Save the F22 Raptor fighter plane

[Intense]

Overview F-35
F-35 Variants: US Air Force
F-35 Variants: US Navy
F-35 Variants: US Marine Corps
Images
Specifications

Sources and Resources



The F-35 is the result of the Defense Department's Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, which sought to build a multirole fighter optimized for the air-to-ground role with secondary air-to-air capability. The JSF requirement was to meet the needs of the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and allies, with improved survivability, precision engagement capability, and reduced life cycle costs. By using many of the same technologies developed for the F-22, the F-35 has the opportunity to capitalize on commonality and modularity to maximize affordability.

The Lockheed Martin X-35 was chosen over the competing Boeing X-32 primarily because of Lockheed’s lift-fan STOVL design, which proved superior to the Boeing vectored-thrust approach. The lift fan, which is powered by the aircraft engine via a clutched driveshaft, was technically challenging but DoD concluded that Lockheed has the technology in hand. The lift fan has significant excess power which could be critical given the weight gain that all fighter aircraft experience.

Lockheed Martin developed four versions of the Joint Strike Fighter to fulfill the needs of the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force and the United Kingdom Royal Air Force and Navy. All versions have the same fuselage and internal weapons bay, common outer mold lines with similar structural geometries, identical wing sweeps, and comparable tail shapes. The weapons are stored in two parallel bays located aft of the main landing gear. The canopy, radar, ejection system, subsystems, and avionics are all common among all different version as is the core engine which is based on the F119 by Pratt & Whitney.

Additional systems on the F-35 include:
1.Northrup Grumman advanced electronically scanned array (AESA) multi-function radar
2.Snader/Litton Amecon electronic countermeasures equipment
3.Lockheed Martin electro-optical targeting system
4.Northrup Grumman distributed aperture infrared sensor (DAIRS) thermal imaging system
5.Vision Systems International advanced helmet-mounted display
F-35 Variants
US Air Force Return to Top

The Air Force expects that to purchase 1763 F-35s to complement the F-22 Raptor and replace the F-16 as an air-toground strike aircraft. The Air Force variant includes an internal gun, infrared sensors, and laser designator. This is the technologically simplest version of the JSF, in that it does not require hover or aircraft carrier capability. Therefore it does not require the vertical thrust or the handling qualities for catapult launches, augmented control authority at landing approach speeds and strengthened structure to handle arrested landings. At the same time, the Air Force F-35 will have to improve upon the high standards created by the F-16. Since replacement of the F-16 by the F-35 will entail a significant payload reduction, the F-35 faces a very demanding one shot one kill requirement.
US Navy Return to Top
The requirement for carrier operations creates the largest differences between the Air Force and Navy version. The naval version has larger wing and tail control surfaces to enable low-speed approaches to aircraft carriers. Leadingedge flaps and foldable wing tip sections account for this increased wing area. The larger wing area also provides the Navy version with an increased payload capability. To support the stresses of carrier landings and catapult launches, the internal structure of this version is strengthened. In addition, the landing gear has longer stroke and higher load capacity, and of course an arresting hook is added. Compared to the F-18C, the F-35 has twice the range on internal fuel.. The design is also optimized for survivability, which is a key Navy requirement. Like the USAF version, the Navy version will incorporate an internal gun and sensors. This new fighter will be used by the Navy as a first-day-of-war attack fighter in conjunction with the F/A-18 Hornet. The Navy plans to purchase 480 JSF.

US Marine Corps Return to Top
The distinguishing feature of the USMC version of the JSF is its short takeoff/vertical landing capability (STOVL). There will not be an internally mounted machine gun, but an external gun can be fitted. This version requires controllability on all axes while hovering. Another critical design feature is its impact on the ground surface beneath it during hover. The USMC expects their version of the JSF will replace the F/A-18 Hornet and the AV-8 Harrier. The Marine Corps expects to purchase 480 STOVL versions of the F-35.

United Kingdom Royal Navy and Air Force Return to Top
This version will be very similar to the one procured by the United States Marine Corps

Federation of American Scientists :: F-35/Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

 

[Munin]

Forgive me but I think manned fighter planes are things of the past. Right now the most limiting thing on a fighter aircraft is the pilot. He simply cannot bear the stresses imposed by the kind of performance that the modern craft can put upon him. (at least not in a conscious state.

Couple that with the cost and the only thing keeping pilots in the cockpit is nostalgia.

As for conventional war? No way. Someday we may even learn that surrogate wars are stupid.

Drones. There is the wave of the future.

