[StarSlayer]

How does the Rafale M stack up?

[Kosh]

The the F-22 is the absolute best in the world but expensive and now apparently even more expensive to maintain.

But if only a small fraction of them can be up in the air at any time because of severe maintenance problems with the design its usefulness suddenly starts dropping off.

There were two projects; one would have been the Super Tomcat, the other the Tomcat 21. One was probably evolved out of the other. Both were to create an all-around improvement of the Tomcat using new or remanufactured airframes and give it multirole capablity. Both were well along and had produced a couple well-performing prototypese.

Both were cancelled.

Why? It seems to make more sense to base the next generation off of something we already have given future budgetary constraints as well as the kinds of conflicts we are currently in.

[The E]

Politics, I guess. Ask the british aircraft enthusiasts about TSR 2 someday.

[IceFire]

How does the Rafale M stack up?

I had to look it up just to be sure but the Rafale M is the Marine (Navy) variant of the Rafale and its 500kg heavier than the Rafale C so its not going to be the best performing from what I understand.  The Rafale C is a fine aircraft but in mock combat tests apparently the EF Typhoon comes out ahead.

There's one other aircraft on the table.  The Saab Gripen is also an excellent aircraft...its close to its competitors in most respects and it can take off and land on a semi-prepared runway.  Pretty impressive for a modern jet fighter.  Unfortunately not too many of them have been built....mostly for political reasons.

[NGTM-1R]

Why? It seems to make more sense to base the next generation off of something we already have given future budgetary constraints as well as the kinds of conflicts we are currently in.

Politics. The Tomcat airframes were old and most had been withdraw from service pending remanufacturing as part of the projects, which were expected to be approved. Those left in service were mainly the underpowered A model (because being underpowered, they were not capable of causing as much wear and tear on the airframe) of which there were few; towards the end there were barely six Tomcats to a carrier.

Congressional representives with stakes in the Hornet E/F program and the then-nascent JSF program combined to kill the Tomcat upgrade project on the basis of existing Tomcat flight hours being lower than that of even the E-2C (which is only assigned four to a carrier, however a carrier under weigh always has an E-2C airborne, frequently two of them). Never mind this was a totally artificial condition.

This left the Navy with just the Superbug. It was widely decried in publications of the time.

[Kosh]

In other words pork barrel spending....Ouch.

[TrashMan]

What id you expect? Big businesses have their tie-ins with the politicians.

Companies and congresmen are connected. Even moreso if hte company is centered in the same state the congresmen comes from.

It's tragic given the Tomcats amazing combat performance.

[General Battuta]

I dunno, man. The Tomcat can't engage at long range with the Phoenix because most ROEs require visual identification, and it's kind of a clunker in ACM. Pilots called it the 'silver cloud' or 'metal cloud' or something like that because of how sluggish it was in dogfights.

[Janos]

Anyways the biggest problem right now is this. The the F-22 is the absolute best in the world but expensive and now apparently even more expensive to maintain.

It's best, if it flies, does not suffer a catastrophic error, USAF can maintain them, does not cross international dateline and could be present at sufficient numbers to actually make a difference. It's super hyper awesome if it happens to be fighting an enemy which has those airplanes that do not exist yet - otherwise it's redundant (many other airframes give the same performance) or useless (a grounded airplane is useless).

edit: Without AWACS, the stealth is kinda useless as well, since in order to see anything without AWACS support - remember that this thing is made to combat superpowerful nations that do not exist yet, so AWACS is not given - F-22 has to turn its radar on, and blamm, it's quite visible. And other nations also possess, and are actually quite far ahead of USA, in developing anti-stealth radars. And in case radar is completely off F-22's size and not too good fuel capacity or manuverability in combat don't work in its favour.

Without defective stealth and more emphasis on air-to-air F-22 would be a great plane. Now it's just... an expensive one.

The F-15 has an amazing record but the latest Su-27 variants (Su-30MKI and MKK for instance) that are available for export are better in most respects. The F-16 is still a great aircraft and many of them are relatively new but they can't do everything.  The F-18E/F is a great plane but its not good enough to win outnumbered by the latest Su-27 models.  Plus all of the older models despite being quite good are ageing and there are cracks in the airframes forming and all sorts of bad things.

You hit the nail on the head on the last paragraph. Currently, the performance of current models of Russian or Chinese fighters is not a threat to US: the training, force multipliers, numbers, electronics and all the other stuff presumably give huge advantage to US airforces, though that is of course quite speculative. However, the updates and maintenance can only keep fighter aircraft flying for so long; finally we meet a situation as with F-15s that the airframes simply break.

