"The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is one of the world’s premier fighter jets, thanks to its unique combination of stealth, speed, agility, and situational awareness."
A huge understatement. It's the only true 5th gen that's tailored for performance, rather than cost savings (ala the F-35). The others are completely unproven (Chinese) or both unproven and in extremely limited quantities, while not providing true stealth (PAK FA, though if anything, the SU-35 family is the closer analogue).
I’m not a huge fan of obscene military spending, but the cancellation[0] of F-22 production must be one of the most boneheaded decisions I’ve seen in US military procurement. I must add the caveat that I have no security clearance so there may be other factors.
I always wondered why they couldn’t have just used the F-22 for both the air superiority role it was originally designed for and the multi-purpose role the F-35 was made for. The F-22 is more capable in every way, and more survivable with dual engines. They would have needed to figure out vertical take-off/landing version of the F-22 but I’m sure that was not impossible.
It may have looked more expensive on paper with ideal assumptions to produce lots of expensive F-22s instead of a few F-22’s and lots of cheaper JSFs. But in practice I bet the costs would have equalized, due to the increased volume of F-22s and the development of extensive institutional knowledge of that airframe - from manufacturing to maintenance to piloting/operating.
The F22 was designed in the 80s. It's old. It's fast, certainly the best in some aerodynamic ways, but nothing like the capability the JSF brings in computing technology.
In addition, the threats anticipated that led to its development never materialized.
>but nothing like the capability the JSF brings in computing technology.
What computing technology can't be put into the F-22? Iirc it has a much bigger radar housing, and EO DAS (fancy term for 360 IR / situational awareness) can be added to it.
To answer the parent term - the F-22 was used for air-to-ground in the middle east, so it can definitely fill that role. There was also an attack plane/bomber variant proposed.
JSF has sensors built into its skin. You don’t just retrofit sensors onto an LO platform.
Retrofitting new computing technology into an aircraft is a huge deal. Just getting a data link into it so it can talk to the rest of the DOD has taken over a decade and I’m not sure it’s even complete yet.
Yes, it’s old. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful, the F15 is far older and still in use and will be for decades, but it was more cost effective to put the money into the new platform instead.
I don't mean to get into the weeds here, but what part of EODAS can't be added by literally putting a thermal camera (from the F-35 program) in several places on the F-22 and running wiring to it?
I completely understand that it interfaces with the helmet. I also know that it took ages for the F-22 to get a simple FLIR built in, but if even a fraction of the F-35 resources were directed at the F-22, this would all be more than doable quickly.
As far as I am concerned, the selling pitch of the F-35 is the STOVL and EODAS. At that point the F-22 could be fitted for carrier operations, because no one uses VTOL (or plans to) on the F-35 anyway except for moving it around parking lots with no ordinance.
Again, this is ignoring all the political info.
Also, to get more specific, I don't know of any "sensors built into its skin" - EODAS is just a bunch of little pods with thermal cameras and fancy computing. Obviously don't tell me if it's something that's not public knowledge.
The main function of the JSF is situational awareness. The F22 doesn't even have a functional data link yet. JSF has all of it built in from the beginning. Everything you add to an airframe costs millions of dollars, and there's no point in doing it.
STOVL is an important part of the JSF program. The F22 isn't capable of doing STOVL or carrier operations, you don't refit a non-CVN capable aircraft for carrier operations.
F-22 has datalinks, including the one datalink that appears to be ultimately the only one really used - Link-16.
F-35's MADL wasn't added to F-22 because Air Force deemed it "not ready to use" and cited maturity problems with the whole stack.
A lot of JSF sensors are to patch over its horrible pilot situational awareness, mostly a legacy of the STOVL variant (which is responsible for most issues) and which exists only because USMC needs it to fight against Imperial Japanese Army in Guadalcanal. Few other purchases of F-35B happened because building a proper carrier would result in political shitstorm (Japan) or because F-35B being supposed to let build carrier more cheaply and when its issues became known it was too late to refit the carrier with catapult (UK).
As for refitting a non-carrier aircraft to be a carrier aircaft - F-18 is the best known case, and its competitor was navalized F-16. As far as I know, there was carrier variant of F-22 in the works as well.
The JSF was designed around sensor fusion to give the pilot situational awareness like no other aircraft.
Stovl has been used by the USMC in every conflict since they got the Harrier. They flew off of highways in OIF.
Japan hasn’t purchased the B model yet, they likely will. But the B model has doubled our carrier force by giving the ARG strike capability.
You do not “refit” a non naval aircraft for carrier duty. The f18 was designed as a carrier aircraft from the ground up, and there was never a carrier variant of an F22 except in some people’s fantasies.
The F-18 is navalized YF-17 (specifically, it's based on YF-17 model 267). It's competitor was literally F-16 "navalised" by team up of General Dynamics and Vought Aerospace, with resulting model being Vought Model 1600.
You don't usually already produced units to "navalize", but making a derivative is the norm, and was the case for both.
F-22N was proposed but never went far.
As for JSF sensor fusion - the helmet itself comes form pretty bad visibility from the cockpit. Incorporating modern passive sensors was an obvious choice, though.
(I'm still waiting on reports of "sensor fusion finally works", given our local idiots in charge decided to jump on the Lockheed Welfare project)
And outside of F-35, everything talks Link-16 with possible tunnelling/subnetting, and MADL was considered "too immature" to start fitting on F-22 despite Congress "ordering" it.
The F18 has some roots in the YF-17 program, but it is not a YF-17. It was a new development effort that used some of the tech developed from the YF-17 program. And even at that, the modern F18 is a totally new aircraft that vaguely resembles the previous models and retains the name for funding and programmatic purposes.