Yes I m also on your side on that, but are there already drones that can take on fighter planes? Is there a drone plane that has the same capabilities as an F22 fighter plane?

To me it seems that drones are still in an experimental fase when it comes to the more complicated air to air combat. The other problem with a drone is the guidance system: it could be possible for an enemy to even take over the drone aircraft by developping their own guidance systems or just let it crash by interfering with the communication signal that connects the drone and the controll center. (a problem we don't have with the taliban cavemen)

A man-controlled aircraft will not that easely betray its own side, because it is the pilot that controlls the computers directly. When a computer is flying it then the aircraft is just a remote controlled machine that becomes vulnerable to outside "signal manipulation".

But the other side is true also: the only thing that holds back the capabilities of an aircraft now is the human that flies it (because it can only fly as fast as the human body can handle: G-forces, ... ).

 

[onecut39]

Forgive me but I think manned fighter planes are things of the past. Right now the most limiting thing on a fighter aircraft is the pilot. He simply cannot bear the stresses imposed by the kind of performance that the modern craft can put upon him. (at least not in a conscious state.

Couple that with the cost and the only thing keeping pilots in the cockpit is nostalgia.

As for conventional war? No way. Someday we may even learn that surrogate wars are stupid.

Drones. There is the wave of the future.

Yes I m also on your side on that, but are there already drones that can take on fighter planes? Is there a drone plane that has the same capabilities as an F22 fighter plane?

To me it seems that drones are still in an experimental fase when it comes to the more complicated air to air combat. The other problem with a drone is the guidance system: it could be possible for an enemy to even take over the drone aircraft by developping their own guidance systems or just let it crash by interfering with the communication signal that connects the drone and the controll center. (a problem we don't have with the taliban cavemen)

A man-controlled aircraft will not that easely betray its own side, because it is the pilot that controlls the computers directly. When a computer is flying it then the aircraft is just a remote controlled machine that becomes vulnerable to outside "signal manipulation".

But the other side is true also: the only thing that holds back the capabilities of an aircraft now is the human that flies it (because it can only fly as fast as the human body can handle: G-forces, ... ).

Computers do a good bit of the flying and weapons control on all modern aircraft. They are no less vulnerable than guidance systems for a drone. Violate them and the aircraft loses much of its superiority.

There was a recent article in Popular Science on the subject of drones. They listed at least one prototype that was supersonic or very close. (635 MPH)

I would rather put the money into drones. (does UAV sound better?) The F 22 is horrendously expensive and requires horrendously expensive pilots.

 

[Intense]

Non-Nuclear EMP: Automating the Military May Prove a Real Threat
by Major Scott W. Merkle
How is this for a grand scenario?...One that would make an airborne assault with combat equipment, followed by a twenty-five-mile forced march sound enticing. You are the operations officer (S3) of your battalion and tomorrow you are to present your one-hundred-plus slide quarterly training brief (QTB) presentation, but for some unknown reason, all of the automation equipment on post is down. You hurry home to print it on your own PC, but your system is also down (and you just spent the whole weekend with that new income tax software working on your return).
You wonder...How could such a catastrophe occur? What could cause this to happen? Then you remember the movie that you saw this past weekend. About ruthless forces threatening to use a weapon capable of destroying the computer chips and memories upon which our lives depend. But one man stood in their way: "Bond... James Bond!"
Hollywood shenanigans? Implausible? Science fiction? The answers are yes, no, and maybe. The 007 saga "Goldeneye" is about attempts to prevent the neophyte, but dangerous, Russian Mafia from using an orbiting space weapon (called Goldeneye), which can blast uncooperative nations with pulses of energy, harmless to people but devastating to electronic devices and their components. Airplanes would fall from the skies, nuclear-power plants would race out of control, financial records would be erased, and your one-hundred-plus QTB slide presentation would be lost.
Could this actually happen? The fact is, that today, there is technology available that could do just that. Fortunately, international treaties governing the use of outer space and the availability of the simpler, non-nuclear-pulse weapons make the specifics from the "Goldeneye" scenario improbable. Then again, the military has earned a reputation for falsely labeling as fiction advanced weapons and units already within its arsenals; remember the Pentagon's embarrassment when surprisingly accurate models of its supposedly super-secret stealth-fighter aircraft began appearing at your local toy store?
Real EMP Weapons
In reality, the existence of Goldeneye-like pulse weapons first became a fact in the early 1960s. While testing hydrogen bombs in outer space, hundreds of miles above the planet, American and Soviet scientists discovered that each atomic blast created a pulse of electromagnetic energy similar to conventional radio-made microwaves, but with energy so great that they erased magnetic memories and melted the microscopic junctions in transistors on the Earth below. These were veritable tidal waves of energy, sufficient to cripple sensitive microelectronics but too weak to be seen, heard, or felt by human beings.1 During one U.S. test, in July 1962, a hydrogen bomb was detonated approximately 650 miles in space, roughly where today's space shuttles orbit. Simultaneously, 2100 miles to the northeast, street lights went dark and burglar alarms began ringing on the Hawaiian islands. The reason was an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) produced by the blast.2
Due to this reaction, in 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to counter the considerable threat posed by EMPs. Since then, that threat has grown at a fantastic rate, fueled by the rapid progress made in compacting ever more EMP-sensitive transistors onto the computer chips upon which modern electronics rely.3 Can you imagine your neighbor being able to go down to the local radio parts store, buy a hand-held EMP weapon, and use it to wipe out your household electronics? All because he is angry at you.
According to a declassified U.S. military report, the explosion of a bomb about one megaton in size (the exact size remains classified) eight hundred miles over Omaha, Nebraska, would shower the continental United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico with an EMP capable of disabling virtually every computerized circuit in its path. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, succinctly described the damaging consequences of such an EMP attack in 1982, when he wrote in an obscure engineering journal
Today there is almost universal dependence on electronic computers. They are used by first-graders as well as research engineers. Industry, communications, financial records, are all at stake here. In the event of heavy EMP radiation, I suspect it would be easier to enumerate the apparatus that would continue to function than the apparatus that would stop.4

