D-Scythe

Wow, making up facts already huh? I mean, I thought I was *Canadian*, but since you say I'm "American" I guess I am :disgust: Hitman, don't worry about it. This thread obviously pretends Eurofighter is #1, so there won't be many facts being tossed around, just opinions. I'm out.

Says everybody. Name one other stealth fighter in service (or nearing service entry) right now. I can only think of two - the F-22A Raptor and the F-35 JSF. There are a bunch of stealth bombers, but only two stealth fighters. I disagree, at least in the context of an air-to-air, BVR engagement. The term "stealth" can be applied in many ways, true, but the term "stealth fighter" usually describes a jet whose RCS is the size of a bee or small bird. You're also right when you make the point that many 4.5/5th generation fighters have stealthy features (i.e. F/A-18E/F, Eurofighter, Rafale, etc.). However, none of these were designed to be "stealthy" - the low observable technology incorporated into them are only meant to delay detection by a few radar miles. On the other hand, the F-22 and F-35 are designed to delay detection to the point of visual range (i.e. detected too late to mean anything). I see no other plane capable of defeating the F-35 in terms of "first look" and "fisrt shot" than the F-22. I'll repeat it again - it's competitors are not stealthy in the same respect, in the context of an air-to-air engagement.

Headline News: In a stunning display of well-crafted arguments and indisputable facts, TucksonSonny has proven that the Eurofighter has "world beating detection, track and fire & control capabilities." After numerous speculation and debate regarding the subject, it has finally been revealed that the Eurofighter's chief competitor, the American F-22A Raptor, is especially vulnerable to super-cooled IR sensors that the Eurofighter is equipped with. When this information was uncovered by TucksonSonny, Lockheed Martin held a press conference to answer some questions. "Yes, this information is indeed true," one Lockheed spokesperson admitted. "Despite the decades of research and billions invested into the program, we unfortunately completely forgot about IRSTs with supercooling. Supercooling is a really, really, really advanced technology and we just didn't anticipate that they'd find their ways into fighters anytime soon. Sorry USAF, our bad." When asked to comment, one USAF just said, "Holy jumping pizzas Batman! This TucksonSonny guy just revealed the achilles' heel of our entire multi-billion dollar F-22 program. We don't know how he knew, but it's all true."

Do people from the anti-stealth camp intentionally not-read things or is it simply a fact that their average IQ is inversely proportional to the number of people who are anti-stealth? Dismiss *what* claim? I don't think any company has ever advocated that their IRSTs can pick up a supercruising Raptor (or any stealthy target for that matter) beyond visual range. So far, all these claims have come from armchair IRST wannabe-experts with absolutely *no* backing whatsover. And yes, the F-35 will have first shot in the majority of air engagements, and first look in all. It's stealthy (yes, IR stealthy too), it has AESA and it has (will) AIM-120D. It's competitors will all have AESA too (eventually), and they have Meteor/whatever, but they don't have stealth. The logic is quite simple IMO.

That's where you go wrong. Jammers typically don't "destroy" or "degrade" a radio wave - they send out their own radio waves emulating the type they are trying to jam back at the RF reciever, to confuse it. What US patriotists? A lot of us aren't even American. It's just a fact that the U.S.A. have some of the most powerful and technologically advanced weapons in the world. What *is* funny, however, is reading crap from the anti-U.S./West camp. It's hilarious - "facts" mean nothing to these people. Like thinking that a military program with a R&D budget worth millions is comparable/superior to one that is worth billions (R-77 vs. AIM-120 anyone?). Or that IRST is some super anti-stealth tool and that Lockheed Martin "forgot" to stealth the F-22 from these IRSTs when they designed it. Hahahaha :megalol:

Pirate IRST was never tested against the F-22, so I don't know where you get your wonder-facts from make-belief land. You ALSO seem to dismiss the fact that Lockheed has stealthed the Raptor to IR sensors as well. Like, we keep telling you "hey man, the F-22 is IR-stealthed," but you keep ignoring this fact to promote your own arguments. Sure, the F-22 is not as stealthy to IR as it is to radar, but IR sensors don't have the range of radars either. Either way you look at it, you're gonna be picking up the F-22 with radar, IRST or with the Mk. 1 eyeball at the SAME time. APPLY YOUR LOGIC (or lack thereof) TO BOTH SIDES OF THE DEBATE. You seem to forget that one, the F-22 ALSO has an AESA radar, and two, the U.S. had been looking at RF-softkill weapons for a while now too. Furthermore, if the Chinese don't know where the F-22 is (again, cause of STEALTH), how is it gonna direct any RF-weapons against it or the AMRAAMs it spams? Oh yeah, it can't.

