And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
The Russian's SU-57 is at least going to give the F-22 big trouble, it has the missile and X band radar range 2x's plus. F-22 is old tech now, wonderful jet, worked directly on it's engine program, thats still more advanced than pretty much all engines, for now, till the Russian's get the IL-30 into serial production, but tech has moved beyond its capabilities I think from looking at all the honest straight specifications. Its not rocket science, simply technology improves always. Got to remember the 22 is essentially 90's high technology, even with the life extension, only goes so far, it doesn't have open architecture unfortunately as all Gen 5+ has.
The F-22 was the second-fastest, second-longest ranged, second highest payload carrying, second-best maneuvering, second-best plane overall in a two-plane competition.
It was also to be built in the home state of the head of the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee chairman, by a company rightfully charged about a dozen times in federal courts for defense kickbacks to government officials.
The F-23 was not.
See if you can guess why the F-22 somehow won the contract.
The SU-57 is one step above vapor-ware, it's not going to be put into mass production, the ruskies don't have the money much less ability. Plus after seeing how great their "superior" tanks have been doing in Ukraine, I would take any of it's claimed capabilities with a grain of salt.
Totally agree with Aesop, the F-23 was clearly the better aircraft but not only due to govt shenanigans, the AF was scared of the what cutting/bleeding edge technology could actually do and for some reason didn't think it was possible. They really swung and missed on this one.
Both prototypes met contract specifications for demonstration, but the YF-23 demonstrator was a significantly less complete aircraft than the YF-22. It was going to take more redesign and engineering to bring it to production status than the YF-22. The YF-22 was an airframe flight characteristics demonstrator only, it did not carry mission avionics or weapons. For example designers already knew that the provisional weapons bay they had put in the prototype was going to have to be redesigned into two separate bays for production. Though not required for demonstration, YF-22 incorporated actual weapons carriage into it and demonstrated firing of both AIM-9 and AIM-120 missiles. The YF-22 had the same combat range as the YF-23, was only slightly slower at supercruise, and was more maneuverable. It had design provisions to make its infrared signature stealthier as well. The YF-23A was said to be radar stealthier, but it was also going to have to change its shape to get to production. YF-23 was better at some things, but YF-22 was better at others. It is false to say the YF-23 was technically better in everything.
Since both companies’ demonstrators met minimum requirements, other factors like management and cost weigh heavily. It is of no help if someone can build her superduper one off, but then can’t produce that at scale. At the time the Air Force plan to buy 750 copies.
Northrup Grumman was way over its head in the B-2 program at the time, a redesign with massive overruns and huge schedule slips. Not only did this not give a warmfuzzy as to their ability to bring the YF-23 into production, but adding yet another high value high-risk program would detract the company from working the B-2s problems.
Lockheed had a better management history, and had the capacity at the time. Indeed they brought extra engineers into the ATF program during the prototype development, so they had a deep bench with nothing else to do but make a production aircraft out of it. Lockheed focused on the system engineering of the airplane, keeping a strategic direction of how all parts played together, and how to get to production, whereas Northrop, focused more on making a specific prototype airframe that could fly, and separately demonstrating other pieces mounted on test aircraft, and creating a separate program to get to production.
The production F-22 ended up being faster than either of the prototypes, and small re-designs of various portions of it made it even stealthier. For all we know, the production version may be stealthier than either of the prototypes.
The F16 was the best fighter for a dog fight. The F35 is the best fighter period. The F35 was tested against 5 F16's and it was able to take all 5 F16's out before any of the F16's even saw the F35. Because of bias and bad press the F35 is very under rated. It is not intended to dog fight. It is designed to take out all the opposition at a long distance. The F-22 is awesome, no question. Just that the F35 is awesomer.
We should have added a bomb bay and made a stealth attack bomber.
ReplyDeleteThe F-22 was the better choice as it is still the most dominant fighter in the world.
