Unfair at Any Price
If you’ve missed it, I’ve hosted quite the little raging debate, over the merits and need of the F-22 Raptor. And there’s a lot of confusion — even amongst smart blogger-type people — over just what it is the Raptor is supposed to do.
The F-22 is built around three things: Radar (with implied computing power), supercruise engines, and stealthiness. This much we know for sure. Its weapons (and certain other capabilities) remain secret.
Other things we can figure out through conjecture, and not even much of that. But here’s the street fighter version of what the Raptor can do: You stick your thumbs in the other guy’s eyes before you kick him in the balls. And did I mention the part where your thumbs and legs are about a hundred miles long?
Let me explain…
The F-22′s radar is less powerful than the one atop an AWACS, but its computing power is unmatched in the skies (probably).
Its supercruise engines enable it to fly at supersonic speeds without afterburners or entering steep (and dangerous) dives. There’s nothing secret about supercruise engines.
How stealthy is the F-22? Well, we don’t know. We do know that the much, much larger B-2 has about the same radar cross-section as a smallish bird. And the B-2 is based on technology developed in the late ’70s/early ’80s. So it’s no great leap to assume that the F-22 — more modern, much smaller — is even harder to detect.
Put those three things together (forgetting whatever wonder weapons the Raptor might carry), and you can start putting together a solid doctrine for how put the F-22 to good use.
First: Each plane is very powerful. As infantrymen have gotten enhanced vision and more powerful weapons (and better teammates like main battle tanks and computer-controlled indirect artillery), they’ve spread out. Instead of trenches of men lined shoulder to shoulder, small fire teams of four-to-five men cover much larger swathes of untrenched territory. Expect something similar with the Raptor — just one F-22 can cover a lot of airspace. So forget masses of planes hurtling towards each other at high speed. In fact, I’d say even the “loose deuce” formation would be a thing of the past with the F-22. If I were writing Air Force doctrine, I wouldn’t get two Raptors within 50 klicks of one another.
Second: A conventional third- or fourth-generation fighter (F-15, F-16, Su-27, Su-30, MiG-29, Eurofighter, Rafale, etc.) has only a couple minutes worth of supersonic cruising available. Any more than that, and the afterburner has them on bingo fuel. And an enemy fighter on its way home is almost as good as one you’ve shot down. The F-22 can go well over Mach 1 (how far over, no one is saying) without ever goosing the afterburner.
Third: I’d be surprised if Raptors couldn’t datalink with each other, and with any nearby friendly AWACS. This would only increase their lethality. And a two-way datalink would allow our AWACS an even clearer picture of the battlespace than they currently enjoy — and that’s saying something. That said, each individual F-22 should have at least as much computing power as a ’90s-era AWACS, and an even-more sophisticated (albeit shorter ranged) radar. However — if you have three or four widely-spaced apart Raptors, their radars could cover as much battlespace (or more) as an AWACS. Datalinked together, each individual pilot would have a view of the battlespace God Himself would envy.
Fourth: There’s an old Army tanker dictum which goes: What you can see you can hit and what you can hit you can kill. This drove the development of the M1 Abrams X-ray spec sites and DU shells. It really can see anything, hit anything, and typically kill it with one shot. This is exactly how the F-22 doesn’t work. It’s meant to be invisible, and largely is.
Now then, let’s put all these elements together and come up with a doctrine.
Imagine an effective enemy strike package of, say, twelve planes. Four strike fighters, six air superiority jets, an electronics warfare bird (AKA, a jammer) and an AWACS somewhere way behind the lines. The jets are coming in fast — 400, 500 knots. The AWACS is loitering way up high, safe and far away.
Imagine also there are two (!) Raptors in the neighborhood and, contrary to American doctrine, no friendly AWACS. Hey, sometimes the odds aren’t in your favor.
Raptor-1′s and Raptor-2′s passive radars see the enemy AWACS’s massive, active radar signal like somebody switched on a 200-watt bulb in a dark cave. Even with all that power, the Raptors are on the outside of the AWACS’s detection threshold, because their computers quickly figure out a safe range, and Raptor-1 and Raptor-2 stay there. How? Using constant returns from the ground, the enemy AWACS radar, and everything in between, the F-22s can, at each moment, figure just how far away they need to be to stay invisible.
