Eagles and Vipers take on Raptors in the skies over Nevada.
The results are predictable.
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Dying WholesaleBy lex, on April 2nd, 2009
44 comments to Dying Wholesale |
Targets of Opportunityblog advertising is good for you Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Amazon AssociateFor the Effort!Winnar! Subscribe CategoriesPagesTagsacademy
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Nice, but what happens when your ROE requires a visual ID prior to engaging? Not that the politicians would ever do that…
Well,
I remember when P-3′s got Harpoons, and the ROE specified we had to visually ID the target before engaging. We tried to explain that, if we could see them, they could most certainly see us, and their SAM’s could easily reach out and touch us long before that point, anyway.
The Navy has F-15s? Maybe they mean the Japanese Navy. Do they fly the Eagle?
Japan does fly the Eagle, but it is in service with their ASDF, not the navy.
How many drivers will stick around to play video games? I’m thinking all will retire unless they absolutely must stay in order to reach retirement.
“Ten of the 174th Fighter Wing’s 30 pilots decided to retire as the unit transitions to drones, Bradley said. A few more transferred to other units where they could continue flying fighter jets. ”
http://www.syracuse.com/poststandard/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-17/1237625796264940.xml&coll=1
This is the reward the “Boys From Syracuse” get for being probably the most combat-ready outfit in the ANG universe and the first (IIRC) deployed to the ME during Gulf I. They’ve ALWAYS had one of the better reps for SH performance–air to air AND air to gnd. So naturally a message had to be sent, I guess……don’t bother to hone those skilz, scratch the “M-1″ maneuvers in the centrifuge, we’ve got a barco-lounger in your future!
I guess Lex didn’t realize when he put up that video of his little stint in the ‘go-round thingee that he was putting up a picture of a Dinosaur….Or maybe he did, come to think of it, sort of a “what it once took” to be a fighter pilot sort of thing…..
I’d say retirement is what a lot of the ANG pilot’s are in for… (based on conversations with my retired AF brother). So after active duty, wanting to still be in service to America, but not wanting to spend a year unaccompanied to someplace, I’d guess they they joined up with the ANG with that retirement goal in mind.
Now speaking on topics which I absolutely have no clue…. I’d also say the under 40 crowd (is that age-ist???) would be most comfortable with video game flying and most likely to stick it out in that capacity. And since that can be done basically anywhere there is an equipment trailer set up, we’ll probably see a lot more of this farmed out remote flying done, if nothing else, just to relieve the burden on the USAF pilots…stuck in the videogame cube in Arizona. (So THEY can be remotely deployed to unaccompanied duty stations…to get tired of that and leave to join the ANG or AF reserve to support the replacement USAF guys. rinse. repeat.)
The attrition zone I’d worry about is that 40-60 (bell curve) age group… too old to be comfortable with the “new” AF/ANG direction, but not old enough or close enough to retirement to want to put up with such a radical change in work environment. What are THEY going to do? (I guess they could be like my brother…switch over to civil engineering to build targets for the kiddies to blow up, eh?)
Trigger down… BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP!
http://www.alert5.com/2006/04/fa-18f-guns-down-f-22a.html
A picture worth 1000 words.
The story read like a press release from Lockheed, “Our product is so good, even the best of our own pilots can’t beat it. You should just give up or buy one too.”
I think the standard restrictive ROE mentioned above will tarnish the glow of its “awesome” superiority some.
True. Although it should read, “Our Lockeed F-22 is so good, our Lockheed (they bought GD) F-16 can’t beat it. So buy F-22s. Or F-35s. Anything but F/A-18s.”
The F-22 is a great machine, but it was always intended to make one quick pass at Mach 1.5+, shoot AMRAAMs on the way in, count kills going past…and run for it.
Not a bad tactic, seeing as a variation worked quite well against the Mitusubshi Zero. But if the ROE force visual ID before firing, a lot of the advantages of an F-22 shrink.
I don’t know the answer to this: Near the bottom center of that HUD is the word “Guns” with an X over it….does that mean the gun is not selected or is out of ammo or what? Is that circle on the F-22 the end of the story no matter what?
The “X” just means that the gun is not actually armed – ordinarily we fight in “sim” mode to generate valid weapons symbology. The circle is a “bullets at target range” indicator, showing where the armament computer believes the round fired one time of flight previously would be at the target’s range.
The readout just below and to the left of the Bullets At Target Range circle, does that indicate that in 18.5 seconds, you will be close enough to fire a fish at the F-22? If so, what sort of fish does NAVAIR prefer for air to air use?
Does anyone know if the F-22 guys are now using Helmet Mounted Display? When they were flying out of NTU a few years ago, they weren’t. If you had JHMCS/9X and could survive to the merge, game over.
