just a good measure of perspective and experience to draw from.
I'm interested to know exactly where you have generated your perspective and experience, because if you're as knowledgeable about air-to-air combat as you seem to present yourself you have some very surprising opinions on the subject.
Mine is from 17 years as a USAF officer with two tours as an F-15E pilot, one tour as a maintenance officer, one tour as a fighter lead-in instructor, one tour as an SUPT instructor, and one tour in Afghanistan flying the MC-12. I've flown combat in the "Shock and Awe" phase of the Iraq invasion against all kinds of legacy SAMs and AAA, and have fought against the Raptor directly in the Eagle. I think I have a pretty good background from which to speak on this topic, short of actually being a Raptor pilot at the present time.
Name an operator of the Flanker that you are scared of, or even respect as an adversary. Honestly. Is a Viper in the hands of a Pakistani the same as a Viper in the hands of a Zoomie? An Eagle in the hands of a Saudi the same as one with our guys in it? We know the answer to that...
Suggest you read up on the first two Cope India exercises as an education in underestimating your enemy based on your own misplaced bravado. You never, never assume that your opponent is an idiot. In fact, quite the opposite. I don't think all that much of the Iraqi Air Force on paper, but that certainly isn't an opinion that you'd find anyone who actually flew against them expressing. Their relative incompetence compared to US forces didn't keep a number of US pilots from going home in flag-draped caskets.
There are many formidable operators of Flankers. China, Russia, and India are the top three that I'd be concerned about. Let's not forget that there are lots of Russian mercenaries who are willing to -- and have -- sold their skills and experience to many countries around the world. Think those were actually Ethiopians and Eritreans flying in that air war a decade ago?
Again, doesn't necessarily matter who is flying 'em today. It matters who might be flying them in the next decade or two -- because it's going to be that long until we have a legitimate fleetwide replacement for the Eagle and Viper.
That's just one component of survival in modern warfare, though. We can talk about the IADS in a minute here.
Anything that IS being kept super secret squirrel renders you, the pilot, obsolete, anyways, and that's just the way things are going. We live in a new day and age.
Obviously we cannot even remotely touch what is classified and awesome about the Raptor, but I will say at a minimum that it has nothing to do with rendering the pilot obsolete.
We aren't going to war with China. They own us. Like all of our debt own us. And all of our manufacturing. And the majority of industry. They'll default us, and it's game over. Russia? Pakistan? N. Korea? We would have done it already. Who is it? Iran? It won't be because they pose a real threat to yours or my freedom.
We have no clearly identified enemies because they are groups and factions, not nations and states. We have the ability to deal with them with our current assets.
Nobody predicted we'd be fighting a decade-long war in Afghanistan, either. The annals of history are littered with people who said, "this will never happen" and were wrong. Nobody was particularly worried on December 6, 1941, either.
It's our purpose, our entire mission as a military to be in a position to handle these threats. It's the civilian leadership's mission to avoid needing to use them.
Yes, we are well equipped to deal with "groups and factions". We are incredibly ill-equipped to deal with peer states for the next two-three decades, especially as the US "empire" declines and others, especially in Asia, emerge.
If the argument is that we needs them to counteract SAMs, why are packages built around Growlers and CJ's?
It's not that Raptor is needed to "counteract" SAMs. It's that it's needed to SURVIVE operating in a double-digit IADS. If you don't understand the discussion on this level, we may as well not go any further, because we are straying into sensitive territory with respect to both friendly and enemy capes.
Short version: HARM shooters and jammers aren't gonna cut it if we care about pilots surviving and actually defeating that kind of IADS. Vipers and Eagles don't stand a chance, regardless of who they are supported by.
As an aside, do you actually have any technical knowledge of exactly what and how the Prowler, Growler, and Viper perform the SEAD mission, and compared to the capabilities and vulnerabilities of both legacy SAMs and the double-digit SAMs?
The F-22 went into service in 2005. Why was it sidelined for Iraq?
What air-to-air combat was there for Raptor to participate in Iraq between 2005 and 2011? What IADS was there for it to operate in?
This is why I said, "use a hammer to pound a nail."
By 2005, Iraq was a pure CAS war, and an air-to-air fighter had no business to conduct there. To put it in perspective, during the opening shots of OIF in 2003, after the first 3 or 4 weeks of the war, the leadership sent all of the F-15Cs home because they were serving no function and just "taking up gas".
Does the Raptor have a basic air-to-ground capability? Yes...but then again, so does the F-15C. Neither had a place at a time in a war which required both equipment that was of use in a CAS environment, but also crews who were well trained and experienced in CAS.
What place do you feel that Raptor would have had in the war? Why aren't you making the same complaints about B-2s -- outside of a few missions during Shock And Awe, they weren't being used over there either? What about the Minuteman III -- they were just sitting there in their silos being useless, right?
We built the F-22 to keep Lockheed in business, and to maintain a technology baseline. That's really my opinion, and the above illustrates why I think what I do.
Unfortunately, I think that it shows a fundamental lack of understanding about current friendly and threat capabilities on your part....but that's just
my opinion.
