TANKFRQ>>Um, dude the F-22 couldn't outmanuver the Su-37 if its life depended on it.<< What gave you this idea? The -22 has a higher initial rate of roll, faster transient responce and better 'pit! A friend who flew A-4s at RED FLAG against F-15/16s and WON MORE THAN HE LOST, told anyone who would listen that the super maneuver 9G plane wore out the pilot before it gave him the kill more often than not and all he had to do was fly around the outside of the "9G Fur ball" untill the other guy got tired, before he turned in to kill him. Maneuver is over rated! Stealth and AVIONICs is the future! Niether of which the big Ruski bird has. TANKFRQ>> Seriously, the F-22 was designed to be first look, first shot, first kill, not dogfight superiority.<< Why then does it out point the big SU? I'll give you a hint; We use 4-5000 PSI hydraulics that work and don't leak. The Big SU and other Ruski AC, not to mention most of the newer ECDs too, use 3000PSI systems. Have you watched the rate at which the vectoring nozels change direction in the two birds? It is plain as day and night that the F-22 can out point the big Su! Secondly, if the BVR combat is the future, why would you build a dogfighter that will never see it's killer? In 2V8, 22-V-15s the -22s win! Piriod! The Big Su is bairly a match Vs the F-15, why would you think it could cope with it's master? TANKFRQ>> The Su-37 is all about manuverability. Plus, the F-22 sux compared the the Su-37 at ALL SPEEDS. Link: http://www.area51zone.com/aircraft/f22.shtml It says right there, as well as on many other sites that the F-22 is clearly not as manuverable as a Su-37. I don't know what anybodies thinking if they say the F-22 can manuver better than the F-22. << There are lots of different maneuver charicteristics. Things like rate of accelleration and G onset, rate of pitch and roll athority, initial rate of roll and pitch that are more important and that the F/A-22 has in SPADES, than the things like sustained rate of turn, climb and decelleration where the big Su appiers to have an advantage. It is part and parcel of the problem with discribing maneuverability. What is and is not important? Instantainious maneuvers are important in a dog fight. Sustained maneuvers are critical in BVR combat. The Big Su has great sustained numbers as good as the F-15 and better instantainious numbers than the F-15, but that are about the same as the F-16 configured as a fighter WO bombs. The Su is not in the same league as the F-22! In fact they arn't even playing the same game! TANKFRQ>>THe F-22 is designed for stealth, the Su is designed for manuverability, all i'm asking in this post is to balance out manuverability and stealth to give your opinion on which is better. << STEALTH IS THOUSANDS, TENS of THOUSANDS or MILLIONS OF TIMES MORE IMPORTANT AND USEFULL THAN MANEUVERABILITY! Lets play a little war game. You get to fly 32 Su-37s and I get to fly two F/A-22s. On the first sortie, I get to kill 15 or 16 of you with BVR missile shots before you know that you are under attack. just before the Merge, that you are ignorant of it's existance, I get off four more AIM-9Xs and four more big Su's bite the big green donky ****! (Sorry about the Ex-Army aligory, but I do not know the appropriate AF terms!) We then go home without you getting to see us and never firing a shot! The the second mission, we tote two JDAMs and six missiles, You do not know you are under attack untill the second of your planes, the one you are in, is destroyed! The other ten then proceed to bend over and kiss their rear good by, without seeing their killers! We then drop four Mk-84 JDAMs on your HQ building, maint and engine shops and the missile storage bunker! Your Air Field is now out of action and all 32 of your Shukois are destroyed! All because you never even looked in the right direction to see us. Given the scenario abouv plays out just like all the Red Flags so far involving the F-22 and all other types and that the USAF gets more practice and the f-15 has beaten all commers but the F-22 so far, I do not see any way for the out come to change!

I don't think youre right. First I'd like to mention that about a dozen AMRAAMS were used to kille one Serbian Mig-29. The pilot simply outmanouvred the missiles. The kill is far away from 100% for any missile. If youre lucky u get 4 Su's. Every time a missile is launched the F-22 will "show" a significant signature. With 32 Su's approaching in different angles the stealthiness becomes less important. One the distance is reduced to WVR the F-22 does not have a chance against an overwhelming force. The Su's just needs to que up for dogfights. Another factor which was not even taken into consideration is the effect of jamming.

