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F-22 vs Typhoon


Pielstick

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I'm sure most people read the stuff that came out last year relating to both RAF and Luftwaffe Typhoon's experience against USAF F-22s. With the various claims and counter claims appearing on various websites and magazines, etc.

I've been following a thread on another site about F-22 vs T-50/J-20 and there's been a very interesting exchange between one of the resident Lockheed Cheerleaders and a German guy who claims to work in the optronics field.

Basically this German guy asserts that F-22 is very vulnerable to Typhoon because of the latter's PIRATE IRST. He says that the publically stated figures of PIRATE having a detection range of 50nm against a subsonic fighter sized target mean that PIRATE should be able to detect a super cruising F-22 at considerably greater range, indeed well beyond the engagement range of the AIM-120, thus meaning that the Tiffie should be able to detect an F-22 before the F-22 gets within AIM-120 engagement range. When pressed about the effect of clouds on IRST performance the German guy asserts that PIRATE works in two IR wavelengths that are "atmospheric windows" where IR attenuation due to cloud and precipitation is much reduced, and even so the higher altitude that combat is likely to take place are free of clouds and precipitation and very conducive to IRST performance.

In fact if we throw out a favourite line used by F-22 advocates - that publically released figures are conservative and the real numbers relating to these aircraft are much greater - then we could conceivably say that PIRATE could detect an F-22 at much more than 50nm. Remember that a year or two ago Lockheed announced that the IRST system on the F-35 had detected and tracked a ballistic missile launch from over 400nm distance.

The German guy points out that nobody is putting bigger radars on their fighters, as one might expect to mitigate stealth, but everybody is putting IRSTs on their fighters. The Lockheed Cheerleader said that IRSTs aren't much use and pointed to the one on the F-14D as an example. Our German friend them pointed out that the IR/TV sensor on the F-14D was meant as an aid to identification and not for searching/tracking targets. He also stated the one of the F-14 was generations behind PIRATE.

Further to the above, this German guy then asserts that a Meteor armed Typhoon would actually present more of a threat than an AIM-120D armed F-22, as the Meteor's ramjet means it maintains an impulse all the way to the target, and thus arrives at the target with maximum energy. Whereas the AIM-120D is still rocket powered and starts to lose energy as soon as the motor burns out, not forgetting Typhoon also has a towed radar decoy.

Now then, I've read enough peeing contests across various fora to be a bit jaded. I also know that a clinical 1v1 engagement is extremely unlikely to happen in the real world, and of course that F-22 and Eurofighter are going to find themselves on opposite sides of a shooting war anytime soon. However, I did find the argument presented above to be quite interesting, because if correct it pretty much undermines the whole concept of the F-22.

Thoughts?

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From what I heard about the Typhoon vs F22 dogfight the Typhoon held its own and was superior in some ways.

Now of course a Typhoon would NEVER end up in a dogfight with an F22. Mostly for the shear fact that the F22 has the stealth advantage and would blow it out the sky without ever being seen...

The whole point of the F22 is to carry a couple of missiles into the air to be fired BVR at a target acquired via Satlink from another aircraft using it's radar from 50nm behind. I just don't see how an F22 could be spotted by the Typhoon's system given the formers 5th gen stealth.

I could well be wrong!

Ben

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Now of course a Typhoon would NEVER end up in a dogfight with an F22. Mostly for the shear fact that the F22 has the stealth advantage and would blow it out the sky without ever being seen...

The whole point of the F22 is to carry a couple of missiles into the air to be fired BVR at a target acquired via Satlink from another aircraft using it's radar from 50nm behind. I just don't see how an F22 could be spotted by the Typhoon's system given the formers 5th gen stealth.

The crux of the argument is that a state of the art IRST like PIRATE can detect the F-22 at well beyond the range at which an F-22 can launch a missile.

Whether this is true or not I don't know... those who do know certainly wouldn't tell. It's an interesting argument though.

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From what I heard about the Typhoon vs F22 dogfight the Typhoon held its own and was superior in some ways.

Now of course a Typhoon would NEVER end up in a dogfight with an F22. Mostly for the shear fact that the F22 has the stealth advantage and would blow it out the sky without ever being seen...

The whole point of the F22 is to carry a couple of missiles into the air to be fired BVR at a target acquired via Satlink from another aircraft using it's radar from 50nm behind. I just don't see how an F22 could be spotted by the Typhoon's system given the formers 5th gen stealth.

I could well be wrong!

Ben

the op says the typhoon can detect the f22 from 50 miles+ :)

i agree with you about the main idea of using the f22 bvr but that raises the question why not pick the f23 that was both stelathier and faster than the f22

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there is an old saying...put a experienced older pilot in an older fighter and put a newer pilot in a newer fighter and the old guy wins every time. All this new technology is a great advantage to the modern fighter pilot but in the end it is the Mk I brain, eye and basic skills that wins the day. That has not changed since WW I no matter what anyone says. As they found out in Vietnam there will be times when all the options you have left is your guns and a good old dogfight as your prey will be right in front of you and missiles are useless. The above arguements been going on since the early days of the sparrow/sidewinder days and you know it always goes back to the basics. It reminds me of sports fans, you got the coach who always says his team( e.g. Lockheed) is the best in the league while you got the armchair quarter back who thinks he knows more and better ( e.g. the so called experts). The F-22 and the Typhoon are good aircraft along with several other modern fighters but how they would do against Su27/33/T-50/J-10/J-20 fight is another matter. They all have their weaknesses and strengths but all could be equal in overall performance which again will come down to pilot skill.