So I reckon all you can do is hope the F-22 system is “down-saturated-has lousy RD” and hope your eyesight is better than the Raptor driver? Hope ain’t a strategy or a tactic.
Did y’all ever consider that the Raptor folks are just learning this new jet and how to use it in close? I remember the bravado from the Phantom drivers when the Tom and Eagle were brand new…
Despite the rhino-wizzo’s (WSO is an USAF deriverd term) swagger and that questionable 2-3 year old photo, I still think, aerodynamically speaking, the Raptor would eat the Rhino’s lunch head to head in a dogfight!
b2
Being on the other side of the jet (not the seat side), how long does it take one to learn a jet like this? It’s been out there awhile. Motors are starting to come in to the depot for the 4325 inspection. That’s a lot of flying time…
“If you had JHMCS/9X and could survive to the merge, game over.”
+ 1 to that.
“aerodynamically speaking, the Raptor would eat the Rhino’s lunch head to head in a dogfight!”
History is full of examples where aircraft with inferior performance across the spectrum have defeated those with superior performance… WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam…
Sometimes it comes down to the “man in the box”… I don’t care how good of a pilot you are, what kind of plane you are flying, what your crazy weapon system is capable of… if you don’t see the enemy at the merge… he’s going to own you… be that a crazy SU-30 or some busted, P.O.S. MIG-17…
Call the photo questionable if that makes you and other Raptor lovers feel better. I don’t vouch for it’s authenticity one way or the other. Looks legit to me unless someone is a photochop expert.
Technology is great – I love it. We aren’t supposed to fight fair. However, all technology can be defeated with time, effort, and counter tactics…
I still hate to think that we are planning/hoping for air superiority on a buy of what – 178? 183? what is the latest number? Looks like it is gonna be the 37 ME-262 Swallows versus 1,221 B-17s thing again. You can kill ‘em, you just can’t kill ‘em all.
Virg – take heart. new business for barco-patches. Git yer 500 hr chair patch, your 1000 hr chair patch, 100 night landings patch. A whole new industry.
I have a bad feeling that the Raptor pilots are due for at least one or two nasty surprises when they actually engage an enemy (excepting CAS). Human beings have a habit of coming up with novel ways of how not to die in combat.
Take the Me-262, for example. It represented a tremendous quantum jump in fighter technology, just as the Raptor does today. Allied fighters should have been meat on the table for this plane, yet our boys managed to regularly chop them down to size. Even Chuck Yeager shot a Swallow down with a Mustang.
True, the Swallow had very temperamental engines, but the Allied pilots demonstrated that appropriate tactics (going after the 262s while taking off or landing) can defeat superior technology.
Add to this the tremendous maintenance demands of stealth technology, and you have a problem. The B-2 is a bit of a hangar queen due to the need to literally patch over every access hatch or door that has been opened, before flying again. From what I’ve read, the Raptor faces a similar (although not as severe) challenge, if you want to keep that radar signature down.
What happens if someone misses a patch? How well will the birds stand up to forward deployment? Can the crews keep the planes “invisible” under those conditions?
The F-22 isn’t meant for forward deployment, their sole mission is continental air defense.
Given the current government’s wish to cancel F-22 production, this exercise serves one of two purposes: either it’s designed to show that the F-22 is not all it’s scratched up to be and the F-15 and F-16 can do the same job cheaper, or it’s designed to show that the F-15 and F-16 don’t stand a chance against 5th generation fighter aircraft.
Which it is depends on who wrote the rulebook for the exercise, is he following the party line as laid out by the secretary of defense (who wants the F-22 dead because it doesn’t drop bombs over Afghanistan (his stated reason)) or the military itself who want it because it’s the only thing that will give them a fighting chance against the latest generation Soviet hardware in use by Russia/USSR and China (and probably Iran).
You are kidding, right? About the continental AD mission? The whole point of the 30 year development of the ATF/F-22 program was to go into the OTHER guy’s backyard and defeat him over his airfield, not ours. That’s the whole point of stealth. You don’t need stealth over your home field.
Maybe when you have a better grasp of programs, you can play with the big boys.
Brad: Dead On Da Money. You want to win the air war over the modern battlefield? You better have one bad-ass fighter that can fight against the odds, kill everything it sees, and make it back to do it again. You own THEIR skies, you got 9/10′s of the battlefield won.
Well; Brad, Byron; that’s my point. How well will the Raptor stand up under forward deployment?