Shooter, I appreciate you're trying to find some way to make the scenario "even," but it's completely unrealistic to stack the deck against the F-22 with numbers like 2 v. 32: There are *more* F-22 in service than there are Su-35 in service, and still will be for many years to come. The more realistic scenario would be 2, (or 4, or 8) F-22 v. maybe 2 or 4 Su-35. Clearly this would be a blow-out, and just like when the F-22 flies against F-15s, the Su-35 drivers would be lucky just to catch a glimpse of their death before it happens. Also, Shooter, I'd say you're exaggerating the missile carriage just a tad, as it's unlikely the F-22 will ever need to carry more than its internal load of 6 + 2 missiles and even I'd definitely start to feel a bit uncomfortable sending them into a mythical sky full of 32 Su-35 with wings loaded with signature-compromising missiles, rails, and pylons. Also a strike of 4 1000lb JDAMs (or even of 4 2000lbers like you said, but which the F-22 does not carry internally) wouldn't do much more than temporarily hamper airfield operations for several hours. I know you're trying to give the devil his due, but as for any website or any other "authority" which claims something to the effect of: "The Big Su has great sustained numbers as good as the F-15 and better instantainious numbers than the F-15," I will give that a pass but only regarding the Su-30MKI/Su-35 (and only because I don't remember the details of the comparisons). As for the rest of the FLANKER family, I'd rather be in an F-15 in a dogfight than a FLANKER. I'll concede it's possible the very latest (and almost non-existent) versions of the Su-27 family may have closed the gap, but the F-15C definitely has better instantaneous turn, sustained turn, and acceleration numbers than the Su-27 and at least some of the Su-3x's, with the sole exception of very low-speed instantaneous turn rates. ---- F-S, I don't know which engagement you're referring to, but of the five Serbian MiG-29s downed by U.S. jets, I doubt we used even 12 AMRAAMs total. Also, what are you on about with showing a signature when launching? Are you referring to the two seconds while the missile bay doors are open? Yes, if someone happens to be lucky enough to have their radar sweeping right across the F-22 at that moment, they may detect it once. Then the doors will close and the enemy won't even be able to establish a track on the F-22, and it's gone. Within "WVR"? Good luck ataying alive long enough to spot it and do something about it as it flies 4+ miles above you at M1.7. Yes, I agree that if the fight is in daylight (which I realize it often is) and it closes down to within 10 miles (which I realize it could do in a countermeasures and high odds environment), then the enemy may visually spot the F-22 and may be able to box him in and get one close enough to get a missle shot. I do not think the F-22 is impossible to shoot down. I merely think the F-22 is almost impossible to shoot down in a realistic scenario. Displacedjim

I appriciate your comments but I can't agree. First of all an AMRAAM will be detected once it is fired. The initial position will be known for many reasons. There are several methods that can be used to detect the airraft. I'm not an expert on wht the russians use but there is a signature of the F-22 and with modern signalprocessing tracking will be possible even after the launch is complete. The jet leaves a IR-signature wich can be detected and in broad daylight it will even be detected visually. About the mig-29 in Serbia. I didn't participate in the discussion but followed it. A Serbian Major flew the mig. He evaded several AMRAMMS before he was hit. In the discussion an american pilot participated. He told that there are very few missiles he culd not evade in fact he thought he could not be hit by one single missile anytime. The discussion was much about how to fly to evade missiles (making s-turns). This sounds reasonable to me because of the "Nyqvist frequence for one processing cycle and direction corretion". I will not dig into it further because I can't confirm or deny if it's correct. Back to the AMRAAM case. The missile can't be fired at it's max envelope because it will siply run out of fuel. I made a rough estimation and found that to have a fare chance to get a hit the missile has to be fired at a range less then 50 km. Even then it would likely run out of fuel (the Su's will most likely not run head-on towards the missile). There is onc case the Su might turn Head on and it is at shorter distances. The advantage by running initiallt towards the missile is that the AAM gets less accurate with the high relative velocity. Then the missile can be evaded theoretically in two ways, either by take advantage from the Nyqvist frequenze or the second option to take advantage from the "Abbe's comparator principles" (I don't know the real name in English). It is a method to analyse and minimize the error in measured valused or in this case it will be maximum in error (which is equal with high likelyhood for evading the missile, statistically). The distance is after the evading manouvers to the F-22 quite small. I would be supriced if the distance would exceed 20 km. This is also an engagement limit if youre not interested in wasting taxpayers money.

> This sounds reasonable to me > because of the "Nyqvist frequence How is Tarver these days? > Back to the AMRAAM case. > The missile can't be fired > at it's max envelope because > it will siply run out of fuel. But not energy however and that's what counts. v^2