:coat: my two cents

Edited by hacker
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The F-22 would win. There is no argument. Even in the spurious IRST case, (and that's assuming the F-22 jock hasn't been watching the Typhoon for the last 20 mins via secure real time satellite imagery), what will the Typhoon engage it with at that range?

Besides, the F-22's passive acquisition systems are cued by a lot more than just passive IR sensors. The assumption is always a one v one balls out engagement. In fact, the Raptor would have real time access to far more information via MIDS or even JTIDS. You pitch a Gen 4 fighter against a mature Gen 5 one like the F-22 and you will have an heroic failure.

Edited by PHaTNesS
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But as many have found out, you can have the best, but if the others have second best, and a lot more of them, your going to get it in the end, it's just statistics :winkgrin:

Funny thing is though the Yanks will still have more F-22s than the RAF has Typhoons...

Remember back in the day the RAF was supposed to have 230! Now it's what, a hundred or so? It makes me laugh when people say they're going to make over two and a half thousand F-35s.

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The F-22 would win. There is no argument. Even in the spurious IRST case, (and that's assuming the F-22 jock hasn't been watching the Typhoon for the last 20 mins via secure real time satellite imagery), what will the Typhoon engage it with at that range?

Besides, the F-22's passive acquisition systems are cued by a lot more than just passive IR sensors. The assumption is always a one v one balls out engagement. In fact, the Raptor would have real time access to far more information via MIDS or even JTIDS. You pitch a Gen 4 fighter against a mature Gen 5 one like the F-22 and you will have an heroic failure.

AFAIK F-22 has a two way datalink to other F-22s only, along with a receive only Link 16.

If, if somebody has come up with a means of detecting and tracking aircraft via satellite and then transmitting that to aircraft in real time, we might as well stop bothering with radars, AWACs and indeed stealth altogether! Opening up the discussion a bit, it also means that shooting down the satellite would be a very attractive course of action. Not terribly hard to do either as the satellites can be easily tracked on radar and fly nice predictable orbits.

I don't see what's so spurious about the IRST case? The publically stated detection range of PIRATE for a figher sized target is 50nm. Lockheed have said in tests EODAS on the F-35 has detected a ballistic missile at over 400nm. What's so hard to believe about a state of the art IRST like PIRATE being able to detect a large fighter like the F-22 travelling at supersonic speeds at high altitude, beyond the range of an AIM-120? Let's not forget AIM-120 doesn't have that long a range, and operationally has only hit a little over half the targets it's been launched at - and none of those targets had anything like the kind of electronic warfare kit or self defence suites the likes of Typhoon has.

Right now Typhoon and F-22 have the same missile - but in a few years time Meteor will be a longer range missile with a higher PK than the planned versions of the AIM-120D (unless the Yanks actually press ahead with a ramjet powered AIM-120).

If true does this not pretty much negate much of the advantage (and thus cost) of the F-22? Why is everybody mounting IRSTs on their fighters now? Typhoon, Rafale, Gripen NG, F-35, T-50, etc?

Don't even get me started on the "Gen 5" marketing speak :tapedshut:

Edited by Pielstick
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The Su-27 carried an IRST from day one and no-one got their knickers in a twist about it. If it was such hot stuff why did it take 20 years for a western option to be considered the trump card in a BVR engagement? Simple answer was EID. If your radar range is up to 80+nm, you get an advantage over your opponent whether he knows you're there or not.

IRST is a passive sensor, which means its value is in the stealth environment. If a radar equipped stealth fighter has already EID'd you 30 miles ago, you're locked on and already in the disadvantageous position.

Anyway, as the man said, it's all academic, unless the US and Saudi Arabia ever get into a ruck...!

Edited by PHaTNesS
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I should just start to say that I'm actually not the biggest fan of either fighter. I've been pretty hard on the F-22 in the past because of its significant development and operational issues, as well as incredibly high cost. The Eurofighter is no better in this regards. Its an excellent point defence fighter, but its heavily limited by its extreme costs and real limitations in multi-role capability.

The first thing is several of the reports concerning the F-22 vs Luftwaffe Eurofighters training at Eielson were highly skewed towards the Eurofighter. This article lays out "story behind the story" or historiography.

http://elementsofpower.blogspot.ca/2012/07/f-22-journalism-vs-punk-journalism.html

With that out of the way... Is IRST going to be a game-changer? Depends, but probably not.

The problem with these sort of comparisons is that they don't really encapsulate how a capability would fight in a war. Even these training engagements aren't really indicative of warfighting in general because they are designed to expose pilots to very specific situations in order develop their experience. At Redflag Eurofighters had no tanks or missiles, and were training close in maneuvering.... not exactly a situation that pilots would see in the field.

One of the biggest advantages that the US military has developed over the past 20 years is a truly networked fighter capability. It goes beyond Link16, and to distributed networking of large amounts of Sensor data. First it was AWACS to fighter, now its fighter to fighter. The Rollout of the F-35 and planned upgrades to the F-22 will continue to build on this network. Battlefield networking is the likely the That, combined with the widespread application of low observable technology is the two key facets of the next generation of allied air superiority for the next two decades.

