[Unknown Target]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The futuristic F-22A "Raptor" fighter jet, designed to dominate the skies well into the 21st century, joined the U.S. combat fleet on Thursday, 20 years after it was conceived to fight Soviet MiGs over Europe.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-12-15T165508Z_01_SIB560880_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARMS-USA-FIGHTER.xml&archived=False

[Ford Prefect]

Woohoo! Those Soviet MiGs won't even know what hit 'em!

Wait....

[redmenace]

Actually many countries still use soviet built equipment though. And Russia is currently the equivolent to a high tech weapons garage sale.

[Rictor]

The Raptor will never be used as intended. It's just the Pentagon doing what it does best: being a sugar daddy to the high-tech military industry. When was the last time the US fought an aerial war? Not since Korea. Most countries are lucky if they are up to the F-16/Mig-29/Su-30 standard in terms of air power. The notion that there is someone out there with a fleet of advanced air superiority fighters just itching to pick a fight is really very far fetched.

America will never fight an adversary that is on equal footing technologically. And no one who is on equal footing with the States will go to war with the most power military on planet Earth. As far as I know, the only nations who have even a potential competitor to the Raptor are the EU and possibly Russia and China (if they ever actually produce any).

...besides, the Sukhoi Berkut looks so much cooler.
 

[Kosh]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The futuristic F-22A "Raptor" fighter jet, designed to dominate the skies well into the 21st century, joined the U.S. combat fleet on Thursday, 20 years after it was conceived to fight Soviet MiGs over Europe.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-12-15T165508Z_01_SIB560880_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARMS-USA-FIGHTER.xml&archived=False

Yeah! Another extraordinarily huge waste of taxpayer money takes flight.

Let me get this straight, the US is supposed to be fighting a war against terrorists, right? Since when did any of those organizations have jet fighters?

[aldo_14]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The futuristic F-22A "Raptor" fighter jet, designed to dominate the skies well into the 21st century, joined the U.S. combat fleet on Thursday, 20 years after it was conceived to fight Soviet MiGs over Europe.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-12-15T165508Z_01_SIB560880_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARMS-USA-FIGHTER.xml&archived=False

Yeah! Another extraordinarily huge waste of taxpayer money takes flight.

Let me get this straight, the US is supposed to be fighting a war against terrorists, right? Since when did any of those organizations have jet fighters?

Well, they have vast volcano lairs, don't they?

[Kosh]

Well, they have vast volcano lairs, don't they?

I think they also have moon bases like Dr. Proton in the original Duke Nukem........

[IceFire]

The Raptor will never be used as intended. It's just the Pentagon doing what it does best: being a sugar daddy to the high-tech military industry. When was the last time the US fought an aerial war? Not since Korea. Most countries are lucky if they are up to the F-16/Mig-29/Su-30 standard in terms of air power. The notion that there is someone out there with a fleet of advanced air superiority fighters just itching to pick a fight is really very far fetched.

America will never fight an adversary that is on equal footing technologically. And no one who is on equal footing with the States will go to war with the most power military on planet Earth. As far as I know, the only nations who have even a potential competitor to the Raptor are the EU and possibly Russia and China (if they ever actually produce any).

...besides, the Sukhoi Berkut looks so much cooler.
 

Berkut is a technology demonstator...Sukhoi has repeatedly denied that an actual fighter would be built on that airframe.  But they were hoping to take several pieces from that and create a new fighter.  I think they are actually collaborating with MiG on a new next gen Russian multirole fighter.  I think the goal is cheap stealth

The thing with the F/A-22...its a enourmous amount of money...but if it were ever to be needed it'd be a critical factor in how well the USAF would be able to deploy against a well armed enemy.  I still think the Typhoon is a better buy because of its full multirole capability.

[Kosh]

The thing with the F/A-22...its a enourmous amount of money...but if it were ever to be needed it'd be a critical factor in how well the USAF would be able to deploy against a well armed enemy.

Big if though.......

[Rictor]

It's funny to see the US and to a certain extent the EU and Russia putting all their money into air superiority fighters, when they are becoming less and less relevant. At least during the Cold War, you could plausibly make the claim that at some point you would need to fight an air war against an equally well armed enemy. But if you look at most wars in past years (Iraq, Afghanistan, some smaller "interventions" like Kosovo, Bosnia and so on)  bombers and close air support have been so much critical and widely used.

As for the Berkut, I recall them saying that the forward-swept wings are being scrapped (though I also remember seeing the Berkut in its current form on exhibition at MAKS 2005) and a more conventional fighter will likely emerge. Good to hear that Sukhoi and MiG are collaborating, hopefully that means that the Russian government is serious about the project. A dedicated interceptor is probably too costly for Russia, or anyone aside from the US for that matter, even the EU worked multirole capabilities into the Typhoon.

[Jetmech Jr.]

Better safe than sorry. The U.S. can't expect to maintain it's tech edge following your advice

...besides, the Sukhoi Berkut looks so much cooler.

