Please don’t make this political. You’re in the wrong place for that.

http://ukarmedforcescommentary.blogspot.com/p/eurofighter-typhoon.html

http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/Anti-StealthTechnology.pdf

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00197

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=3389&from_page

http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2011/12/leaked-pentagon-report-reveals-slew-of-joint-strike-fighter-problems.html#report

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=4527&from_page=../index.cfm

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/modern_fighter_gun_effectiveness.htm
- last paragraph, when he mentions spin-up power

A vouloir faire les opérations de mémoire, on oublies :
- de mettre les cales aux roues
- de ne mettre que deux moteurs à pleine puissance (avion vide)
- de garder la main sur la manette des gaz
- de garder son sang-froid

Tout les reste c’est de la foutaise!!

JM HUTTER (France)

My Dear fellow, did you actually read the pearls of wisdom by some of the other posters? One such post goes like this and I quote, “send a few robots to fun around mars for a few years and than we talk about who has superior tech” and yet another gem,
“Why did wie talk about a dogfight .
The f22 Shot the enemys down before they know that the f22 is there !”

But of course you would not criticise them since they are all for the Raptor. There has not been one rational comment from anybody (lately) making sense remotely. It seems a plane HAS to be superior than the rest by default just because it is American technology. This is the kind of attitude that I severly oppose! Hey, I am all for America being technologically superior than other countries and there is no denying that. However, if you are efficient in your work, does that automatically make your co-workers inefficient?

You have stated, “The Raptor was never used in combat because it was not needed to put the wear on the expensive super capable aircraft when the F-15 was achieving ridiculous kill ratios.”

Yes the F-15 has excellent kill ratios (air to air combat), no doubt about that (50% being Israeli Pilots). However these kills ratios you are talking about, were way before the raptor recieved operational clearance. Did the f-15 see air to air combat action since 1999 (last being the kosovo conflict)? Nope. The USAF played escort, air support, transportation and strike roles in all the wars since then. In Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya. In each of these conflicts, the F-22 could easily have been used in ground strike roles like the Typhoon or Rafale were used in Libya. This would have given the USAF the chance to show the world the raptors capabilities and show its might. All the wars in the past decade have been against adverseries weak in aerial combat but had reasonably good air defence systems like Libya (afghanistan not so much). So the question is, what would be an ideal situation in which the Raptor can be fielded in battle? Air combat against Russia and China ONLY? Yeah right, you keep on believing that!

By the way what are the sources for your claim? I suggest you google “F-22 critical failure” and compare the search results with the search results of “F-22 (a) success”. Obviously the USAF and LM would feed the American citizens any crap to try and cover their mistakes.

As far as the JSF F-35 is concerned, the less said the better!

Problem with the typically arrogant American attitude is that they don’t know how to say these simple words which would make a world of difference, “Hey we guys are good. You guys aint bad either.”

The Raptor was never used in combat because it was not needed to put the wear on the expensive super capable aircraft when the F-15 was achieving ridiculous kill ratios. This would not only risk atrition on a fleet of only 187 planes, but also expose the actual capability of the aircraft. We had the Nighthawk for many years before it was ever used for the same reason.

Finally, one of the strengths of the US is that it does attract the best and brightest expats from the entire planet. In fact, one of the things I was taught to be proud of was that America is a “melting pot” of peoples from many races, religions and countries who claim themselves as American. My family are immigrants, and we are Americans by choice, and it does the US no shame that most everyone else would love to live as we do.

The SU-30/35/37 family is a different story altogether. The Sukhoi Su-37 is a supermaneuverable multirole jet fighter. In assessing the Flanker against the Super Hornet it is clear from the outset that the advantage in firepower, speed, raw agility, range and manoeuvre performance goes to the Flanker. Given that operational Flankers span variants from B through H, and type designations from Su-27S, through Su-30s to Su-35s, there are a wide range of configurations possible.

When this post was created, the only aircraft in the world coming close to the Raptor’s capabilities were the EF typhoon, su-30/37.

However, since 2010, the F22/F-35 has a new adversary in the Indo/Russian 5th generation fighter the Sukhoi PAK FA T-50. It is going to have 3D Thrust vectoring as compared to the Raptor’s 2D. The T-50 has been designed to be more maneuverable than the F-22 Raptor at the cost of making it less stealthy than the F-22. One of the design elements that have such an effect is the Leading Edge Vortex Controller (LEVCON).

The PAK FA SH121 radar complex includes three X-Band AESA radars located on the front and sides of the aircraft. These will be accompanied by L-Band radars on the wing leading edges. L-Band radars are proven to have increased effectiveness against very low observable (VLO) targets (read F-22/F-35) which are optimized only against X-Band frequencies, but their longer wavelengths reduce their resolution.

In conclusion, the F-22 should be compared to the PAK FA or maybe even the Chinese J-20 (also a 5th generation) fighter.