You're kidding right? It supercruises at Mach 1.7, it can accelerate to Mach 1.8 in a heart-beat, plus it has TVC for close in agility. Manueverability-wise it's only matched by other TVC-equipped fighters - kinematically it's only exceeded by the MiG-25/31 on AB. Baghdad was defended by SA-2s and 6s. The F-22 was designed to walk around SA-10s/20s. You do the math. Nobody said the F-22 was gonna eliminate some MANPADS guy taking pot shots at your helos.

For the record, nobody's underestimating anything (*don't engage the Flanker in a knife-fight, remember? ;) ). It's just that one of the F-22's many advantages is that it doesn't ALLOW the other team to play the game to their strengths. Again, if it wanted to, the F-22 can force the enemy to play the BVR game with them 99.99% of the time. If 2 Raptors went up against 40 Flankers and killed 10 of them with AMRAAMs, how's the other 30 Flankers gonna "force" the F-22s into a visual range for a dogfight? When the 10 Flankers die, there isn't any sign that says "F-22s are here - afterburn there and kill them now". The only warning they're gonna get is when the AMRAAMs go active, and by that time the Raptors are cruising stealthily away at Mach 1.7. I have yet to come up any facts that state that there is something in the world that can force the F-22 to play fair and do some dogfighting every now and then. There isn't.

Iguana, I DID get it...too bad he posted the photo AFTER I replied (he edited his post 10 min after my reply) ;) Jester, of course nobody has ever won on technological supremacy alone - cept in sci-fi novels and make belief. But you have to realize, USAF pilots/tactics are not taking a back seat because they got the Raptor now; every single Raptor pilot has been hand-picked and are largely considered the best of the US Air Force. Every contingency can have a counter-contingency, and so on. A tactic that might work on the F-22 one day may be negated when F-22 pilots come up with a counter-tactic the next.

He's not wrong. But you can't see the F-22 BVR (i.e. BEYOND VISUAL RANGE), and the Raptor pilot has the luxury of keeping the fight BVR. The only way to visually spot an F-22 is if the pilot chooses to push the engagement into a dogfight. And no sane pilot would willing choose to engage in a dogfight where the odds of winning are even - they are going to be INCREDIBLY stacked in the F-22's favour. Otherwise, the pilots WON'T engage in a dogfight, cause they have stealth and supercruise. Gee, I repeated that 100 times already.

As for the F/A-18 vs. F-22 thing, the main thing to remember is that the scenario was specifically set up as a contingency because dogfighting is something that all Raptor pilots train to AVOID. Thank you. That's the scenario that I've been dictating all along, that an air force with a smaller fleet of F-22s would eventually achieve air dominance over a numercially superior air force without F-22s/counter-part. I *do* accept the Raptor for what it is. I never said it was invincible. I just said that it has *no* counterpart. It's the type of weapon that requires a counterpart to defeat it, not merely something that is numercially superior. The F-22 can engage/disengage WHENEVER it wants. If desired, there will be NO visual range fighting, at ALL. Should the Raptor pilots desire, they could keep ALL their fights BVR. I don't get why you think that all aerial battles will eventually degenerate into a dogfight. They *don't*, and that's YOUR illusion.

You don't think that it's possible for a group of Raptors to cross the fence, do some SpecOps-like operations (such as navigating between SAMs/enemy CAPs to kill an AWACs), and then get out unscathed? You don't think that the F-22 can *choose* the type of target density that it wants to engage in? The thing can probably stand-back on the periphery and pick off individual targets/flights of targets before going back to base, re-arming, get a new pilot if need to be, and take off again. Rinse, wash, repeat. Again, this assumes that yes, the Raptor base is more or less full protected and well defended. And how much more obvious can *I* make it? The detection range of the F-22 either to radar, IRST or visually is gonna be so low that it's not gonna matter to the F-22. It's still gonna dictate the fight how and where it wants to. Comprende? Owned?