The complete farce of fighter developement of 1980s-2000s in West - and in Russia as well - has left many nations with dimishing choices: either the small multirole canards like Gripen, Typhoon or Rafale, older planes with limited flying time, Russ--- scratch that if you're a NATO country or something close to that - or complete reliance that the US et al can actually get the JSF program working. You can only recycle old frames for so long. And now you see what US gets for scrapping all other programs: absolutely nothing at all.

So take Australia which faces the real possibility that everyone else in the region is going to have something close to the latest Su-27 export model which is largely better than the F-15 and you are relying on ageing F-18C models for defense...things get interesting for the purchasing experience.  The F-35 is capable but its not massively superior and isn't proven. The F-22 is not for export and has problems.

It seems like the winner of the current generation of aircraft is an upgraded Su-27 or the Typhoon which seems to be well liked and doing relatively well in exports.  Its rarely a pure performance game...

It's always a politics game. Airframe is only one thing; it needs radars, communications, computers, spare parts, weaponry, training, numbers and someone to pay the bill to become a fully functional death machine. I would bet Australia to follow the general Western suit and go for F-35 or perhaps Typhoon.

[TrashMan]

I dunno, man. The Tomcat can't engage at long range with the Phoenix because most ROEs require visual identification, and it's kind of a clunker in ACM. Pilots called it the 'silver cloud' or 'metal cloud' or something like that because of how sluggish it was in dogfights.

Sluggish? Tomcat? Designed to be a interceptor/dogfighter and you call it sluggish?

And as far as dogfighting goes, it could mount other, shorter range missiles.

[General Battuta]

It's quite sluggish in a dogfight. Powerful engines, but it's a very large plane. It can't turn with something like an F-16.

It's designed as an interceptor, not as a dogfighter. The two aren't at all the same.

[Scotty]

For anyone who doesn't have a proper grasp of scale for the F-14:

The F-14 is 62' 8.5" (18.9 meters) from nose to tail
The B-17 Flying Fortress bomber is 74' 4" (22.6 meters)

If you put the two right next to each other, the F-14 would reach all the way to the tail of the bomber.  The F-14 is gigantic.

However

It can't turn with something like an F-16.

This is true because nothing can turn with that thing.

[TrashMan]

It can't turn with something like an F-16.

Well, no. After all, the F-16 is smaller.
But it's not sluggish. The F-14 is very manuverable. Not to mention that the F-16 is newer.
Take a look at what the Super Tomcat 21 was supposed to be like performance-wise.

[Flaser]

Not to mention that in a war with Russia, one would only need one Raptor per wing of Soviet MiGs or Sukhois.

Bull****. Read the last reply to find out why.

Stealth planes are overrated anyway.

The JSF is far better than the F-22 anyway. Heck, I'd rather invest in more specialized (and easier to mantain) interceptors/space superiority fighters than F-22's.

Extreme bull****. The JSF is a STRIKE-fighter. It's a CAS and attack plane first and foremost. Aerodynamically even venerable designs like the F-18 outperform it not to mention the F-16. It doesn't have all aspect stealth, so if you send it into contested airspace with bandits in the air, prepare to take severe losses.

Anybody in Canada remember the Sea King chopper?

Remember it? They still fly over my house at least twice daily, and I'm 50k from the base. I cover my head every time.

I think that the JSF is a much better option for fleetwide deployment, it's cheaper, more countries are in on the deal thus improvingrelations as well as bringing more to the table, I say leave the F-22 for low-scale production as an elite fighter.

The same as above. Simply put, the JSF doesn't cut it as an air superiority fighter. It was never intended to, it was never designed to and it simply never will. Read up on it.

Stealth, as we think of it, doesn't exist in the real world. The newest generation of fighters can pick up Raptors at forty miles out.

Base canard. At 40 miles you're already about 10 miles within AMRAAM range. (Or mere seconds from dogfighting considering the supercruise capablity.) That part, at least, worked as advertized.

The real danger here is that the JSF is going to reuse a lot of the technology, and the Navy is not happy about the skin problems. Rain and sand abrasion is child's play compared to salt water. People have actually suggested cancelling the contract, which while thoroughly unpractical, shows how annoyed the Navy is. The Marines are only slightly less irate.

More bull****. Repeat after me:

Air-to-air missiles have no such thing as a "fixed range".

What? I didn't HEAR YOU!

Air-to-air missiles have no such thing as a "fixed range".

That's better.

A2A engagements depend on a whole slew of factors, the height, airspeed and angle of the craft involved for instance.

Up high missiles go a lot further as the thinner air doesn't have as much drag. Being higher than the target also gives more range. Lower angles (so the missile doesn't have to constantly turn) ditto.

Reverse these situations, and even the AMRAAM becomes pretty "short legged". The situation is also complicated because most of the time the Russian and their buyers will have a lot of aircraft in the air as their planes are a lot cheaper and are actually meant to be used that way. Sure you can swat whole wings of Sukhois out of the skies - but the rest of them will keep fighting and eventually you will start to loose planes too.