Are you now beginning to reconsider that purchase of the latest superhot mini-tower PC? Relax. It is unlikely that a nuclear blast will occur in space any time soon. The Outer-Space Treaty of 1967, since ratified by the members of the United Nations, explicitly states that treaty partners not place any objects carrying nuclear weapons in Earth's orbit great idea, in principle. The trouble is, the treaty does not oblige any nation to allow others to inspect the cargo they send into space.5 So, if Iraq obtained nuclear weapons and was capable of launching them into a space orbit around the Earth for detonation over the United States (in revenge of Operation DESERT STORM), you could kiss your fancy E-mail system goodbye.
The Non-Nuclear EMP Threat
So, to this extent, the plot of "Goldeneye" is plausible. Any of several nations with nuclear weapons and the capacity to launch them into space including the United States, Russia, China, and even Israel could conceivably pulse us back to, shall we say, a simpler time when operations orders were done orally with a sandtable, instead of with the high-speed graphics and charts that turn into an encyclopedia that few people care to read. Even more unsettling, however, is the fact that the U.S. Defense Technology Plan confirms that development of advanced EMP weapons continues to this day, and not just by the Americans. According to a report drafted by conservative members of the French National Assembly in 1992, EMP weapons testing was a recommended goal during France's 1995 underground nuclear tests.6
Some really scary parts of the EMP story did not make it into James Bond's latest adventure. Weapons designers specializing in high-energy physics can now create electromagnetic pulses without going into outer space. One approach involves harnessing the force of a conventional explosion. Others are simply just modifications of radar, which bounces pulses of energy off aircraft in flight, vehicles on the ground, and other objects.7 Crank up the power and you have an EMP weapon, ready to point at the computers of your favorite enemy.
This knowledge has set off a new arms race. Whether fitted into cruise missiles or parked at the side of the road in a van, non-nuclear EMP weapons have the potential to devastate the electronic systems of areas as large as a city or as small as a selected building, all without being seen, heard, or felt by a single soul.8 It is a dream come true for any and all terrorists, to include Saddam Hussein himself!
Sound far-fetched? It did not in 1993 to the owners of automobiles parked about 300 meters from a U.S. Defense Contractor's EMP generator test site at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Their alternators and electronic engine controls were accidentally fried by a pulse during classified field trials.9
Specific Threatto the Military
So what is the non-nuclear EMP threat to our military today? It is, put simply, that while we are quite enamored of our technological progress, we would do well to ensure that basic infantry skills, those things that have enabled America to have the greatest army in the world, are not forgotten. It can be readily observed that the United States is devoting a significant amount of time, energy, and hard working tax-payer dollars to "push the technology envelope" to prepare for the Force XXI battlefield.
The Army will equip tomorrow's infantry soldier with a totally integrated fighting system that takes full advantage of technological advances. Their fighting load modules include vests with removable ammunition pouches enabling them to carry the soldier radio, battlefield computer, global positioning system (GPS), and required antennas. One burst of EMP will render this equipment inoperable, rendering the 21st century land warrior ineffective on the Force XXI battlespace. He will still be able to fight, but without his wondrous gadgets and gizmos.
Conclusion
Therefore, it seems to me that while developing and implementing technologies and strategies for the Force XXI battlespace, we also need to emphasize force modernization in developing technologies and strategies to counter the EMP threat. It is even more important that our junior leaders and soldiers become and remain exceptionally proficient in basic skills of land navigation, small unit tactics, and sandtable operations and operations orders. I would not discard that Ranger handbook just yet. At the battalion level, I recommend that the battalion intelligence officer keep those grease pencils, templates, and manual weather forecasting equipment handy because the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System, All-Source Analysis System, and most other "high tech" intelligence connectivity systems will not be working.
In sum, while I advocate taking full advantage of any and all technologies that will enhance our ability to fight and win America's battles, we must not lose sight of one essential fact. Gadgets and gizmos do not take and hold terrain, nor do they fight and win on the battlefield well-trained soldiers do! Non-nuclear EMP has the potential to reduce the battlefield equation to very simple terms. I submit that in this scenario, "back to basics" becomes more than a simple clich‚. Stripped of the technology, the soldier who is well versed in basic soldiering skills will be victorious.
One thing is certain: in case of an EMP attack, don't bother calling James Bond. Your telephone won't be working.

