What to do if the F22 is cancelled?

[Josh]

Oh, really.

 

Lets see.  Were any of these "medium sized industrialised nations" effectively take-down by one bomber in one sortie?

 

Bosnia... Nope

 

Afghanistan... Nope

 

Iraq... No again

 

Your batting average isn't looking too good there.

 

If we could put enough near-precision ordnance in one bomber to effectively take-down a medium sized industrialised nation in one sortie, we wouldn't need any carriers at all.

233066[/snapback]

 

Actually in the case of Serbia the power grid was not targeted until late in the war and when it finally was the conflict ended in days. Even when it was targeted, 'black out bombs' were used that limited the damage and made it much easier to repair. In Iraq the infrastructure was deliberated not targeted throughout the entire war because it was known that the US would be inheritting the damage; witness the lights on in Bagdad for entire war. Afganistan would never be considered industrialized by anyone and thus USAF ordnance just made a smoking crator a slightly deeper smoking crator, from a strategic point of view.

 

The fact that a B-2 could carry 56 500 lbs bombs and drop them within a CEP of 40 feet or less, *and* have a decent change of not beind detected until it released it weapons is probably a pretty valid assertion. That would allow for around 28 aim points which probably could bring wide spread economic dislocation to a medium sized country if something extremely centralized like power production was targeted, or perhaps fuel distrobution. So perhaps 'take down' is too broad of a term, but the capability to cause serious, strategic harm in a single sortie of a single bomber probably is a fair statement if no heed was paid to the inconvenience, distruction, or casualties to be inflicted on said nation. Although I don't think you'll see that kind of gloves off attitude employed by the US as a rule.

 

That said B-2's are obviously not replacements for CVBG's which have many roles beyond strategic strike. In fact that as a rule I don't think CVBG's would be used in that role (the A-6 did have that role in the SIOP IIRC though) although the line between strategic and tactical got wiped pretty clean with the introduction of cheap, plentiful PGMs.

[Rod]

One could argue that with the development of accurate GPS-guided ordnance, many older attack aircraft just got a new lease on life as they could become like a "bomb-truck" once air supremacy has been achieved and the Wild Weasels clean up most of the long range SAM threat. In such scenario where achieving air supremacy becomes paramount, the F/A-22 role becomes more important than the F-35. In fact once the F/A-22 cleans up the airspace, it becomes safer for attack packages of planes older than the F-35 to come in and drop their GPS-guided ordnance. How much better than an F-16C is a F-35 when dropping 2 JDAMs in a suspected terrorists safe house? Heck, if it wasn't for the old avionics that are no longer has a support system, the A-6E Intruder could be a great bomb-truck over Iraq and Afghanistan. Load it up with JDAMs and leave it loitering until the grunts call in an attack.

 

Of course GPS-guided bombs cut both ways: Obsolete MiG-23s and Su-22s would become more efective bombers with such ordnance, thus becoming more imperative a definite super-duper fighter to provide air dominance at the onset of hostilities which fits the bill for the F/A-22.

[Chris Werb]

Oh, really.

 

Lets see.  Were any of these "medium sized industrialised nations" effectively take-down by one bomber in one sortie?

 

Bosnia... Nope

 

Afghanistan... Nope

 

Iraq... No again

 

Your batting average isn't looking too good there.

 

If we could put enough near-precision ordnance in one bomber to effectively take-down a medium sized industrialised nation in one sortie, we wouldn't need any carriers at all.

233066[/snapback]

 

 

Let's see. How many of the above are middle sized industrialised nations?

 

Bosina?... Nope

 

Afghanistan?... Nope

 

Iraq? Not post 1991 in any real sense. In 2003 we limited the damage we did to them because we knew we'd be part footing the bill to rebuild what we'd trashed.

 

Let's take another medium size industrialised country - the UK.

 

Everything that happens in the UK ultimately relies on electricity. We're already seeing disaster scenarios played out on TV about what the loss of one gas pipeline would do to our power generation capability. If one bomber could hit 80 aimpoints in the UK, it could essentially remove our power grid, with no hope of early reinstatement.