Then there is the embarrassing, little quoted fact that even the AMRAAM only has a real life proven PKill around 50%. Ergo you need 2 missiles for a sure kill. This "unrealiability"* is what made the Russians think and adopt a very different A2A doctrine: carry dozens of missiles, with different seekers to pile the odds for you.

Finally there's the also very little quoted "fun" fact, that most R-27 (most used Russian A2A medium range missile) variants can go a lot further than the AMRAAM under similar conditions. Granted most of these are SAHR missiles but the Russians already have active-homing variants just like the AMRAAM.

*The missile's not "faulty" - that only accounts for 0,5%-1% - it just has a darn hard job against a maneuvering target that spews flares/chaff clutters the radarbands with ECM and does its best to stay alive.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, the degree to which missile range is affected by various factors is really pretty astounding. (I say this due to extensive flight experience in Falcon 4.0  )

[Flipside]

The F14 was, primarily, a bomber killer, it relied on ranged engagement and was, compared to many Fighters around at the time, not particularly good at Dogfighting, regardless of what Top Gun might tell you.

It was originally designed to be an Air Superiority fighter, which it was, to a degree, capable of when using a mixed loadout, but in reality, it was a Bear and Badger killer, that was what it was at heart.

[StarSlayer]

Sounds like the military is in a bit of a pickle.  Even if the F-22 can dogfight God and all his angels, at the current inventory and with the apparent  readiness rate/logistics issues that isn't going to cut the mustard.  The JSF is an air to ground specialist with its on issues, and all the teen era fighters are feeling their age and are no longer superior to their Russian counterparts.  I assume we still have an edge in training and AWACs/Electronics/Coordination in order to stay ahead with the equipment we have but still thats pretty FUMTU.  I don't suppose they can update the bejesus out of some of the teen era designs and build new airframes?  

It will be interesting to see what comes out of it, I don't think we can expect F-15Es and Vipers to carry the load by themselves.

[Roanoke]

Just one more reason they should have just created an operational F-15 with thrust vectoring like the one they tested.

Weren't F15s grounded due to wings falling-off 'n' stuff ? Shame as it's my favourite US fighter.

[Janos]

Sounds like the military is in a bit of a pickle.  Even if the F-22 can dogfight God and all his angels, at the current inventory and with the apparent  readiness rate/logistics issues that isn't going to cut the mustard.

It works in the 1% of situations where you A) have to use such an specialized craft in small numbers and B) cannot risk to lose one. Those situations are quite rare.

 The JSF is an air to ground specialist with its on issues, and all the teen era fighters are feeling their age and are no longer superior to their Russian counterparts.  I assume we still have an edge in training and AWACs/Electronics/Coordination in order to stay ahead with the equipment we have but still thats pretty FUMTU.  I don't suppose they can update the bejesus out of some of the teen era designs and build new airframes?  

JSF is not an A2G specialist; it performs well on both A2G and A2A duties, but does not excel at either of those. It's an F-16 replacement. The question is: is it so inadequate to justify F-22? Supposedly not. It's an F-16 om steroids, and on most of the cases it is quite enough.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of it, I don't think we can expect F-15Es and Vipers to carry the load by themselves.

F-22 will remain a complete niche solution for a problem that does not exist; F-35 will be a good solution for a wide array of problems that can be solved more cheaply. Nations will try to use cheaper platforms to achieve given goals; F-35 will try and become cheaper, eventually replacing F-16 but will become outdated by simpler platforms. It will perform beyond whats needeed, but will not be affordable. F-22 will do as an deterrent until proven obsolete by far cheaper radar/AA solutions. US will develop a cheaper alternative unless Europe updates the4 Typhoon. No one gives a **** about Russia or India.

[NGTM-1R]

It was originally designed to be an Air Superiority fighter, which it was, to a degree, capable of when using a mixed loadout, but in reality, it was a Bear and Badger killer, that was what it was at heart.

It did have some good things going for it to make a multirole aircraft, though, including potentionally massive payload and high straight-line speed. The prototypes that came out of the 21 program included terrain-following flying gear and extensive guided weapons integration since they were expected to have to pull the duty previously carried by the A-6. They also had new engines and some rudimentary vectored thrust ability. The vectored thrust probably wouldn't have made it into the final version, though.

I don't suppose they can update the bejesus out of some of the teen era designs and build new airframes?  

That option is still in theory on the table for the F-15 and F-16. Part of the problem with the modern F-15 fleet is that they haven't gone through a major fleetwide upgrade (like the sort that would warrent a model designation change) in more than a decade. The -16s are better off since the Block 52 issue went through, but most of them are still the old tired airframes rather than the new ones.