That's not to say that the Eurofighter is deficient in this regards, however it does not have the same maturity both on the front and the back end. I'll get to that at the end of this post.

AFAIK F-22 has a two way datalink to other F-22s only, along with a receive only Link 16.

While it has been cancelled, the F-22 will likely be retrofitted with the Harris Corp Multifunction Advanced Data Link when F-35 starts to enter service.

If, if somebody has come up with a means of detecting and tracking aircraft via satellite and then transmitting that to aircraft in real time, we might as well stop bothering with radars, AWACs and indeed stealth altogether! Opening up the discussion a bit, it also means that shooting down the satellite would be a very attractive course of action. Not terribly hard to do either as the satellites can be easily tracked on radar and fly nice predictable orbits.

Ahhh, its much more difficult than it seems. Most military satellites are actually incorporate a fair level of low observable features, and do not fly nice predictable orbits. GPS is the only exception, but the US DoD's space network will be very difficult to knock out of the sky.

I don't see what's so spurious about the IRST case? The publically stated detection range of PIRATE for a figher sized target is 50nm. Lockheed have said in tests EODAS on the F-35 has detected a ballistic missile at over 400nm. What's so hard to believe about a state of the art IRST like PIRATE being able to detect a large fighter like the F-22 travelling at supersonic speeds at high altitude, beyond the range of an AIM-120? Let's not forget AIM-120 doesn't have that long a range, and operationally has only hit a little over half the targets it's been launched at - and none of those targets had anything like the kind of electronic warfare kit or self defence suites the likes of Typhoon has.

The problem with this line or argument is that it basically says "well the F-22 doesn't have IRST so it can't compete with the Eurofighter." Well the reality is that the F-22 wouldn't fight like the Eurofighter because its designed to fight in a different way. Its like putting a MMA fighter in a Boxing match against a boxer and forcing him to fight by the rules. However if you put the two in a no-rules cage match, well the Boxer might be at a severe disadvantage.

Its not well publicized but way that the F-22 fights is significantly different from how 4th gen aircraft operates. Rather than close fighting formations, LPI/LPD networking allows them to operate loosely over a wide battlespace, collectively using passive and selective use of active systems to detect and track hostile forces. Its difficult to make a comparison with other major

Probably the best indicator of the difference in the two approaches can be seen today in regards to the USMC. They are attempting a very ambitious attempt to bring their F-35B fleet online in the next year or so. The Marines have realized just how differently this new generation of fighters operate and its potential. Its why right now the USMC is working hard to accumulate the collective knowledge of the F-22 fleet in an attempt to incorporate those lessons into their upcoming conversion.

I should note that I've been pretty hard on the F-22 in the past due to their really significant

Does the F-22 lose some flexibility without IRST? Absolutely. But the F-22's approach to undertaking air superiority is extremely lethal and should operate just fine in an operational setting.

Don't even get me started on the "Gen 5" marketing speak :tapedshut:

I'm sorry, but it you believe its a "marketing" ploy, you're quite mistaken. As far back as 2000 the RAND corporation identified fighters like the F-22 and JSF as belonging to a new, fifth era of fighter aircraft. The other generations included: post war, subsonic, supersonic, supersonic and stealth. Even without stealth, the level of networking integration is such that these fighters don't really operate in the same way as their earlier brethren. While 4++ generation aircraft have been retrofitted to some degree with these technologies; they are still limited in this regards. One of the key parts of this is the power of the computing architecture on these aircraft. The F-22 and F-35 utilize data buses that are 10+times faster than the Mil-Std-1553 ones on the Eurofighter and its ilk. With their AESA radars and battlefield networks, the aircraft are able to process far more information from their and other vehicles' sensors, and give their pilots a much better

Of the 4th generation aircraft, only the F/A-18E/F really comes close in this regards. This is largely due to the investments made by the U.S. navy to obtain such a capability.

Edited by -Neu-
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I'm not sure if you gents are getting what I'm trying to say.

The whole point of F-22 is to detect the enemy and get a shot off without being detected. The German guy I mentioned in the first post maintains this is brought into question by the existence of IRST systems that should be able to detect the F-22 at 50+nm. I'm not talking about radar, networking or whatever.

It's simply pointing out the possibility that a modern IRST equipped fighter could quite conceivably detect an F-22 beyond the range at which an F-22 can take a shot.

On the subject of the IRST on the Su-27 and MiG-29 - these were 1970's Soviet technology. Not representative of what can be done nowadays.

On the subject of "5th Gen" speak... nobody used these terms before F-22. They were invented to sell an extremely expensive piece of kit to politicians and taxpayers. I'd be very careful about quoting think tanks - especially one set up by an aircraft manufacturer - as they are essentially lobby groups. There are entire companies and entire industries in the US that exist for the sole purpose of getting the US Government to buy lots of very expensive bits of military hardware. It's one of the reasons they go potty over the Affordable Care Act yet nobody bats an eyelid over the government spending $10bn to develop a class of just three Zumwalt destroyers.