 

I wouldn't state we don't need carriers - we'll still need responsive CAS in limited war and CT scenarios. There are lots of other things carriers do very well. We just don't need dedicated bombers to fly off them anymore.

[Guest pfcem]

Let's see.  How many of the above are middle sized industrialised nations?

 

Bosina?... Nope

 

Afghanistan?... Nope

 

Iraq?  Not post 1991 in any real sense.  In 2003 we limited the damage we did to them because we knew we'd be part footing the bill to rebuild what we'd trashed.

233382[/snapback]

I guess you did not get my "middle sized industrialised nations".

 

I did not mean to imply that Bosnia or Afghanistan were mid-sized industrialised nations (Iraq is however) but that in the last three conflicts in which the US has been involved in many, many sorties from many, many aircraft (including bombers) failed to "take down" the opposing nation.

 

 

 

Let's take another medium size industrialised country - the UK.

 

Everything that happens in the UK ultimately relies on electricity.  We're already seeing disaster scenarios played out on TV about what the loss of one gas pipeline would do to our power generation capability.  If one bomber could hit 80 aimpoints in the UK, it could essentially remove our power grid, with no hope of early reinstatement.

233382[/snapback]

The same was true during WWII & both England & Germany were able to continue the war effort dispite massive bombing raids that took out many "vital" facilities.

 

 

 

I wouldn't state we don't need carriers - we'll still need responsive CAS in limited war and CT scenarios.  There are lots of other things carriers do very well.  We just don't need dedicated bombers to fly off them anymore.

233382[/snapback]

I guess you're right, we can rely on $80+million a piece Super Hornets as long as the enemy does not have a realistic capability of fighting back.

[DB]

I guess you did not get my "middle sized industrialised nations".

 

I did not mean to imply that Bosnia or Afghanistan were mid-sized industrialised nations (Iraq is however) but that in the last three conflicts in which the US has been involved in many, many sorties from many, many aircraft (including bombers) failed to "take down" the opposing nation.

The same was true during WWII & both England & Germany were able to continue the war effort dispite massive bombing raids that took out many "vital" facilities.

I guess you're right, we can rely on $80+million a piece Super Hornets as long as the enemy does not have a realistic capability of fighting back. 

233402[/snapback]

I think that you are missing Chris' point, and that's because you are failing to take into account the very restricted rules of engagement that the US forces were acting under in the conflicts mentioned.

 

Chris started a thread a while ago (month or two?) about this very subject. The concern is that precision guided munitions are capable of providing counter-value capability to almost anyone who possesses a delivery platform. The US has a number of B-2 bombers that would be capable of performing a multi-hour precision bombing mission over any country in the world, and if the gloves were off each would be able to put 80 or so precision guided bombs anywhere they liked.

 

If you dropped 80 bombs on the 80 busiest road junctions in the UK - say 20 to cut all of the motorway interchanges to the M25, including two to take down the QE bridge and a couple to block up the tunnels, then the remaining 60 or so to drop the network around Birmingham and Manchester, with maybe a detour to put four or five on each of tte major London rail interchanges..

Then with the second bomber, put a 500lb bomb through the roof of every major power station in the UK, then for good measure in case they didn't work very well, you could hit the Super Grid network with maybe another bomber's worth.

 

If you wanted, you could use four bomber's worth to put a hole in every paved runway in the UK over 1000yds long... temporary, of course, but do you care?

 

OK, now use a spare bomber to re-attack targets that fall into the 5% dud margin.

 

Now, the UK, a major power, is left with no usable runways for hours to days, no power grid for weeks to months, no power to put on the non-existent grid, for years, a road network paralysed and so far I've only allocated 9 out of 21 B-2 bombers.

 

Drop a bomb or two on each of County Council Offices, and one or two on each of the HQs of the Police services and you'd cripple the civil authority. And that would only be another two or three bomber's worth.

 

You could use the rest to attack your actual military targets, although why bother? they won't be going anywhere.

 

David

[Guest pfcem]

I think that you are missing Chris' point, and that's because you are failing to take into account the very restricted rules of engagement that the US forces were acting under in the conflicts mentioned.

