https://www.yahoo.com/news/fighter-jet-crashes-eglin-air-160843927.html

I don't envy that pilot.  My Great Grandpa had to bail out over Tyndall AFB during WW2, he was aerial gunnery instructor.  He more or less scalped himself jumping out of the plane and said hat wasn't the bad part.  It was the insects that made themselves at home in his wound and all the mosquito bites that put him in a burn unit for a month.  I think he spent three days out in the swamp before finding help.

Doesn't matter.

The pilot ejected safely, so he'll be effective again in another bird soon enough.

The F-22 has been replaced and overshadowed by the newer, more capable, F-35s, so it's no loss on the Air Force's ability to fight a war at all.

One aircraft does not a fleet make.

Nor does a fleet of aircraft with differing capabilities and missions "replace" another.

again?

On an aircraft to aircraft basis for comparison, the F35 is superior to the F22 in modern combat in every metric.

The F22 will be left to gather dust in the hangars soon.

Isn't this the 3rd one they lost today?

Maybe in the past 3 years.

They just have to build a few more F35s, that's all.

Just ‘cause he ejected it doesn’t mean he’ll be effective in another bird soon enough.   He may have sustained injuries, as an ejection is a high risk emergency procedure.  A stat I heard was 1 out of 3 ejections result in injury or worse. Granted that may include older jets with older style seats/systems. Then you also have the possibility (albeit very small) that the dude messed up and caused the Class A.  

The F-22 is still a very critical asset and losing one isn’t something to make light of.

We're making more than 200 F35s a year, easily.  (I am being VERY conservative with this number)

Given that F35 is an improvement over the F22s in every metric, which is why we choose it over the F22 in the first place, yeah, I'd say that one downed F22 is nothing to sleep over, as long as the pilot can fly in another bird again.

The F-22 and F-35 were never in any direct procurement competition or choice.

There was *always* a plan to replace F-15Cs with the winner of the Advanced Tactical Fighter program (the F-22) and replace F-16s and A-10s with the winner of the JSF program (the F-35). Two different programs to replace two different mission sets flown by three different aircraft.

SECDEF Gates cut full procurement of the F-22 and rationalized that the money was better spent on F-35s, but that does not mean the F-35 was chosen "over the F-22".

If you don't count fuel load, maneuverability, range, or any of that stuff, sure.

The F-35 is also a decade newer in terms of avionics, but that isn't "every metric" in "modern combat".

That was decision driven in part by the cost spiral that was threatening to kill the F-35. At some point the necessity was that they needed to replace EVERYTHING to get the per unit costs down.

F35 has all sorts of plans to increase fuel capacity. The F35A already has a greater than 100nm combat radius advantage over the F22. It's not 2002 anymore. F35 has come a long way.

They are different airplanes, one is air superiority the other is everything else.

I'd love to see that it if involves internal tanking.

So, now the F-35 shows up with 2x AMRAAMs?

The big advantage the -22 has is that it completely picks the geometry of the fight from hundreds of miles out, and gets to pick the terms of engagement.

While a -35 has the ability to do that via LO, its not the performer that gets to pick geometry, and it certainly doesn't have combat persistence.

LOL

I don't know why this keeps coming up.

The F-22 and the F-35 have entirely different missions.

The F-35 is not replacing he F-22.

The F-35 is a multi-role strike aircraft with air to air defensive capability designed for foreign sales. It is the F-16 replacement.

The F-22 is the Air Superiority work horse aircraft and is the F-15 replacement and has very selective foreign sales for a reason.


ETA: And nobody on the board who isn't actually flying either one or was involved in the contract procurement knows the real capabilities of either. Those are classified and anybody that will talk about it is full of shit.

Do you happen to have a friend that had his canopy melted??

why aren't F-15, 18, 16's sitting dusty in hangers?

please stop posting comic book level gobbledygook

Conformal tanks. Haven't seen any pictures yet.

Still think it's a shame we let F22 production die. Should have sold them to the Aussies.

Edit: article from last year's Paris Air Show -

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/6/17/news-from-paris-air-show-lockheed-planning-major-increase-in-range-other-capabilities-for-f-35

183
182

That sucks....F-22 is a dead sexy plane

You don’t know allot about planes and their mission other than what your told?