As for F-22's computer architecture, my understanding is it's pretty ancient by computing standards. The only fighter which has anything like modern computing power availalble is the F-35. There are plans to retrofit the F-35's hardware and architecture to the F-22, but this hasn't happened yet and when it does it's going to cost a lot of money. In fact I also understand that Tranche 3 Typhoons are coming off the production line with a more advanced computer architecture than that currently fitted to F-22 - something that is supposed to allow them to receive more advanced sensors and avionics as they become available.

Again, I'm not trying to infer that F-22 is rubbish or that Typhoon is better. I'm talking about the perhaps quite real possibility that one of the headline capabilities of the F-22 is possibly brought into doubt by the existence of modern IRST.

Edited by Pielstick
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The German guy however is omitting one important aspect: even assuming that the IRST has detected the F-22 (a type that not only has a low radar cross-section but also a lower IR trace than Others), what is the Typhoon pilot going to do ? He will have to launch a missile against a target for which he knows some information but not all as IRST can not detect range accurately. At that point it's all in the hands of the missile own radar, that however will have a very hard time locking onto a stealthy target that far away. Mid-course update would help solving the problem, but this is usually supplied by the shooter's radar and if this can't see the target it can't send updates. A 2-way datalink with the missile will solve the problem, but the datalink can be jammed.

The German guy also assumes that the F-22 will never use its own radar, presumably in order to maintain stealthiness... however F-22s use the radar and their radar have a detection range a but longer than the IRTS.. not to mention the various information available to F-22 pilots that NEU mentioned.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying IRTS are useless, on the contrary I firmly believe they are a very useful addition to every fighter Aircraft. It's just that the IRST is a tool among many others and not a silver bullet that would make anything else obsolete

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Fair enough Giorgio, but what IR reduction does F-22 have? As far as I can tell it has two huge engines that must throw out a lot of nice hot exhaust gas (compare the nozzles on the F-22 to the shielded ones on the YF-23). What's more an F-22 doing M1.5 is also going to receive quite a bit of frictional heating to the airframe. Don't forget the nice big APG-77 which throws out a peak power of 12kW - the heat generated there has to go somewhere... In such a case wouldn't the F-22 present a rather nice IR target for a capable IRST?

PIRATE is stated as having passive ranging, exactly how this is achieved and how accurate it is, is of course the kind of stuff that remains classified. There's also no reason why Typhoon can't datalink with other platforms to get a better idea of the F-22's position - especially if it can datalink with other PIRATE equipped Typhoons in which case it becomes a very simple triangulation. What's more if the Typhoon could detect an F-22 via it's IRST then it's almost certain the F-22 is slap bang in the middle of Meteor's engagement envelope. Both Meteor and AIM-120D have two-way datalinks, which should be more difficult to jam than the current AIM-120A/B/C datalink which piggy-backs onto the aircraft's radar signal.

As for F-22 using its own radar, again I totally agree. The point however, is that by the time the F-22 is within range to take an AIM-120 shot it should, theoretically at least, be within the detection range of PIRATE, and again in theory at least, the Typhoon pilot should know he's there and be able to take action. Don't forget that even the longer range AIM-120D still just has a traditional rocket motor and the missile will begin to lose energy the moment the motor burns out. From that moment the PK starts to drop off. Throw in jamming and towed radar decoys and the odds for the missile hitting become even less. In fact if we're going to start throwing around stuff like real time satellite imagery then let's also throw in active cancellation which an advanced AESA radar should be capable of. Now consider that of all the fighters currently in service Typhoon is said to be an absolute monster when it comes to kinematics and its ability to manoeuvre whilst retaining huge amounts of energy. That radar guided AIM-120D arriving with rapidly depleting energy is in a lot of trouble now.

Remember the Serbian pilot who managed to evade three AIM-120s before being hit by the fourth. He was flying a Monkey Model MiG-29 9.12 with no radar or jamming equipment.

It was mentioned above that the F-22 will fly widely spaced formations and share radar/sensor data. Pretty much any modern fighter can do that. It's been postulated that this could even be one way to mitigate low observable aircraft - a very widely spaced formation of fighters means that the low observable aircraft won't be presenting his most favourable radar aspect to every fighter in the enemy formation, potentially allowing them to detect him and share that data with the rest of the formation. If we want to talk about Typhoon in particular, if/when it gets CAPTOR-E it will be one of the largest AESA arrays in service, so if anybody's got a hope in hell's chance of detecting an F-22 it should be Typhoon.

I'll admit my topic title was a poor choice - I didn't mean to specifically pit Typhoon against F-22. I should have perhaps said F-22 vs Modern IRST Equipped Fighter. It's interesting to note that pretty much everybody is putting an IRST on their fighters now. There must be a very good reason for that.

Edited by Pielstick
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I'm not sure if you gents are getting what I'm trying to say.

The whole point of F-22 is to detect the enemy and get a shot off without being detected. The German guy I mentioned in the first post maintains this is brought into question by the existence of IRST systems that should be able to detect the F-22 at 50+nm. I'm not talking about radar, networking or whatever.

It's simply pointing out the possibility that a modern IRST equipped fighter could quite conceivably detect an F-22 beyond the range at which an F-22 can take a shot.