To my understanding, an effective device is one that works equally well as a machine, as well as a a weapon. By this definition, the C-47 was one of the premier weapons of WW2. Along that line, the B-2 (again, from my understanding) needs an excessive amount of maintenance between every sortie, just to maintain that vital “stealth” capability. From what I’ve read, the Spirit is the modern equivalent of the WW1 Dreadnaught. Big, expensive, powerful, but too valuable to risk in a real fight. Most of the heavy lifting these days is executed by the very nearly septuagenarian BUFF, even if it has a far greater radar cross-section.
On the other hand, I recall the debate between the expensive, “bleeding-edge” tech B-17, and the affordable (read cheap) B-18 Bolo. During peacetime, the Bolo won out, but they turned to the Fortress when the fighting commenced…
Maybe -at the end of the day- the Raptor is the best choice…
no, I’m not kidding. After the original numbers were scaled down to under 200, it was decided that the aircraft would be roughly evenly divided between the east and west coast continental air defence units.
No foreign deployments are envisioned at least for the time being.
The F-15 falling out of the sky because of metal fatigue may of course change that, at least until replacements can be built (Boeing has offered to reopen the production line, with a new version using missiles fitted inside the fuselage where the auxiliary fueltanks are now).
J.T./
That’s a classic example of a political decision, if true. How can the service justify, and the politicians, justify to the tax-payers not having them and the homeland protected by the very latest in equipment, no?
And the sad part of it is their (both sets–political & military) political opponents would probably/undoubtedly savage them if they had decided on a different deployment plan that didn’t emphasize the protection of CONUS first–no matter how illogical from a tactics/strategy standpoint.
Reminds me of the lyrics to the Dos Gringos song:
“Their suicidal bravery made us feel bad for them,
So on Tuesdays it was heaters only, Wednesdays BFM.”
Nose/
OT, but did you ever read/buy Forrester’s
“The Good Sheppard?”
The epic story of CDR. George Kraus, and the strangely armed MAHAN class DD USS KEELING? A Ripping Good Yarn, old CS could pilot a typewriter, no doubt about it!
SCOTTtheBADGER/
I re-read it every few years, as is great read, but tell this AF guy what was “strange” about the KEELING’s armament? I’m trying to remember, and out here in Cali w.o. my library in NO., so can’t refer back.
The KEELING is a MAHAN class destroyer, yet it seems to carry the armament of a FLETCHER class destroyer. There are 40mm Bofors mounts before the bridge that were only carried by FLETCHERs, and the 20mm mounts are located other than where the MAHANs carried them.
I think what happened was that the FLETCHERs were so omnipresent, that most photos of late war DDs were of FLETCHERs. So the mental image most people had and have of WWII USN DDs have the forward 40mm mounts before the bridge. There are some bridge structure oddities, but there were MAHANs with those mods, as updates after battle damage. KEELING must have been the prototype for the square bridge mods. ( Of course, KEELING was fictional, and if Scott Forester had wanted a rail gun in Mount 52, she could have one ).
I also reread The Good Shepherd annually. It really is a ripping yarn, about resposibility, and how an officers job is to build, as well as destroy. Witness Krause’s watching the development of the OOD, whose name I can’t remember, and I am too lazy to walk up 2 flights of stairs to look up, he’s the one that OKed the shifting of the steering cables.
We seem to have a lot of interests in common, sir! YAY!
C. S. ” Scott ” Forester, HUZZAH!
Nose, All the lyrics you can’t beat: (thanks for the laughs) http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/dos_gringos/world_war_iii-lyrics-1249188.html
Spaz
Great link – outta be posted in every sqd ready room! Cheers.
It is all fine and dandy that the F-22 is able to sweep the skies of F-16′s and F-15′s along with whatever else is currently flown in our inventory. However, how is that good training for either the ANG drivers or even the F-22 drivers? I mean if you lose everytime you get airborne then you don’t learn anything and just decied to go through the motions. The same is true if you win the minute you show up in the air space and everyone goes “Wholly crap its Jester!” and decide instead of getting smoked they will go home.
Come on folks! This is alright until real pilots are getting killed because they have not learned the hard lessons of pushing thier airplanes to the limit. Losing during training is important but also is winning and building lessons to learn which will be shared in the ready rooms during actual deployments.
I guess institutional memory is very short. I remember the whole reason that Top Gun and later Nellis Weapons School was to teach pilots how to fly such aircracft as F-4′s against such jets like the MiG-19′s and MiG-21′s. So what happens when our F-22′s start to get smoked by bad guys flying jets like F-5′s/Hawk 2000/ or even Su-35′s? The world wonders.