A Tiger tank can be seen, caught and thus destroyed. A Raptor cannot be seen, cannot be chased down and thus cannot be destroyed, no matter how much you want to wish otherwise.

...are you serious? How bout....A-pole the AMRAAMs, turn tail and run? Plus, how are the 900 other Flankers going to chase the F-22s around if they can't SEE IT? Or OUT-RUN it? Wow, missed those little details there didn't you? Guess you were caught up in the fantasy of an anti-stealth, supercruising Flanker there for a moment. What? How on earth can the MiG-15s (or anything) eventually win? The Raptor is going to be GONE (out of range and out of radar) by the time the first AMRAAMs are arriving on target. The first four-to-six targets (MiG-15s, Fulcrums, Flankers, it doesn't matter) are going to be dead. The remaining 14-16 survivors are just going to be targets for the Raptor later. This assumes, of course, if we're talking about an actual war here, where there are SAMs and other friendly fighters guarding the Raptor's "friendly" side of the fence.

Two points: One: If the USAF was able to buy the F-22 like it DID want to buy it, than the price of the entire program (relative to the number of airframes bought) wouldn't be so high. The program was delayed and cut back - delays cost a LOT of money (you need to maintain production assets, security, hydro/electricity, etc. for that much longer) and cutting back on the numbers of Raptors bought inflates the individual price of each airframe when R&D costs, etc. are factored in. Two: How is complete air dominance for the next 30 years over the top? The military equipment that you mentioned (the Kutznetzov, Su-30, etc.) can all be effectively countered by another weapons system in one way or another. With the F-22, it *has* no counter. For example, if Russia built 8 extra carriers and 240 Su-33s to go with it, than the US can likewise build extra carriers/JSFs/Super Hornets. With the F-22, it doesn't matter how many MiGs, Flankers or SAMs you build. It's gonna smash everything to bits and there is *nothing* the enemy can do about it. The only difference between a force of 100 Su-27s and a force of 1000 Su-27s to the F-22 is that 1000 Flankers are gonna take longer to kill. Everything in the air is basically just a target to the Raptor - stealth, supercruise and great situational awareness ensures that the F-22 will be to engage what it wants, where it wants, and how it wants (provided that it comes with a competent pilot). It's like putting F-5s against AESA/FDL equipped F-15Cs, linked to AWACs. Sure, the F-5s are gonna be able to pick up the -15s on radar, but the Eagles probably had them on radar ages ago and have probably multi-targetted each F-5 with a Slammer. Then, the F-15s can choose to engage the survivors with AIM-9Xs, but they can also choose to run away. How do you win against such an enemy? It doesn't matter how many F-5s you have, the F-15s will always pick you up sooner, and will always know what you're doing because of AESA, FDL and AWACs. A hundred, five hundred, a thousand F-5s aren't gonna make a difference - the Eagles can always run away if they don't want to fight.

Think the plan was to install extra AESA arrays in the wings. IIRC, much of the wiring/support structure for these extra arrays is still in place, so if the funding does come through, it would be a relatively quick and easy affair to install these extra radar elements. I haven't heard of any plans to mount IRST onto the Raptor. If any thing resembling an IRST would be mounted onto the F-22, I'd imagine it would be more like a stealthy, internal Sniper XR/LANTIRN targetting pod with IRST functions, rather than a "pure" IRST. If you put the best pilot in the world into an F-86, would you expect it to win against a mediocre pilot in a F-15C? Obviously not. The F-22 was designed for *absolute* capability over-match against *anything* flying today or in the next 20 years, mediocre pilots or not. However, USAF pilots are still amongst the best trained in the world (if not the best), so what do you get when you take well-trained pilots and put them into the F-22? Answer: complete air dominance for the next 30 years.