ReplyDeleteThe Russian's SU-57 is at least going to give the F-22 big trouble, it has the missile and X band radar range 2x's plus. F-22 is old tech now, wonderful jet, worked directly on it's engine program, thats still more advanced than pretty much all engines, for now, till the Russian's get the IL-30 into serial production, but tech has moved beyond its capabilities I think from looking at all the honest straight specifications. Its not rocket science, simply technology improves always. Got to remember the 22 is essentially 90's high technology, even with the life extension, only goes so far, it doesn't have open architecture unfortunately as all Gen 5+ has.
DeleteThe F-22 was the second-fastest, second-longest ranged, second highest payload carrying, second-best maneuvering, second-best plane overall in a two-plane competition.
DeleteIt was also to be built in the home state of the head of the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee chairman, by a company rightfully charged about a dozen times in federal courts for defense kickbacks to government officials.
The F-23 was not.
See if you can guess why the F-22 somehow won the contract.
The SU-57 is one step above vapor-ware, it's not going to be put into mass production, the ruskies don't have the money much less ability. Plus after seeing how great their "superior" tanks have been doing in Ukraine, I would take any of it's claimed capabilities with a grain of salt.
DeleteTotally agree with Aesop, the F-23 was clearly the better aircraft but not only due to govt shenanigans, the AF was scared of the what cutting/bleeding edge technology could actually do and for some reason didn't think it was possible. They really swung and missed on this one.
Both prototypes met contract specifications for demonstration, but the YF-23 demonstrator was a significantly less complete aircraft than the YF-22. It was going to take more redesign and engineering to bring it to production status than the YF-22. The YF-22 was an airframe flight characteristics demonstrator only, it did not carry mission avionics or weapons. For example designers already knew that the provisional weapons bay they had put in the prototype was going to have to be redesigned into two separate bays for production. Though not required for demonstration, YF-22 incorporated actual weapons carriage into it and demonstrated firing of both AIM-9 and AIM-120 missiles. The YF-22 had the same combat range as the YF-23, was only slightly slower at supercruise, and was more maneuverable. It had design provisions to make its infrared signature stealthier as well. The YF-23A was said to be radar stealthier, but it was also going to have to change its shape to get to production. YF-23 was better at some things, but YF-22 was better at others. It is false to say the YF-23 was technically better in everything.
DeleteSince both companies’ demonstrators met minimum requirements, other factors like management and cost weigh heavily. It is of no help if someone can build her superduper one off, but then can’t produce that at scale. At the time the Air Force plan to buy 750 copies.
Northrup Grumman was way over its head in the B-2 program at the time, a redesign with massive overruns and huge schedule slips. Not only did this not give a warmfuzzy as to their ability to bring the YF-23 into production, but adding yet another high value high-risk program would detract the company from working the B-2s problems.
Lockheed had a better management history, and had the capacity at the time. Indeed they brought extra engineers into the ATF program during the prototype development, so they had a deep bench with nothing else to do but make a production aircraft out of it. Lockheed focused on the system engineering of the airplane, keeping a strategic direction of how all parts played together, and how to get to production, whereas Northrop, focused more on making a specific prototype airframe that could fly, and separately demonstrating other pieces mounted on test aircraft, and creating a separate program to get to production.
The production F-22 ended up being faster than either of the prototypes, and small re-designs of various portions of it made it even stealthier. For all we know, the production version may be stealthier than either of the prototypes.
The F-22 System was the best one to go with.
The F16 was the best fighter for a dog fight. The F35 is the best fighter period. The F35 was tested against 5 F16's and it was able to take all 5 F16's out before any of the F16's even saw the F35. Because of bias and bad press the F35 is very under rated. It is not intended to dog fight. It is designed to take out all the opposition at a long distance.
DeleteThe F-22 is awesome, no question. Just that the F35 is awesomer.
Manned equipment is having a tough go on the battlefield.
ReplyDeleteExpensive to replace when a small drone can be traded for however many millions in electronics and sensors while it's on the ground.
Those small drones are definitely changing warfare, but they aren’t going to catch a real jet going 1000 mph at 40,000 ft.
DeleteI walked by there today. Cool museum.
ReplyDeleteBiggest mistake was not putting this awesome aircraft into production.
ReplyDeleteDisagree. They stopped short, they should have also killed the POS known as the V22 and the F35.
ReplyDelete