"I appriciate your comments but I can't agree. First of all an AMRAAM will be detected once it is fired. The initial position will be known for many reasons. There are several methods that can be used to detect the airraft. I'm not an expert on wht the russians use but there is a signature of the F-22 and with modern signalprocessing tracking will be possible even after the launch is complete. The jet leaves a IR-signature wich can be detected and in broad daylight it will even be detected visually. "About the mig-29 in Serbia. I didn't participate in the discussion but followed it. A Serbian Major flew the mig. He evaded several AMRAMMS before he was hit. In the discussion an american pilot participated. He told that there are very few missiles he culd not evade in fact he thought he could not be hit by one single missile anytime. The discussion was much about how to fly to evade missiles (making s-turns). This sounds reasonable to me because of the "Nyqvist frequence for one processing cycle and direction corretion". I will not dig into it further because I can't confirm or deny if it's correct. "Back to the AMRAAM case. The missile can't be fired at it's max envelope because it will siply run out of fuel. I made a rough estimation and found that to have a fare chance to get a hit the missile has to be fired at a range less then 50 km. Even then it would likely run out of fuel (the Su's will most likely not run head-on towards the missile). There is onc case the Su might turn Head on and it is at shorter distances. The advantage by running initiallt towards the missile is that the AAM gets less accurate with the high relative velocity. Then the missile can be evaded theoretically in two ways, either by take advantage from the Nyqvist frequenze or the second option to take advantage from the "Abbe's comparator principles" (I don't know the real name in English). It is a method to analyse and minimize the error in measured valused or in this case it will be maximum in error (which is equal with high likelyhood for evading the missile, statistically). The distance is after the evading manouvers to the F-22 quite small. I would be supriced if the distance would exceed 20 km. This is also an engagement limit if youre not interested in wasting taxpayers money." -- F-S ---- The AMRAAM will be detected? How? Furthermore, how does that relate to tracking the F-22? At most it shows the enemy where the F-22 was when it launched. The F-22 "will" be detected? How? Yes, it's possible to track it using radar when close enough and you manage to find it. Yes, it's possible to track to track it using IR when close enough and you manage to find it. Yes, it's possible to see it using eyeballs when close enough, it's daytime, and you manage to find it. None of those are a given, all of them have maximum ranges, and none of them *must* result from launching an AMRAAM, although if the F-22 is within the maximum tracking range it launching a missile may suffice to enable the enemy to then track the F-22 until the F-22 gets outside of the enemy's maximum tracking range or otherwise evades detection (for example, by getting outside the enemy sensor's field-of-view). Yes, I've read a few laughable accounts that are supposedly Serbian pilots supposedly truthfully describing what supposedly happened in the air. What actually happened is pretty much summed up by F-15s inbound, MiG-29s launch, AWACS vectors F-15s, MiG-29s fly around a little, F-15s lock up MiG-29s, Fox-3 (sometimes Fox-3 again), MiG-29 becomes fireball, F-15 pilots recover and shoot their watches off over a beer at the O-club. All rocket-powered AAMs "run out of fuel" within about 5 to 10 seconds. All rocket-powered AAMs coast unpowered after that for the remainder of their time-of-flight. Most of them get up to around M3.0 to M4.0 by the time the motor burns out, and then lose speed due to drag until the flight of the missile ends. All in all, there is no reason to believe any FLANKER or any other fighter in the world today will be able to engage the F-22 with significantly better results than the F-15s have had during many hundreds of hours of combat manuevering against the F-22 so far. Displacedjim

Capt Soap, give me a little feed back if you are able to download this. I have a few more flicks I'd like to share including a off road joy ride me and a couple of buddies took in a Hummer, a runaway .50 cal MG, a close encounter I had with an F/A-18 and your truly firing some weapons including the 120mm M256. I cleaned up a bit and I found a bunch of old media. I'm trying to digitize it where possible and I'd like to share. -snip- Darn... The link does not work ....

->"Why then does it out point the big SU? I'll give you a hint; We use 4-5000 PSI hydraulics that work and don't leak. The Big SU and other Ruski AC, not to mention most of the newer ECDs too, use 3000PSI systems." Wow! Hydraulics??? Damn! And here I was under the impression that all these newest aircraft were all fly by wire. I can understand hydraulics for landing gear, but flight servos? Since when did we decide to take a step backwards from the "Electric Jet", the F-16?

Wow! Hydraulics??? Damn! And here I was under the impression that all these newest aircraft were all fly by wire. I can understand hydraulics for landing gear, but flight servos? Since when did we decide to take a step backwards from the "Electric Jet", the F-16? You're joking, right? The F-22A's control surfaces are hydraulically actuated, as are those on pretty much every fighter aircraft -- even fly by wire ones like the F-16. They are controlled by the computer, which in turn takes inputs from the pilot via the controls which are "electric", but they are actually moved by hydraulics.

I'm not certain if you're joking or not, but I'm not aware of any high performance aircraft today that do not use hydraulics to drive their control surfaces. The wire part of fly-by-wire is the transmission of flight control computer commands to the actuators, but at the actuator these electrical commands are used to control the flow of hydraulic fluid in the actual rams that move the control surfaces. The wires duplicate/replace the earlier mechanical methods of using things like control cables and pulleys, push rods and bell cranks, and steel ribbon tapes to transmit pilot inputs to the actuators, which then would use them to control the flow of hydraulic fluid in the actual rams that move the control surfaces. Displacedjim