From what I know of current IRST technology (I'm not entirely familiar with PIRATE specifically), I think he's playing up their abilities. While the detection range may be stated to be 50nm, in reality its likely to be much, shorter in operational settings. Atmospheric attenuation still exists, there is no magic window that allows you to go beyond bad weather. Moreover as I mentioned earlier, non-stealthy aircraft would usually be detected far before 50nm, through AWACS or Onboard sensors... meaning it would be able maneuver into a better position.

Where the F-22 would be deficient is against another low observable aircraft, like the F-35, especially given that aircraft has an IRST sensor.

On the subject of the IRST on the Su-27 and MiG-29 - these were 1970's Soviet technology. Not representative of what can be done nowadays.

On the subject of "5th Gen" speak... nobody used these terms before F-22. They were invented to sell an extremely expensive piece of kit to politicians and taxpayers. I'd be very careful about quoting think tanks - especially one set up by an aircraft manufacturer - as they are essentially lobby groups. There are entire companies and entire industries in the US that exist for the sole purpose of getting the US Government to buy lots of very expensive bits of military hardware. It's one of the reasons they go potty over the Affordable Care Act yet nobody bats an eyelid over the government spending $10bn to develop a class of just three Zumwalt destroyers.

Uhh, I think that's a completely inaccurate view of that organization, both about its aim and nature. First off, RAND's work is based on quantitative, scientific approaches towards defence and government issues. It is nonpartisan: I don't think many would disagree that RAND likely one of the, if not the most impartial think tank in the United States.

RAND's work has been pretty critical of various programs: The F-22 has been singled out on a number of occasions for its development and management challenges (and thoroughly studied.) This is a comparison between the Super Hornet and F-22 programs that emphasizes that.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG276.html

As for your views on 5th gen being purely a marketing term, I think that's not correct. The level of capabilities offer by aircraft like the F-22 and F-35 just are not available on any other fighter. Only the Super Hornet comes close, but without low observable technologies which is pretty critical for allowing it to out maneuver potential adversaries.

To take a historical comparison, I think your argument is akin to saying in 1909 that the term "Dreadnought" is purely a marketing term to drum up political support for the 1909 eight ship plan... when in reality the HMS Dreadnought was a major advancement over "pre-dreadnought" designs.

As for F-22's computer architecture, my understanding is it's pretty ancient by computing standards. The only fighter which has anything like modern computing power availalble is the F-35. There are plans to retrofit the F-35's hardware and architecture to the F-22, but this hasn't happened yet and when it does it's going to cost a lot of money. In fact I also understand that Tranche 3 Typhoons are coming off the production line with a more advanced computer architecture than that currently fitted to F-22 - something that is supposed to allow them to receive more advanced sensors and avionics as they become available.

Aspects of the F-22's architecture are old, however the newer builds have upgraded power-pc processors, and there has been significant upgrades to its capability since (and bigger ones planned for the future). Moreover the AFAIK Tranche Three still has Stanag databuses, which is a key limiting factor. The F-22 and F-35 utilize the IEEE 1394b FireWire that allow for much more data to be passed through. I could be wrong about whether the Eurofighter still use the STANAG, but its a major limiting factor.

Again, I'm not trying to infer that F-22 is rubbish or that Typhoon is better. I'm talking about the perhaps quite real possibility that one of the headline capabilities of the F-22 is possibly brought into doubt by the existence of modern IRST.

I think there is always the possibility that anybody can shoot down an F-22, it all depends on the scenario. However the level of development and investment into the entire range of DoD's military capabilities basically makes it difficult for any potential adversary to effectively contest.

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Fair enough Giorgio, but what IR reduction does F-22 have? As far as I can tell it has two huge engines that must throw out a lot of nice hot exhaust gas (compare the nozzles on the F-22 to the shielded ones on the YF-23). What's more an F-22 doing M1.5 is also going to receive quite a bit of frictional heating to the airframe. Don't forget the nice big APG-77 which throws out a peak power of 12kW - the heat generated there has to go somewhere... In such a case wouldn't the F-22 present a rather nice IR target for a capable IRST?

No, it has very significant IR reduction. There is a lot of air mixing pre-exhaust, the exhausts are blocked by the Tail/body), and the exhaust is buried a bit inside the body (rather than protruding out the rear). Also the F-22 won't be plugging holes in the sky at Mach 1.5... its likely to be flying around at a more leisurely .8 or so. There are IR reduction features along the airframe, including cooling systems.

PIRATE is stated as having passive ranging, exactly how this is achieved and how accurate it is, is of course the kind of stuff that remains classified. There's also no reason why Typhoon can't datalink with other platforms to get a better idea of the F-22's position - especially if it can datalink with other PIRATE equipped Typhoons in which case it becomes a very simple triangulation. What's more if the Typhoon could detect an F-22 via it's IRST then it's almost certain the F-22 is slap bang in the middle of Meteor's engagement envelope. Both Meteor and AIM-120D have two-way datalinks, which should be more difficult to jam than the current AIM-120A/B/C datalink which piggy-backs onto the aircraft's radar signal.

Uhhh, the AIM-120D has a range of 90NM+, beyond the optimistic 80 cited by your german source. And if the Eurofighter is put on the defensive without actually knowing where their opponent is, then it makes it much more difficult to actually "win" an engagement. You're constantly trying to dodge missiles, and that doesnt help at actually aiming your own missiles.