Oh and the last time the USAF claimed to have an airplane which couldn’t be shot down the USN showed them up. That was the B-36. F2H-3 from VC-33 (if my memory serves me right) took a pair up for intercept and were able to escort a B-36 out of Q-point, Rhode Island airspace and down to Atlantic City, NJ before having to land for gas. Ooops! Egg on USAF face
Charles/
The USAF aircraft that really couldn’t be shot down (at the time it was first introduced, before hi-alt SAMs and later gen fighters.) was the B-47. It could fly higher and faster than anything anybody–us or them–had. LeMay used to fly them all over the length and breadth of the Soviet Union in massed formation in the early days as an intimidation factor.
we’re back in the 1960s, with the idea that there’s no more need for dogfighting and guns, that standoff weapons will do everything and that soon there will be no more need for manned aircraft.
In the 1960s this was driven by balistic missile and SAM development, now it’s UCAVs and long range cruise missiles.
Charles,
ANG pilots have the most flight time and experience flying their steeds than any pilots on the planet with the exception of the IAF. For the record.
OBTW, I flew Navy so I am not being service component parochial . 100% agree, both active duty and ANG/Reserve need to maintain a high level of training A-A.
b2
I have read about how ANG types in F-4s would have Eagle and Vipers for lunch, showing that experience pays. We shall see just how well the F-22 does. I am cynical about any item as hyped as the Raptor.
B2,
I don’t discount the ANG folks have a high level of experience in thier roles (whether A-A or A-G). Having seen the folks from East Coast units fly against a couple of CV strike groups I was part of. They gave the intercept controllers a run for thier money. We gave the TARCAP a run for its money. However, both sides learned something during those engagements and those of us on the ship were able to expand on those lessons later on the cruise.
The premise of my comment was and still is even with your high experience if your placed in a postion that the your just killed the minute you go wheels up then what have you learned? What about the squadron across the tarmac, what have they learned with thier vunder veapons and tactics to use with those weapons?
Charles,
ANG fighter pilots have more flight time and experience flying their steeds than any pilots on the planet with the exception of the IAF. For the record. OBTW, I flew Navy so I am not being service component parochial .
100% agree, both active duty and ANG/Reserve need to maintain a high level of training A-A.
b2
Charles/VX,
re B-36 untouchable . Just took a copy of the “local” rag into the reading room and like Solomon I can now fix your historical argument well before MY time!:
http://www.dcmilitary.com/stories/040209/tester_28201.shtml
“In June 1949, Trapnell again became NATC commander. It was later that year he appeared in House Armed Services Committee hearings that disputed Air Force claims for the B-36 — that flying at 40,000 feet it would be undetectable by radar and unreachable by enemy fighters.
According to Time Magazine’s report, Trapnell ‘‘testified that standard Navy radar had no trouble picking up small jet fighters at 40,000 feet, and that Navy fighters had made interceptions at that altitude by day and by night.”
He told the committee, ‘‘If you were able to ride as an observer in a B-36 at 40,000 feet during joint exercises, you would see (F2H) Banshees diving and zooming all around you and making repeated gunnery attacks with a speed advantage of over 100 miles per hour.”
Sounds like the truth!
“‘‘Such dual personalities do not occur in nature. ”
That’s for Lex.
b2
b2/
Oh yes, I never made claims for the B-36, rather the B-47 which was a horse of an entirely different color–especially in the first few years of it’s intro. into operational status. That window of advantage closed within a couple of years+ but the SAC boys had fun while it lasted–especially with the Russians. I guess everyone of us in Vietnam should really be pissed at LeMay, as had he not taunted the Soviets the way he did by flying B-47s willy-nilly uncontested (successfully, that is) all over the skies of the SU in massed formations, they might not have been spurred on to develop the SA-2 as quickly as they did. LOL (ruefully)
To the best of my knowledge, the B-47 never entered Soviet Airspace. My understanding is the SR-71 did (but that is a much different story and they were never able to touch the Black Bird).
A friend who flew refueling missions for SAC told of many missions over polar air space refueling B-47s and 52s when ever the SU would rattle sabers. Normally, right after they would get real quiet. To his knowledge, none went into Soviet air space. That was back in the 50s when LeMay was CG of SAC. He got out shortly after LeMay became Vice Chief of Staff.
Still, I would say, you are right about the incentive to develop SAMs, and that LeMay and Tommy Power can be blamed for it.
QM/
Yes, Tommy Powers was even crazier than LeMay (who wasn’t so much crazy as single-mindedly cold-blooded.) But I think you’re wrong about the penetration of Soviet airspace. Of course it was super double-secret. Not sure the President even knew in advance when LeMay (who was pretty much a law unto himself in the Truman era) ordered such things. Hell, even Wiki refers to these flights (which surprised the hell out of me–I think an Article in The Atlantic a few years ago by a guy named–of all things–Thomas Power– spilled the beans. Talk about karma!)