Non-Nuclear EMP: Automating the Military May Prove a Real Threat

 

[Munin]

Computers do a good bit of the flying and weapons control on all modern aircraft. They are no less vulnerable than guidance systems for a drone. Violate them and the aircraft loses much of its superiority.

I know that these days the computer does practically all the flying, but because it is operated by a man in the plane itself it does not need the outside connection with the ground. It can fly independantly without interferance from the outside, the only way the plane would betray its owner is if the pilot betrays his country.

The risk I see when you get the man out of the plane is that the computer flies the plane and the plane can become vulnerable to outside manipulation as the plane has just become a flying computer. And don't computers get hacked? Are computers on their own not vulnerable?

Compare the pilot + computer with a LAN network that is not connected to the outside world and the drone as a computer that is connected to the internet and controlled from a distance: as every outsider can manipulate the signal if he can get his "controll-device" in range (that wouldn't be to difficult if you re the enemy, the plane would probably come near you anyway).

 

[Gadawg73]

The psychologic effects of super-weapons are devastating for enemy morale

Right, look how they have demoralized the enemy in Iraq and Afganistan.

True, but Iraqi insurgants don't have fighter planes. An F22 is not made for that job, I m not even sure the US military was made for the job (fighting insurgants). Most of the US military is made for conventional wars, not for this kind of warfare.


Other "super weapons" have been developed to deal with this kind of "new" enemy: the drones. The taliban fear them as they know they can be hit at any time by them. The problem is that these drones are much less usefull against conventional enemies because they need air escorts to defend them against air attacks, a role that would fit the F22.

So we spend 400 million PER FRIGGIN PLANE that costs 50K an hour to fly and thousands more to maintain to defend a drone?
And you question why Gates, many in the Pentago and others want to scrap it.

 

[Gadawg73]

Bottom line:
NO question the F-22 is the best fighter in the world. When you can shoot down the bad guy BEFORE he even knows you are in the neighborhood that is the advantage.
But, 400 million for a fighter that does not even meet an 8000 hour life span.

 

[Tom Clancy]

The Raptor is one hell of a Jet.. I fell in love with it when I saw them on those Air Force Commercials..

But nothing surpasses my love for the AH-64, but that's an Attack Helicopter, so can't really compare.

 

[ScottBernard]

The F-22 is an "air superiority fighter". That means it can whip anything else that it comes up against that flies. That is its role.
I think the Pentagon kind of blew it on this one. Spend the money for top-of-the-line fighters and "bargain" shop for multi-role and attack aircraft. We are already moving towards unmanned attack aircraft anyway. Who cares if they get shot down. There is no flesh and blood pilot to worry about and they can be replaced relatively quickly.
Kill the B-1 bomber, that Reagan era turkey has been obsolete for at least 15 years. We have cruise missiles that can do the job.
And who in their right mind approved the B-2 bomber? At 2 billion dollars a piece?
Spend the money on stuff that troops actually need, like new AC-130 gunships, airborne surveillance and countermeasures.
Drives me crazy how the Pentagon spends tax money sometimes.