The JSF's sensor fusion is not a result of "bad visibility". It's how the aircraft was designed.
F22 also does not talk Link 16, for obvious reasons.
STOVL can certainly be retrofitted the same way lots of things are: as an external pod.
Guide the pilot into a suitable position above the landing area. (with visual indicators, much like those for a bombing run) Once the plane is in the right spot, a computer finishes the job with full automation. The aircraft is stalled. The pods fire rockets. The aircraft is guided down and brought to a stop.
This retrofit would be particularly sensible for the F-15, which normally carries conformal fuel tanks. That would be a fine place to install the retrofit.
It's been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO
The primary requirement for a carrier jet is two engines, decent thrust, and enough body rigidity to take landings. The F-22 has all that. The MIG-29 had less, and had a carrier version. Same with the SU-27.
JATO is for takeoff, thrust in the aft direction is not the same as trying to rocket assist a landing. Completely different. It's also extremely hard on airframes.
The idea is not feasible.
Also your list of "carrier aircraft requirements" is incorrect, the JSF is a single engine aircraft, and landing gear is a major requirement of a carrier aircraft. The F22 is not a naval aircraft, was not designed to be, and never will be.
He is correct about carrier aircraft requirements. The navy was forced to accept the JSF.
As produced, the F-22 is obviously not a naval aircraft. The tail hook is single-use, the landing gear is not reinforced, and the more modern stuff for carrier approach is probably not installed. All of that would be easy to change, and in fact a carrier version was proposed.
The Navy spearheaded the JSF for both its CVN fleet and for the USMC. The JSF is not the first single engine Naval aircraft, and its engine is reliable enough that it's not an issue. People look at the tomcat and hornet and make up requirements that have never existed.
There is no such thing as "easy to change", you would have to redesign the aircraft from the ground up. You don't "navalize" an air force asset, you have the air force use Naval aircraft if you want dual use. The F22 is not and never will be a carrier aircraft.
Oh come on. You're just dismissing it, seemingly with the assumption that we'd have manned aircraft dropping into tight aircraft parking spaces with all the grace of the very first SpaceX landing attempt.
Obviously there is no reason to bother with vertical landings on a fully functional full-sized US aircraft carrier. This would be for other ships, clearings in jungles, and cleared-out parking lots.
You'd descend toward an area that has been cleared of debris and personal. It's not more absurd than flying toward a ship at 135 kts and expecting to grab a cable without crashing into things and people on deck. Compared to what we do on a CATOBAR ship, rocket-enabled descent is really tame and safe.
Vertical landing with the F-35 isn't exactly safe. This is the standard for comparison. Rockets can respond faster. This allows better stability and faster shut-down.
We have aircraft designed to do stovl and do it correctly.
Vertical landing with the F35 is exactly safe. It's the definition of safe, it's been done thousands of times with zero incidents. It was done hundreds of thousands of times in the Harrier before, and they applied the safety lessons learned from the Harrier to the JSF. How many rockets has spacex lost already?
I note that the F-22 was primarily produced in Georgia. That usually isn't a swing state and it doesn't have a lot of representatives in the US House of Representatives.
The F-35 is produced in nearly every state, certainly including all the swing states. This is terribly inefficient, but probably kept the F-35 from being cancelled.
Keep in mind the military has a history of claiming they stopped production and then producing them in secret or producing a slightly modified version as a way of making our enemies think we have fewer weapons than we actually have.
Stealth Blackhawks (pretty much confirmed by the Bin Laden raid) are definitely an example of the cancelled Comanche program tech going into black projects.
I assume they realized they don't need that many air superiority fighters and that they are costly to maintain. What would you even do with 750 planes that have very limited use in bombing Taliban fighters in caves?
It was supposed to be the next generation F-16. The lightweight single engine jack of all trades fighter that could be exported to other countries to help defray development costs.
There was even a notion that you could use the same plane across all branches of the military so the same supply chain could be used for all three and you could build them in higher quantities to spread the development costs over more aircraft. But then of course the aircraft got saddled with requirements from three different branches of the military at once which made it extremely difficult to design and build and thus very very expensive.
>But then of course the aircraft got saddled with requirements from three different branches of the military at once which made it extremely difficult to design and build and thus very very expensive.
Sounds rather like the Space Transportation System. During design, it went from a compact inexpensive passenger shuttle with modest payload capability, to a complete pig of a ship. And all because the Air Force contributed cash on the condition that it be capable of classified high-payload-pass missions to polar orbits.
It is nothing short of a tragedy that fully-reusable compact shuttles with flyback boosters (like the Rockwell P333) lost out to the disposable-booster design that was eventually built.
An extremely important part of project management is the ability to say "no", even if the customer is bringing extra money to the table. Extra requirements have a way of increasing costs in an exponential way and it's very easy to lose sight of your original goal.
Of course this is a problem when you have Congress breathing down your neck and looking for any excuse to cut your program. One big advantage of skunk works projects is that they keep you firewalled off from idea men.
Yup, that was the original goal of the F-35. The idea was that by sharing parts across multiple variants and across multiple militaries, the F-35 would be a cheaper fighter than the F-22 that could scale to a larger fleet.
It's not totally crazy on the face of it- The expensive but undefeated F-15 and the relatively cheaper F-16 successfully pulled it off in the 20th century.
A huge understatement. It's the only true 5th gen that's tailored for performance, rather than cost savings (ala the F-35). The others are completely unproven (Chinese) or both unproven and in extremely limited quantities, while not providing true stealth (PAK FA, though if anything, the SU-35 family is the closer analogue).