in for a kill. This situation has happened to the F-22 during exercises when the plane first went into service. . Now, it happened again in this recent exercise with Eurofighter.
The advantage of TVC is post-stall maneuverability, but you don't want to be in a stall when you are trying to shake your opponent. So, the moral of the story is this: TVC might as well be useless.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I wouldn't go as far as to say TCV is useless. It is certainly of great benefit, especially to stealthy platforms like the F22, as TVC allows for smaller control surface deflections during normal flight, which would reduce radar returns and help with fuel economy.
I agree with you that TVC is way overblown when it comes to WVR.
I am also very perplexed by the fascination of most aviation writers and enthusiasts who prefer to think that TVC is some awesome defensive move, maybe they have just been watching too much bad dogfighting movies like Topgun or trashy sci-fi where you pull your nose up and suddenly the bad guys continue going straight and level like muppets and you end up on their six and get an easy kill.
. But seriously, I always thought of TVC as of more use in an offensive as opposed to defensive situation.
In defense, you want good sustained turn rates and energy states to help you shake your opponent. As the video Engineer posted shows, trying to TVC when you have someone on your six is a high risk maneuver that becomes almost suicidal when your opponent knows what to look out for when you TVC.
In offense, I can see the rationale in pulling a post-stall maneuver with TVC aid to get a snapshot off at an improbably angle and position which might catch an opponent out.
I would contend that such maneuvers are useful even in this day and age with HMS and high off-broadside missiles. Sure an AIM9X or IRST can do a Uee and still hit a target almost behind you, but it burns up a lot of energy and airspeed doing that. If a good opponent sees you making such a shot, it would be quite feasible for him to pull into you to both make the missile's turn more extreme, and also to try and get out of line of sight of you. If the enemy fighter disappears behind or under your plane where you cannot see it, you cannot very well guide an AIM9X after it can you? Even if you can track it visually, the maneuver might still be too much for the missile to acquire the target itself.
Being able to pull your fighter's nose up by a massive degree would thus give your missiles a massive advantage when you fire them off, and it will massively increase the KP of the shot as the different between firing when on the very edge of the engagement zone and being in the engagement sweet-spot would be massive.
When you are on the offensive, it also matters a little less if you bleed off a lot of energy and airspeed very quickly, as chances are your opponent would be too busy trying to shake your missile to be able to take advantage of your temporary vulnerability. It is still a risk though, but far smaller than if you were already on the back foot and defensive.
In defense, TVC assisted post stall maneuvers should only be attempted as a last ditch Hell Mary when you are totally screwed and have nothing to loose. In offense, it can be use a little more liberal, but only when you are one-on-one or during small multi-plane engagements where all the other hostiles are already engaged. The bigger the engagement, the greater the chance that some enemy fighter might be lurking nearby who could take advantage of you if you bleed off too much speed and energy trying to get a shot off yourself.
I agree with you that TVC is way overblown when it comes to WVR.
I am also very perplexed by the fascination of most aviation writers and enthusiasts who prefer to think that TVC is some awesome defensive move, maybe they have just been watching too much bad dogfighting movies like Topgun or trashy sci-fi where you pull your nose up and suddenly the bad guys continue going straight and level like muppets and you end up on their six and get an easy kill.
. But seriously, I always thought of TVC as of more use in an offensive as opposed to defensive situation.In defense, you want good sustained turn rates and energy states to help you shake your opponent. As the video Engineer posted shows, trying to TVC when you have someone on your six is a high risk maneuver that becomes almost suicidal when your opponent knows what to look out for when you TVC.
In offense, I can see the rationale in pulling a post-stall maneuver with TVC aid to get a snapshot off at an improbably angle and position which might catch an opponent out.