233434[/snapback]

No, I think I got Chris' point on how capable the B-2/JDAM is.

 

It is those same restricted rules of engagement that require a good long range attack aircraft to be either on station of on call on short notice.

 

I think we are getting a bit off topic with the line of discussion which was started when Kenneth P. Katz stated the following about the Super Hornet.

 

It's a reasonably affordable, reasonably capable, highly reliable/maintainable and safe aircraft to fill up carrier flight and hangar decks.

 

At $80+million a piece, I do not consider the Super Hornet to be "reasonably affordable". Especially when you consider that it is not as good a fleet defence fighter as the F-14 or as good an attack aircraft as the A-6 that it replaces.

[Rod]

Seems to me that the F/A-22 program is going on schedule...

 

 

http://www.flightinternational.com/Article...+Air+Force.html

 

F/A-22 Raptor No 50 joins US Air Force

Flight International online news 13:00GMT: Lockheed Martin has announced it delivered the 50th F/A-22 Raptor air dominance fighter to the U.S. Air Force earlier this week.

 

The 50th F/A-22 will join Raptors flying as part of the 1st Fighter Wing's 27th Fighter Squadron at Langley AFB, Virginia.

 

Sixty-three of the 83 fighters now on contract have completed final assembly.

 

All remaining aircraft scheduled for delivery to the Air Force in 2005 are on the flightline in Marietta, Georgia undergoing flight tests and final preparation for delivery.

[Chris Werb]

DB (sorry to derail the thread even further!) but I think we're even more vulnerable than your example suggests. The most critical target-set (IMO!) would be electricity generation and distribution. I don't think it would even be necessary to target the power stations directly (with nuclear stations this would involve obvious dangers). I'd go for transformer farms and distribution nodes (where powerlines intersect). Without power, electirc trains won't be going anywhere - we'd lose signalling too. Filling stations can't pump petrol. Container handling cranes are electric. Warehouses are lit by electricity and have mostly electric handling equipment. Even if vehicles had fuel, the systems that tell them where to go are electric.

 

Short of GPS co-ordinates, the maps on the following page contain everything an enemy planner could wish for:

 

http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity...terial/mn_2000/

[Brad F]

Really?  I was under the impression that the upgrades through Block 40 were already in the budget, pre-Rumsfeld hack-n-slash.

 

Here's a link to a Bill Sweetman F/A-22 article in IDR that was posted on another board.  It sums up the state of the program fairly well, IMHO.

 

http://strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/512-13917.asp

231495[/snapback]

 

 

Sweetman's internal fuel numbers are suspect. One of his earlier articles in IDR or AFM stated that the USAF had officially released the internal fuel and it was ~18,500lbs. Now he says its about 1/3rd of 19,500kg, or about 14,300lbs. I have sent emails to LockMart and the "Official" F-22 team website and they responded that the internal fuel numbers have not been released.

 

Further, I find it very difficult to believe that the F-35A or even the F-35C would have more internal gas than the F-22.

 

JSF Official Hompage

 

However the official F-22 site states that "Mission 1" the sub-super profile is 310nm + 100nm radius. This still seems very low, even if the -119's SFC is considerably higher than the -100-229s or -110-229s (when operating at a high mach point) which seems unlikely.

 

Interesting to see how this pans out.

 

Brad

Edited October 13, 2005 by Brad F

[bigfngun]

Sweetman's internal fuel numbers are suspect.  One of his earlier articles in IDR or AFM stated that the USAF had officially released the internal fuel and it was ~18,500lbs.  Now he says its about 1/3rd of 19,500kg, or about 14,300lbs.  I have sent emails to LockMart and the "Official" F-22 team website and they responded that the internal fuel numbers have not been released. 

 

Further, I find it very difficult to believe that the F-35A or even the F-35C would have more internal gas than the F-22.

 

JSF Official Hompage

 

However the official F-22 site states that "Mission 1" the sub-super profile is 310nm + 100nm radius.  This still seems very low, even if the -119's SFC is considerably higher than the -100-229s or -110-229s  (when operating at a high mach point) which seems unlikely.

 

Interesting to see how this pans out.