I suppose you and your twisted sense of aesthetics would think that

[Jetmech Jr.]

But if you look at most wars in past years (Iraq, Afghanistan, some smaller "interventions" like Kosovo, Bosnia and so on)  bombers and close air support have been so much critical and widely used.

You can hardly judge based on these examples. Last I checked, none of them had any truly noticeable airpower.

[aldo_14]

I'd suspect the Us would get more use out of a super-jumbo scale carpet bomber, nowadays.

[IceFire]

The thing with the F/A-22...its a enourmous amount of money...but if it were ever to be needed it'd be a critical factor in how well the USAF would be able to deploy against a well armed enemy.

Big if though.......

Thing is...the British and American aviation industries were not ready or prepared for WWII.  They finally got their acts together about 1943 or 1944.  War wasn't particularly expected...on the whole (specific people and leaders sure but not the overall society/industry).  So while I'm an advocate of not fighting wars of helping people and of solving problems through diplomacy and peacekeeping when necessary, I'm also fairly adamant about making sure that if you need to go to war...then you are ready to do so.  Frankly Canada has not really set itself up to be prepared for any such event...I think our own military needs to streamline what it does...the F/A-22 is not what Canada needs...but its cousin, the F-35 may be the right sort of ticket. Provided that its updated on the same line as frontline American units and not left to stagnate into oblivion like the CF-18's did.

[Unknown Target]

I, personally, think that
A) The US would NOT get better use out of big carpet bombers - in case you haven't noticed, most bombing strikes lately have been with maybe 10 bombs, tops, put in precision places.
B) Notice the A in F/A-22 - that says that it will be a multirole attack craft as well. It will be used probably in much the same way as the F-15E: a fast attack craft that can fight it's way in, bomb the target, and fight it's way out.
C) All developed countries should be improving technology, regardless of if they're going to war soon or not. If anything, it trickles into the civvie market.
D) The F/A-22 presents an enormous technological leap.  You know Freespace 2 radar? Yea, it's that now. Dots are color-coded blue/red based on friend/foe, the radar automatically determines what TYPE of aircraft the enemy is flying, and depending on that, determines whether or not it should track it continuously; i.e. if the radar picks up a Su-33 and an Airbus A320, it's going to constantly track the Su-33 while leaving the Airbus mostly alone. It's just a massive improvement over everything; think of your favorite jet sim with the avionics set to "Easy".

[Mefustae]

It's good to see the US still going wild and spending far more money than they should, I mean, isn't the US economy doing somewhat badly at the moment? *Sigh* It's just a damn pity they had to cancel development of the RAH-66 Comanche.

Hmm, having read the article more closely, it's almost as if the US is expecting a conflict with China, which could lead to the formations of tension in the area... which is bad news for both the North American and South-East Asia regions in terms of fallout, both political and literal.

[an0n]

From what I can see, the Typhoon would kick it's ass.

[Wanderer]

D) The F/A-22 presents an enormous technological leap.  You know Freespace 2 radar? Yea, it's that now. Dots are color-coded blue/red based on friend/foe, the radar automatically determines what TYPE of aircraft the enemy is flying, and depending on that, determines whether or not it should track it continuously; i.e. if the radar picks up a Su-33 and an Airbus A320, it's going to constantly track the Su-33 while leaving the Airbus mostly alone. It's just a massive improvement over everything; think of your favorite jet sim with the avionics set to "Easy".

There is a mighty big difference between target detection, recognition and identification. Assuming none of the targets are actively broadcasting their IFF and also that any hostile targets will most likely utilize either extensive stealth or ECM and follow surface contours so that kind of feature is not as good as might sound. That is there might be no data available for any kind of recognition or identification. IF the target can even be detected before it is too late.

[an0n]

"Even Da Vinci would paint like a 5 year old if you poked out both his eyes"?

[aldo_14]

D) The F/A-22 presents an enormous technological leap. You know Freespace 2 radar? Yea, it's that now. Dots are color-coded blue/red based on friend/foe, the radar automatically determines what TYPE of aircraft the enemy is flying, and depending on that, determines whether or not it should track it continuously; i.e. if the radar picks up a Su-33 and an Airbus A320, it's going to constantly track the Su-33 while leaving the Airbus mostly alone. It's just a massive improvement over everything; think of your favorite jet sim with the avionics set to "Easy".

Targets (military) don't broadcast IFF, to be fair; they only return an IFF code in response to interrogation from a friendly IFF network.  So any form of hostile aircraft identification couldn't be based of IFF but lack thereof.  I guess if you have a high enough resolution radar system, you can map the contours of the aircraft enough to match it to a target database, although I don't know if that's what they'd use here.

There is a mighty big difference between target detection, recognition and identification. Assuming none of the targets are actively broadcasting their IFF and also that any hostile targets will most likely utilize either extensive stealth or ECM and follow surface contours so that kind of feature is not as good as might sound. That is there might be no data available for any kind of recognition or identification. IF the target can even be detected before it is too late.