I would contend that such maneuvers are useful even in this day and age with HMS and high off-broadside missiles. Sure an AIM9X or IRST can do a Uee and still hit a target almost behind you, but it burns up a lot of energy and airspeed doing that. If a good opponent sees you making such a shot, it would be quite feasible for him to pull into you to both make the missile's turn more extreme, and also to try and get out of line of sight of you. If the enemy fighter disappears behind or under your plane where you cannot see it, you cannot very well guide an AIM9X after it can you? Even if you can track it visually, the maneuver might still be too much for the missile to acquire the target itself.
Being able to pull your fighter's nose up by a massive degree would thus give your missiles a massive advantage when you fire them off, and it will massively increase the KP of the shot as the different between firing when on the very edge of the engagement zone and being in the engagement sweet-spot would be massive.
When you are on the offensive, it also matters a little less if you bleed off a lot of energy and airspeed very quickly, as chances are your opponent would be too busy trying to shake your missile to be able to take advantage of your temporary vulnerability. It is still a risk though, but far smaller than if you were already on the back foot and defensive.
In defense, TVC assisted post stall maneuvers should only be attempted as a last ditch Hell Mary when you are totally screwed and have nothing to loose. In offense, it can be use a little more liberal, but only when you are one-on-one or during small multi-plane engagements where all the other hostiles are already engaged. The bigger the engagement, the greater the chance that some enemy fighter might be lurking nearby who could take advantage of you if you bleed off too much speed and energy trying to get a shot off yourself.
Engineer
Major
That statement about reducing radar returns is one of those urban myths which has never been validated. At cruise where RCS comes into play, deflection of control surfaces is tiny. If the aircraft goes into a gentle maneuver, then may be you would see deflection of the surfaces by 2°~3°. Check out and notice how the ailerons move to get an idea. Anyway, edge alignment is still preserved, and the surface is still deflecting signal away from the source, thus a serious doubt exists over that urban myth.
The second statement about fuel economy is also an urban myth, and one resulting from bad accounting. Sure, deflection of control surface can cause drag because of conservation of forward energy into torque to rotate the aircraft. However, using TVC to turn requires the nozzle to point off center, so that some of the thrust of the engine can be used as torque to rotate the aircraft. This is still taking energy out of forward motion, which you will never hear when some are proclaiming the advantageous of TVC, thus bad accounting. When you think in terms of energy, the two processes are the same.
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MiG-29
Banned Idiot
Super Hornet pilots have gotten F-22 in their sights at least once.
not a ramdom event in the case of Eurofighter, it downed the F-22 several times
ands by different Eurofighters
also F-16s
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Pointblank
Senior Member
Indeed. How many of their buddies will be in parachutes before they even get within visual range of a F-22?
With F-22, it's not just stealth; F-22 has major kinematic advantages over other fighters. It is designed to fly higher and faster than any other fighter in existence. While the exact maximum altitude a F-22 is classified, it is generally agreed upon by military analysts that the F-22 is designed to fly at altitude of over 70,000ft. Likewise, F-35 was designed for a very similar operational altitude.
An airplane at 70,000ft has a whole lot of potential enegy it can trade for speed or range. The same goes of its weapons. Most missiles have a short enough burn stage in comparison to their range. You are also lot harder to hit at that height than say 35,000ft. The area from which an adversary can actually get himself into a position which offers a firing solution are very limited as the missile and plane will be climbing throughout their intercept course. On the other hand your weapons will have far greater range than they would at a lower altitudes.
In addition to the weapons issues with AAM's mentioned above it also makes a huge difference in dealing with SAM's and the range of glide weapons like the SDB.
While many SAM's can get up to high altitude their range decreases quite a bit and your reaction time goes up a fair amount as well. A fair number of SAM systems are totally taken out of the equation at that altitude as they can't even get up there. Most SAM's that can get up there suffer reduced performance at that altitude giving the aircraft a much bigger chance of escaping. With a target that can move at a really good clip and that is hard to see it becomes a very very hard SAM target at that altitude, allowing it to take the Air Superiority fight to the enemy in many ways as well as using things like SDB's to gut air defense systems and fight inside of them.