 

Brad

234402[/snapback]

 

Hi Brad, I'm bruant328 on the ACIG forum and we two were discussing this on ACIG based on the Jay Miller book I purchased.Jay Miller Aerofax F-22 book

 

So where do you think Sweetman got his new figures from? Speaking of SFC, what are the SFC numbers for the F119 compared to the other 2 engines?

Edited October 13, 2005 by bigfngun

[Smitty]

Sweetman's internal fuel numbers are suspect.  One of his earlier articles in IDR or AFM stated that the USAF had officially released the internal fuel and it was ~18,500lbs.  Now he says its about 1/3rd of 19,500kg, or about 14,300lbs.  I have sent emails to LockMart and the "Official" F-22 team website and they responded that the internal fuel numbers have not been released. 

 

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but he says the range of the F-22 is a third of the FB-22, not the fuel weight. That may or may not directly translate into range. (there was some discussion of using F135 derivatives in the FB-22)

 

IIRC, there was some discussion somewhere that the fuel fraction for the Raptor was no better than the F-15C, though this has not been confirmed by anthing official I've seen. Riccioni puts it at .29, though he hates the F-22, so YMMV.

 

Further, I find it very difficult to believe that the F-35A or even the F-35C would have more internal gas than the F-22.

 

I don't recall ever seeing figures that any of the F-35s carry more gas than the F-22, though I'm sure all of those numbers are speculative too.

 

F-35s may have a higher fuel fraction though.

 

However the official F-22 site states that "Mission 1" the sub-super profile is 310nm + 100nm radius.  This still seems very low, even if the -119's SFC is considerably higher than the -100-229s or -110-229s  (when operating at a high mach point) which seems unlikely.

 

The -119 SFC seemed high to me, but I don't recall where I saw it.

 

It would also be interesting to know what the "Mission 1" profile consisted of. Was it a simple fly-out, fly-back? Was there any high-G maneuvering? At what altitudes? Any loiter over target?

 

My guess is the quoted range for the F-35 may not represent a realistic mission profile.

 

Just some thoughts.

[Guest pfcem]

The "range" advantage of the F/A-22 over other aircraft in not so much in distance as it is in speed.

 

The F/A-22 "mission profile" includes a significant amount of time at supersonic speed. An F-15 (for example) could not possibly travel anyware near as far if it flew the sam mission profile.

[bigfngun]

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but he says the range of the F-22 is a third of the FB-22, not the fuel weight. That may or may not directly translate into range.  (there was some discussion of using F135 derivatives in the FB-22)

 

 

234686[/snapback]

 

Here is the exact Sweetman quote:

 

The new wing was three times larger than that of the F/A-22, dramatically increasing its internal fuel capacity to 19,500 kg, and thereby increasing range by a factor of three. (If the F/A-22 has a weak point, it is range. The fighter has a radius of action of 1,100 km at subsonic speed, but this decreases to 900 km with a 90 km Mach 1.5 dash and to 750 km with a 180 km supersonic segment.)

 

Article link:Sweetman article

Edited October 14, 2005 by bigfngun

[swerve]

The "range" advantage of the F/A-22 over other aircraft in not so much in distance as it is in speed.

 

The F/A-22 "mission profile" includes a significant amount of time at supersonic speed.  An F-15 (for example) could not possibly travel anyware near as far if it flew the sam mission profile.

234706[/snapback]

 

Exactly. Because it can fly supersonic without afterburner, the F-22 can fly further supersonic than an F-15 can fly supersonic, as its fuel consumption at supersonic speeds is lower.

 

If both fly subsonic, the F-15 has greater range.

[tankerwanabe]

Exactly. Because it can fly supersonic without afterburner, the F-22 can fly further supersonic than an F-15 can fly supersonic, as its fuel consumption at supersonic speeds is lower.

 

If both fly subsonic, the F-15 has greater range.

234883[/snapback]

 

Don't we want to compare both planes combat loaded? I figure the F22 would carry 4 tanks going up and dumping them prior to entering hostile territory. The new pylons are expendable along with tanks.

 

Anyone with an estimate for a F22 with 4 tanks?