As for F-22 using its own radar, again I totally agree. The point however, is that by the time the F-22 is within range to take an AIM-120 shot it should, theoretically at least, be within the detection range of PIRATE, and again in theory at least, the Typhoon pilot should know he's there and be able to take action. Don't forget that even the longer range AIM-120D still just has a traditional rocket motor and the missile will begin to lose energy the moment the motor burns out. From that moment the PK starts to drop off. Throw in jamming and towed radar decoys and the odds for the missile hitting become even less. In fact if we're going to start throwing around stuff like real time satellite imagery then let's also throw in active cancellation which an advanced AESA radar should be capable of. Now consider that of all the fighters currently in service Typhoon is said to be an absolute monster when it comes to kinematics and its ability to manoeuvre whilst retaining huge amounts of energy. That radar guided AIM-120D arriving with rapidly depleting energy is in a lot of trouble now.

Yeah but the Eurofighter will still be on the defensive, which means that the F-22 can follow up with repeated attacks.

Remember the Serbian pilot who managed to evade three AIM-120s before being hit by the fourth. He was flying a Monkey Model MiG-29 9.12 with no radar or jamming equipment.

Generally, the Pk of the AIM-120 is about .5 to .6 based on open sources on a total of 17 actual launches. However there is a lot of discussion that there has been significant improvements in missile accuracy due to advances in technology. I believe the incident you're referring to involved AIM-120As, and I'm not sure if they actually fired four.

It was mentioned above that the F-22 will fly widely spaced formations and share radar/sensor data. Pretty much any modern fighter can do that. It's been postulated that this could even be one way to mitigate low observable aircraft - a very widely spaced formation of fighters means that the low observable aircraft won't be presenting his most favourable radar aspect to every fighter in the enemy formation, potentially allowing them to detect him and share that data with the rest of the formation. If we want to talk about Typhoon in particular, if/when it gets CAPTOR-E it will be one of the largest AESA arrays in service, so if anybody's got a hope in hell's chance of detecting an F-22 it should be Typhoon.

Ah the difference between MIDS and MADL in their ability to be detected and the amount of data that can be sent. I don't really have the time to go into it, but in general the F-35 and F-22 can do distributed formations in a way that other aircraft can't.

I'll admit my topic title was a poor choice - I didn't mean to specifically pit Typhoon against F-22. I should have perhaps said F-22 vs Modern IRST Equipped Fighter. It's interesting to note that pretty much everybody is putting an IRST on their fighters now. There must be a very good reason for that.

Its a relatively cheap upgrade, particularly if you're not that concerned about low observability. If you are, then its much more difficult to incorporate, which was why it was deleted from the F-22 back during the evaluation phase.

Edited by -Neu-
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To be honest I don't know a lot about infra red attenuation in the atmosphere, but the German guy reckons there are two wavelenghts where attenuation is reduced and these are "atmospheric windows". I'd have to read up on it to get a better idea though.

If EODAS on F-35 can detect a ballistic missile at over 400 miles then I don't see why PIRATE can't detect a fighter at 50 miles. The bad weather and atmospherics have been raised before, and again the counter point is you don't get much in the way of cloud or rain at the stratosphere where these aircraft would be operating.

I absolutely stand behind my belief that "5th gen" is a marketing term. The term itself was never used until F-22 came along. The very term itself infers that everything else is markedly inferior or obsolete - which of course is very helpful when you are trying to convice politicians and tax payers to cough up astronomical sums of money for the aircraft.

Let me give you an excellent example of how marketing terms get thrown around and abused by people trying to sell very expensive aeroplanes. Early on in the F-22 days Lockheed and the DoD decided the term "supercruise" could only be applied to aircraft that could sustain flight at M1.5 without the need for reheat. Perhaps it was a coincidence that by this definition F-22 was therefore the only fighter that could "supercruise"? Indeed supercruise became one of the features of our new "5th gen". Fast forward a few years when when we don't need to sell any more F-22s but we do need to seel the F-35. Now that's also got the 5th gen label and so therefore must be able to supercruise. Wait a minute, it can't do M1.5 without reheat. It can only maintain a M1.2 dash with a little bit of reheat. And so it was the definition of supercruise was changed so it could be applied to the F-35. Did I mention that F-35 has the kinematic performance of an F-4? What gen is the F-4? Well nobody used the rather arbitrary generation system to classify fighters when the F-4 was around so let's retrospectively call it 3rd gen. So we've got a 5th gen F-35 with the transsonic acceleration and sustained turn performance of a 3rd gen aircraft. We need to sell lots of them though so let's keep calling it 5th gen because that sounds good.

See what I'm getting at?

