Rafale kills F-22....

I have scored kills on nearly every US fighter in the inventory with a T-38 armed with heat and gun only. Tons of other T-38 IPs acting as Bandits have done the same.

That statistic is as meaningful as film showing a Rafale kill of a Raptor.

In other words, it is meaningless. Anyone can get a lucky shot on anyone else at just about any time. Me saying I've killed all these Eagles and Hornets and Vipers with the T-38 omits the fact that in the other 69 engagements against those fighters I got my ass handed to me by the actual fighter....it omits mentioning that in the engagements I'm cherry-picking to talk about, I won, and in the other majority of fights, I lost.

If we had a steady stream of stories about the Raptor being regularly annihilated in blue-v-blue full up tactical engagements, I'd be concerned. One piece of film....means exactly jack squat.
 
SteveCostello said:
Just out of curiosity, how relevant is 'dogfighting' any more? NOT saying I don't love it, and think that it is full of more awesome than can be comprehended, but just considering the technology available today (i.e., fire-and-forget, etc.), how likely is it that a pilot would do any actual dogfighting?
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The short version is: yes, it is entirely still relevant, and even given current surveillance and missile technology, it is very likely that in a real major theater war the "fog and friction" of war will result in visual maneuvering engagements. Even when we practice BVR air-to-air, most of the time it ends in some kind of visual merge and 1-v-1 maneuvering.

This is something I recently posted on another forum in a thread discussing the Su-35, and a similar statement/question saying that "technology" had rendered dogfighting obsolete:
I think there is this thought that missiles and radars and the like are magic pieces of equipment, that always work perfectly, and always show the information they should. On top of that, there's some belief that the people using those use them perfectly and interpret the information on them perfectly.

When you shoot a missile, there are a thousand things that can go wrong...from your adversary defeating your radar lock or the missile through maneuvering, all the way through the missile not even coming off the airplane when the pickle button is pushed. In between those two extremes are every possible way that something can get screwed up, things a pilot has zero influence over, like a guidance fin falling off after launch and rendering the missile uncontrollable.

People, too, have this idea that since there is an AWACS airborne radar, that friendly forces can see all and thus nobody can go un-noticed or targeted.

I will say that a multiship air-to-air engagement, when it goes well, is an absolute thing of beauty, and is a bit like a baseball pitcher throwing a no-hitter. But I can count on one hand the number of times in practice that I've seen things go that well. Far more times, I've seen things degrade into a big, chocolatey •-show where everyone is working their asses off to kill bandits and not get killed themselves.

Many people think of air-to-air combat like this formally scripted football game where everyone knows where everyone else is, and the plays all go off perfectly. Air to air combat certainly starts like that -- before the war starts, it is like the coach briefing the day's plays....but as soon as airplanes begin to execute those plays (just like in a football play) and start maneuvering every-which-way, it turns into what can be best described as a bar brawl, with chaos everywhere. It is like a football game that has no downs...it just keeps going and going and going (maybe more like a basketball or hockey game)...but a bar brawl is a better simile. Everyone is involved in their own mini-fights, all in the context of dozens of other mini fights taking place in the same area. You may be winning your own fight in the bar brawl, but you don't really have the awareness to know about what's going on in the other mini-fights in your area. You also don't have the awareness to know about the guy standing behind you who finds enough break in his fight to take a shot-of-opportunity at you.

Even if your buddy is standing on the bar (like an AWACS) and is shouting at you to watch for the guy behind you who is taking a swing, often you are so engaged in fighting the guy in front of you that you can hear your buddy shouting over the sound of the chaos in the bar.

So, while it sounds perfectly logical that this combination of AWACS wide-area radar coverage, and missiles that can reach out and touch the threat at range, should render the short-range dogfight a moot point, it just isn't rooted in any sort of reality. It is a belief that gets regularly proven wrong at large force exercises like Red Flag, where after the fight starts and the first plays in the playbook are executed, it devolves into the bar brawl
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IDK I don't speak French or fighter pilot but it looks to me like:

F22 was dogfighting with external fuel (limiting)

The F22 won 7 of 8 times.

The French guy won during the last engagement (bingo fuel light).

I'd say that back in 2009 when this happened likely the F22 guy threw the French a bone. Likely to enjoy the finer things in life with his new pals. Or the F22 guy got bored and his legs and abdomen were tired...