Attached File

F-35A down at Eglin last night.  Pilot ejected safely.

Just in case it was missed.....  And I'd go one step further and say the procurement folks don't know unless still in the game as things have changed throughout development as required to satisfy physics and reality.

I think a GD troll got out

This is the first I've heard that JSF production numbers have reached that high.  They are in the mid 130 range per year last I checked, before COVID-19 slowed it down.  2 of the production lines were temporarily closed, the ones in Italy and Japan, and Fort Worth had to slow down things since so many sub contractors across the Nation had reduced delivery volume.  Spigot of components and assemblies got turned down pretty low.

These were the tracked/planned production numbers back in 2013, which have been adjusted and never reached looking at FY17-19:



2019:



So no, you're not being conservative in the 200 ship per year number.

They were hoping to reach into the 190 ship range, but that won't happen this year without something miraculous.

The F-22A is continuously undergoing upgrades, particularly the combat-coded Raptors Block 30 and higher.  The idea that the Raptor will soon be a hangar queen collecting dust is one of the more preposterous things I've heard lately.  The opposite is true, since they have been flying them operationally all over the world, from Alaska North American Defense missions to CENTCOM.

The F-35 is an improvement over the F-22 in "every metric" except:

Climb rate
Service ceiling
Weapons separation kinematics
Acceleration
Maneuverability at relevant and irrelevant (air show) envelopes
Max V0
Cruise speed (Raptors can cruise without AB in the same Mach range as F-35s hit their full AB placard limits)
Internal weapons count

Areas where the USAF F-35A are better are:

Combat radius and persistence
JDAM size internal carriage (2000lb vs 1000lb)
More evolved avionics and central processing capability
Reduced pilot workload for basic flight
Improved SA
Superior data link and networking
Fused IR sensor capabilities

The two are meant to complement each other in a 5th Gen Hi-Lo force mix like the F-15C and F-16 did, but there have been major changes in thinking of how to structure the force now that the serendipity of 5th Gen and net-centric warfare have manifest different possibilities.

I just barely read about a new insight into the F-22 procurement cut where retired USAF General Norton Schwartz wrote in his memoir that F-22 production was killed to convince Gates to fund the new B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber.



Air Force Mag:  Schwartz Memoir Says F-22 was traded for B-21 Bomber

In “Journey: Memoirs of an Air Force Chief of Staff,” now in bookstores, retired Gen. Norton Schwartz said his predecessor, retired Gen. Mike Moseley, “never gave up in his principled attempts to get those 381 F-22s,” for which Gates fired Moseley and the then-Secretary of the Air Force, Mike Wynne. Schwartz was named to replace Moseley, and Mike Donley was brought in as Wynne’s replacement.

Although there were at least a dozen internal and external studies confirming 381 as the right number of F-22s, “I wanted an independent assessment to determine the minimum number,” Schwartz wrote, “and what we came up with” was 243 aircraft. Gates rejected that number too, “even though we had shaved over 35 percent off the Moseley/Wynne demand for 381,” Schwartz said. That difference of 60 airplanes would have cost “$13 billion at a time that defense budgets were being tightened,” and Gates wanted that money for “things like remotely piloted aircraft and MRAPs.”

Schwartz and Donley concluded “the F-22 debate had consumed enough oxygen and it was time to move on,” Schwartz said, and the two were “certainly not going to go to the Hill behind Secretary Gates’s back and lobby for more … That was never going to happen on our watch.” Schwartz acknowledged that some thought this “too pristine a judgement,” and that “anything in Washington is fair, but I say no. I had never been disloyal to a boss and I wasn’t about to start then.” Schwartz wrote extensively in the book about how Gates fought for Schwartz’ nomination to be Chief against congressional resistance.

Gates was firing Generals and SECAF for sport over the F-22.  I had never heard this aspect of the decision over the F-22 before, which is sad, especially with Gates wanting to stay so short-sighted and sacrifice core capabilities for short-term systems that we don't even bring back to CONUS, many of which were manufactured by other countries (MRAPs include multiple variants).

So we could have continued funding for JSF, B-21, and F-22....pick 2.

F-22 got canned in that decision matrix, and every USAF General Officer at the Pentagon level that tried to fight it got axed and replaced until they found someone who would play along.