If F-22 is of a new generation, distinct and superior to all that has gone before... why does it not have an IRST? Why does it not have a helmet mounted display/sight/cueing? Why does it not have a HOBS missile? Why is its primary weapon a rather old missile that has enjoyed rather mediocre success in real shooting wars? The apparent design philosophy behind the F-22 was to make a fighter that could move undetected in contested airspace and get the first look, first shot and first kill, all BVR. That's fair enough but it all kind of comes apart when you see that BVR aerial combat technology has consistently failed to deliver on its promises - the AIM-120 itself only having hit a little more than 50% of its targets when fired for real. in 1999 a Serbian pilot flying a 1980's era export grade 9.12 MiG-29 with no functioning radar, RWR, jamming or countermeasures managed to evade THREE AIM-120s before he was hit by the fourth one. How well would an AIM-120 fare against an aircraft with a defensive suite in the same class as DASS or SPECTRA? As I outlined above, the key to getting a missile to actually successfully intercept its target is in ensuring it gets there with sufficient energy to make the intercept. This is the weak point of the AIM-120, including the latest AIM-120D, and the strength of a missile like Meteor. Whilst this may not present much of a problem if you're trying to shoot down a large aircraft like a bomber or transport, against a fighter target, particularly with high energy manoeuvre characteristics like Typhoon, it becomes a real problem.

So it's not too much of a stretch to say that maybe, the F-22's proponents are making the very same mistakes which were made with the F-4 fifty years ago - putting too much faith in BVR technology. In which case F-22 will find itself going toe to toe with far cheaper and more numerous aircraft and most of its qualitative superiority is lost, especially when you take into account F-22's lack of helmet cueing and HOBS missile.

Ah, but the F-22 was never intended to go WVR I hear you say! In which case then why has it got a gun? Why did the USAF/DOD select the more agile YF-22 instead of the faster and more stealthy YF-23?

I think the F-22 is an excellent fighter, but I don't buy the marketing and PR hype that surrounds it. Think about it for a second... given it's the most expensive fighter to ever be produced, the astronomical sums of money spent on it and political controversy it has generated, would it ever be acceptable or indeed permitted to be presented as anything less than an all-conquering death machine with big rays of instant-death "I WIN!" awesomeness coming out of its bum?

Consider for a second the mind boggling amount of money the Americans spend on defence, the massive interests that are involved in keeping that huge flow of money going into American defence firms and you possibly begin to see what is perhaps the real motivation behind the likes of F-22, F-35, DDG-1000, SSN-21, etc. This is of course the country that doesn't bat an eyelid at spending $682 billion on defence in 2013 - 39% of the entire world's defence spending, the same as the next eleven biggest defence spending countries combined - yet goes absolutely potty when someone suggests a government subsidised universal healthcare programme. However, that would be erring into politics, which is verboten here :shutup:

Edited by Pielstick
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I'll have to take your word on F-22's IR reduction measures, but I'm far from convinced.

90nm+ for an AIM-120D would be under ideal conditions and a non-manoeuvring target. I suspect the PK against a manoeuvring target running with a modern defensive suite at this range is rather poor.

BTW, forgot to tell you that I absolutely agree with your comments above about Typhoon being very expensive and a poor multi role choice. I'd go further and say the failure of the partner nations to get off their backsides and develop Typhoon to meet its potential in a timely manner has almost certainly cost it several very lucrative export orders, and has perhaps left it as something of a white elephant. Then again I'm not much of a fan of Rafale or Super Hornet either.

At the moment I'm quite liking the Gripen, and the Gripen NG in particular. I was most impressed to read that the eight Gripens sent by the Swedish AF to support operations in Libya in 2011 required only 35 groundcrew. Likewise when the Czechs sent their Gripens to do the NATO Baltic air policing they only needed something like 65 support staff, yet when the Germans sent their Typhoons they needed 200 support staff. It would seem that if you want bang for your defence buck then Gripen NG is going to be hard to beat.

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If EODAS on F-35 can detect a ballistic missile at over 400 miles then I don't see why PIRATE can't detect a fighter at 50 miles. The bad weather and atmospherics have been raised before, and again the counter point is you don't get much in the way of cloud or rain at the stratosphere where these aircraft would be operating.

Ballistic missiles have a huge IR signature, so much that IR detection has always played a large part in the design of antimissile systems.

Stealth fighters with shielded exhausts and other cooling devices have a much lower IR signature.

Said that, it's true that IRST technology has evolved and today a range of 50 nm is not something strange. Of course it's not necessarily said that every time the system will be able to exploit all its potential, but the same is true of any detection device.

If F-22 is of a new generation, distinct and superior to all that has gone before... why does it not have an IRST? Why does it not have a helmet mounted display/sight/cueing? Why does it not have a HOBS missile? Why is its primary weapon a rather old missile that has enjoyed rather mediocre success in real shooting wars? The apparent design philosophy behind the F-22 was to make a fighter that could move undetected in contested airspace and get the first look, first shot and first kill, all BVR. That's fair enough but you see it all kind of comes apart when you see that BVR aerial combat technology has consistently failed to deliver on its promises - the AIM-120 itself only having hit a little more than 50% of its targets when fired for real. in 1999 a Serbian pilot flying a 1980's era export grade 9.12 MiG-29 with no functioning radar, RWR, jamming or countermeasures managed to evade THREE AIM-120s before he was hit by the fourth one. How well would an AIM-120 fare against an aircraft with a defensive suite in the same class as DASS or SPECTRA? As I outlined above, the key to getting a missile to actually successfully intercept its target is in ensuring it gets there with sufficient energy to make the intercept. This is the weak point of the AIM-120, including the latest AIM-120D, and the strength of a missile like Meteor. Whilst this may not present much of a problem if you're trying to shoot down a large aircraft like a bomber or transport, against a fighter target, particularly with high energy manoeuvre characteristics like Typhoon, it becomes a real problem.