Sorry for the buzzkill but, meh, whatever.
 
Hacker15e said:
I have scored kills on nearly every US fighter in the inventory with a T-38 armed with heat and gun only. Tons of other T-38 IPs acting as Bandits have done the same.........

If we had a steady stream of stories about the Raptor being regularly annihilated in blue-v-blue full up tactical engagements, I'd be concerned. One piece of film....means exactly jack squat.
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I seem to recall MikeD telling a story where a F-22 was set up to fight an A-10 in a low altitude fight that was deliberately set up to play against all the F-22's strengths, and it still went 6 for 8.
 
Here's a story that I've told on here before. In short, I don't worry at all about the capes of the Raptor compared to any other operational aircraft in the world today.

I have fought against the Raptor in the Strike Eagle, and it is an aircraft of truly eye-watering capabilities.

Without getting into too much detail, I flew as an un-limited adversary in a formation that vastly outnumbered the Raptors, and in which we used all of the "cheats" and dirty tricks we possibly could think of (because, of course, we wanted to show our incredible F-15E prowess and embarass the new platinum-plated toy)...

...and we were slaughtered. Repeatedly. In fact, slaughtered doesn't even fairly portray how ridiculously outmatched the F-15E was against the Raptor, even with an obscene numerical advantage. It wasn't even sporting. It was more like humiliating.

We did this twice a day, every day for a week, and it was never even close.

Can't speak for the Lightning (which, by many reports, is a complete turd in the airframe department while having spectacular avionics that outclass even the Raptor), but the F-22 has got it going on like you read about.
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Maurus said:
Didn't a T-38 "kill" an F-22 as well? Technology helps, but in the end it is only as good as the pilot will allow.
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Every aircraft has scored a virtual kill amongst every other aircraft in the USN, USAF, and USMC arsenal, as well as a number of foreign fighters at some point. I remember being in Fallon for work ups and if a USAF squadron was there, they really enjoyed sending F-22s and F-15s up against our F-18s. VFC-13 would always get mixed in with the F-5s and it was a back and fourth. Good pilots may not always prevail, but they always get the edge.
 
I know three co-workers flying F-22's. I wonder if it's who I think it is.

"Billy! Billy! Boom?" :)
 
Seggy said:
Who is better at dog fighting, Air Force, Marine, or Navy pilots? Why?
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That's like asking which major airline has "better pilots"....there's not only no tangible difference in the aggregate, there wouldn't really be a way to measure it even if there were. Different aircraft obviously have different levels of capability that shade that discussion somewhat, but overall there's really no difference between any of the services.

Overall, US military training doctrine post-1970s has maintained 1-v-1 BFM skills as a core resource in a pilot's training and continuing education in all the services that have fighters.
 
SeanD said:
Do Marine fighter pilots have a Top Gun or Red Flag?
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Yes. It's called WTI, or Weapons and Tactics Instructor school. Taught by MAWTS 1 at Yuma. Red Flag is an exercise, we build our graduate level instructors at the USAF Weapons School.

All of three produce more than just Fighter/Strike Fighter graduates.
 
Hacker15e said:
That's like asking which major airline has "better pilots"....there's not only no tangible difference in the aggregate, there wouldn't really be a way to measure it even if there were. Different aircraft obviously have different levels of capability that shade that discussion somewhat, but overall there's really no difference between any of the services.

Overall, US military training doctrine post-1970s has maintained 1-v-1 BFM skills as a core resource in a pilot's training and continuing education in all the services that have fighters.
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Well Delta pilots think they are best, so which branch thinks they are best?
 
I was watching some documentary on Hulu lastnight called Combat Pilot. It was a BBC series of only 6 episodes that followed a group of pilots through RAF training. They have some nutty traditions. Many involve drinking a lot of booze. They pick the fighter they'll fly after training by taking shots, spinning a wheel with photos of the jets and making a goal with a soccer ball.
 
SeanD said:
I was watching some documentary on Hulu lastnight called Combat Pilot. It was a BBC series of only 6 episodes that followed a group of pilots through RAF training. They have some nutty traditions. Many involve drinking a lot of booze. They pick the fighter they'll fly after training by taking shots, spinning a wheel with photos of the jets and making a goal with a soccer ball.
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Derg isn't that the way Delta bids are handled?
 
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