Well, chaff doesn't really ever "look" like the target - it's RCS for one is usually several orders of magnitude larger. Rather, chaff is used mostly to introduce noise to the tracking radar (in the case of a look-up engagement - in a look-down engagement, both it and the ground provides clutter/noise for the missile to deal with). Putting a chaff directly between the target and the missile (only possible in a tail-chase scenario) sorta "blinds" the radar IIRC. I'm sure GG will clarify. Volk, the answer to your question is no, chaff really isn't all that effective against doppler missiles except in some "special" situations. Beaming the missile and forcing the radar to "look-down" is one of these "special" situations ;) Speaking of which, the "beaming+chaff" maneuver might not work on smarter missiles like the AMRAAM, which may have some special algorithms programmed into it to (try to) defeat such a maneuver which has been around for a good 30 years already. Although it'll probably take another 30 years before the public finds out for sure if this is true. Either way, I think the target's best bet when faced with an R-77 or AIM-120 is try to defeat the missile kinematically, as from what I've read it doesn't seem very safe to wander into their no-escape zones at all (unlike how it is currently represented in LOMAC).

Mostly everything you stated applies only to older missiles. Newer radar missiles like the R-77, AIM-7M or AIM-120 use doppler to track and home in on a target, which are relatively immune to chaff unless the chaff cloud is directly between the target and the missile.

You have *got* to be kidding me.

About the Su-35...I hope it has a good ejection seat. Cause that fat bird is a sitting duck to the F-22. I have the impression that if it's not engaged in a slow-speed dogfight, it's basically a heavy lump of metal with a "AMRAAM me" sign taped onto its tail-pipe :megalol:

On this point I have to disagree. I understand what you're trying to say, and yes, graphics are to an extent important to immersion. But I fail to see how the automatic changing of camoflage to suit the season "immerses" the player into the sim world. Furthermore, graphics is simply (IMO) not as important as other aspects of jet combat in creating/maintaining the illusion of combat. As a flight sim graphics are important, but Lock On is a combat flight sim. Because of this, things like realistic, elements like more frequent radio chatter (i.e. Jane's F/A-18, F4:AF) and better AI would be much better in immersing the player into the illusion of teamwork/tactical maneuvering that's associated with a dynamic and high-threat combat environment. So basically, BTRs that automatically change their skins to match the season is not going to make me feel a part of the LOMAC world. Again, as far as graphics go, I don't think it's anywhere close to being the most important factor in immersion (in a combat flight sim). For example, I doubt that this feature will stop the Falcon 4 fanboys from crying that LOBS still presents a sterile, *non-immersive* world to fly a Mach 2 jet in.

Immersive? It's great detail for sure (and kudos to ED for that), but to say that it's new and makes LOMAC more immersive is stretching it. Non-graphical things like frequent radio chatter and better flight/wingman AI would make LOMAC more immersive. Just so you know.

Well, optimizations of the graphics to produce better framerates/smoother gameplay is a different matter entirely. That I wouldn't mind. I also wouldn't mind low level terrain graphic optimizations to make LOBS prettier to the eyes. Other than that, I much rather have things like a working, realistic APG-63/AIM-120C hunter-killer combo or much, much smarter AI than any kind of graphics improvement. Just look at the combat flight sim market, and where LOMAC stands currently in the beauty department. It's Numero One, no exceptions.

Um, if you think that ED should spend the time and money to make LOMAC even easier on the eyes than it already is, than I'm pretty sure you're in the minority ;)

I don't know where you get the insane idea that all modern/future weapon systems are supposed to defend us against only terrorists with plastic knives. That is by far the dumbest thing I've ever heard. According to you then, all future (or modern) weapon systems being procured by militaries around the world are a complete waste of money, cause chances are the biggest threat is some extremist-Islam guy with a letter opener. Gee, let's all just scrap the T-90, the Leopard 2A6, the F-22, Eurofighter, Gripen, Rafale, Super Hornet, JSF, AH-64D, M1A2 SEP, etc. Your logic is laughable. If you think the public doesn't influence political decisions in the United States, then that's your opinion. Most people know better. Again, believe what you want. You obviously don't completely understand the way the U.S. government works. I don't know what kinda history books YOU are reading, but according to mine (and everyone else's), the United States and Russia had the same political and military goal during WWII. That war took place between 1939 and 1945, just in case you need any more facts straightened out. Or maybe you should read my post more carefully. France didn't agree with the U.S. a lot lately. Gee, when are we going to take over Paris?