BVR technology has failed so much that most aircrafts shot down from GW1 onward have been shot down in BVR combat and today this is the way everybody is going. If BVR is so overrated, what's the point of developing the Meteor ?

Speaking about the Yugoslav MiG-29, we should not forget that other aircrafts were shot down by single missiles in the same war, so a single incident is not really conclusive about the quality of the missiles. In any case, a pk of 0.5 in real engagements is not bad. Real war is not an exercise and there are plenty of factors that contribute to lower the pk in real combat.

And more: the AIM-120A was a weapon based on 1980's technology, was the best back then but now it's been superceded by other variants. It can be debated if the latest variants are as good as other more recent missiles, but this is beyond the scope of this thread.

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I agree a ballistic missile has a huge IR signature, but remember it was 400nm distant. If you want to break it down to horribly simple and apply the inverse square law, the ballistic missile at 400 miles is 8 times more distant than the fighter at 50 miles. That means the IRST would be getting 1/64 or a bit over 1.5% of the IR radiation it would be getting if the ballistic missile were at 50 miles. That doesn't take into account the atmospheric attenuation which should mean even less of that IR radiation would make it from the ballistic missile to the IRST. As you say, 50nm for a fighter sized subsonic target is not at all unreasonable.

With regards to BVR, how many aircraft have actually been shot down in aerial combat since GW1? Definitely not enough to conclude that BVR technology has finally delivered, especially when we consider the types and vintage of aircraft shot down. One, or in this case a dozen or so swallows does not a summer make.

Again, I wonder what the PK of the latest AMRAAM is when launched at near maximum range against a target equipped with a modern defensive suite like DASS or SPECTRA, and with the kind of kinematic performance offered by the likes of Typhoon? Probably not as good as the Raytheon salesman would like us to believe.

Edited by Pielstick
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On the subject of using an IRST to detect F-22, check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLzD1SCk__g

Note how little difference there is between the Typhoon, F-16 and F-22. Also note the massive heat plume when the F-22 uses its reheat.

Now have a read of this, as it explains fairly well what I've been trying to say all along:

http://theboresight.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/airborne-infrared-and-supersonic.html

Edited by Pielstick
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With regards to BVR, how many aircraft have actually been shot down in aerial combat since GW1? Definitely not enough to conclude that BVR technology has finally delivered, especially when we consider the types and vintage of aircraft shot down. One, or in this case a dozen or so swallows does not a summer make.

The MiG-29 in the early '90s was not really a "vintage type" ! I mean, if shooting down a MiG-29 in 1995 is going against vintage aircrafts, what should we say about the Falklands ? In 1982 the Sea Harriers were fighting against aircrafts that had entered services in the '50s and early '60s, most of them without even a radar, yet the Falklands are invariably described as a lesson in air combat... sounds a bit strange to me !

On the subject of using an IRST to detect F-22, check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLzD1SCk__g

Note how little difference there is between the Typhoon, F-16 and F-22. Also note the massive heat plume when the F-22 uses its reheat.

Now have a read of this, as it explains fairly well what I've been trying to say all along:

http://theboresight.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/airborne-infrared-and-supersonic.html

Sorry but that blog is so full of errors that it's not worth much IMHO.

For a starter, the F-14/F-15 comparison never worked like that. The Phoenix was a missile that everybody knew was not well suited to fighter-to-fighter combat. Sure it seems to have done decently in the Iran-Iraq war, but for the USN it was mainly a bomber destroyer. A Phoenix would have hard a very hard time agasint an F-15 (and they had a hard time every time they were used in combat against most targets...) and the F-14 was expected to use the AIM-120. This was in the end never introduced for a number of mainly budgetary reasons.

.

The MiG-25s routinely tracked the SR-71s and this is well known, but it was a GCI exercise done against targets that followed a preplanned route that never changed for a number of reasons (mainly the need to pass within certain corridors to avoid overflying other countries). In interviews with MiG pilots they told how they were guided to a certain point in the sky knowing where they had to look for the Blackbird and they usually found them there. A bit different from the claims made in that blog.

It is true that the Soviets always invested a lot in IR sensors for both aircrafts and missiles and this because IR sensors can be very useful to detect certain types of target at very high level. One of these was back in the Cold War day a real problem: recce balloons !

The CIA launched thousands of balloons over the Soviet Unions and these were very difficult targets. Of course not much for their speed but for the very high ceilings they flew at and because they had an extremely small radar signature. At the same time, they reflected a lot of solar radiation and therefore were good targets for IRST systems and IR guided missiles.

As I said before, IRST are extremely useful tools and every fighter should have one. They can be emploied effectively in many scenarios and have today reached some extremely high performances. At the same time however stating that a IRST equipped aircraft that can spot a stealth fighter at 50 nm has an advantage over the same stealth fighter when this can spot the opponent at 150 nm without being seen, is pushing things a bit too much.

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Maybe it's your monitor, but the heat splash from the F-22 was significantly less than the other two until the burners went on.

I'd be very careful about quoting think tanks - especially one set up by an aircraft manufacturer - as they are essentially lobby groups.

And I'd be very careful about quoting from internet blogs that were set up specifically to trash US defence developments and act as a cheerleader for European defence interests.

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