And the radars on the enemy fighters? Forget about it. Their jammer plane is there mostly out of habit.
The Raptors, already widely dispersed, spread out further — and Raptor-2 hits the gas. His goal — cruising at MAch 1.5 or so — is to sneak in around the back of the enemy AWACS and fire off an AMRAAM missile from 60 klicks behind the AWACS — or well over 100 miles away from the enemy fighters. Meanwhile, Raptor-1 flies lazy circles between the strike package and the strike package’s targets.
The AMRAAM is self-homing. Once fired, it seeks out the enemy using its own radar. So Raptor-2 shoots off two of them, just to be safe.
The AWACS will almost certainly detect the missiles coming in, even if it can’t see who fired it off. So it does two things: It directs two new fighters (Oh, no — now the odds are 14 vs 2!) towards the threat, and shuts off its radar dome.
Well. By turning off its big radar, it’s Mission Accomplished already for Raptor-2. Against the F-22, the enemy fighters were myopic even with an AWACS overhead. Without AWACS switched off, they’re flat-out blind. But it the AWACS’s panic move didn’t help — the AMRAAM isn’t an anti-radiation missile; it homes in on the plane, not the big, fat radar emissions. And against a AMRAAM, a converted passenger plane doesn’t stand a chance. The first missile takes off an engine and most of a wing. The second missile falls short, but it hardly matters.
With the AWACS gone, the AESA radars on the F-22 recompute, and tell their respective pilots that they can bring their jets in even closer to the enemy fighters. But first, Raptor-2 makes a quick getaway from those two new jets. Raptor-1, still turning those lazy circles, conserving fuel, turns back towards the strike package. First target: The enemy jammer plane.
So Raptor-1 looses a missile that way. It’s programable, and knows exactly who to aim for. Since the jammer jet is throwing out a lot of white noise, Raptor-1′s missile datalinks with both Raptors’ radars to triangulate on the right bad guy.
Raptor-1, fearing its missile launch might have given away its position, pushes the throttle down and takes up a new position 100 klicks away from the old one. With another missile coming in, the enemy strike package splits up. They do so at high speed — which seems glacially slow to Raptor-1 and -2.
Raptor-2 still has four longer-range missiles left. The computer very intelligently picks three of the enemy air-superiority fighters, but gets the fourth one wrong. The pilot overrides and launches his remaining AMRAAMs. Since his missile bay doors had to open for a few seconds, he turns quickly to another direction, gains altitude, and begins his own loiter.
The enemy jets detect the incoming missiles, but too late. Their jammer has just blown up, so now they know for sure that they’re naked. Naked, like naked-at-church naked. They split up in every direction, so long as it’s away from the incoming missiles. Which, of course, just herds them back toward Raptor-1 and his almost-full compliment of AMRAAMs.
At this point, the Raptors can take turns darting in and out of radar and missile range, herding the enemy into preselected kill zones. In the air, there’s simply no effective counter.
In other words, there’s no way to write this where it doesn’t end up with 14 enemy jets downed, and two Raptors supercruising their way back to Elmendorf AFB.
Anyway, that’s how I’d do it, knowing what I know (or can figure out) about the F-22. When you have speed, vision, range, and invisibility, this is how you fight — you never get in range of the bad guys, and you never shoot from the same place twice. And you never, ever let them see you sweat. Or let them see you at all.
If the F-22 has missiles better than the AMRAAM, then you can bet two things: The missile itself is stealthy, and perhaps has a longer range. End result: The same, only with even less risk to American pilots. Actually, one thing does change: Stealthy missiles (if we have them) mean the enemy jets don’t even get a chance to think about dispersing before most (if not all) of them burst into flame. But I know nothing about the feasibility or range of stealthy missiles, so I’m erring on the conservative side and giving Raptor-1 and -2 nothing better than mid-’90s era AMRAAMs. In real life, I’d expect the results to be even more science-fiction like than what I’ve just described.
My good friend Will Collier works on the F-22 weapons systems, and of course he’s never said to me anything he shouldn’t. And I’d always been a skeptic regarding the Raptor. But Will kept assuring me that they were worth the money — and I knew how much he hates Washington spending money it doesn’t need to. So I tried to figure out what could possibly make the Raptor so good. And I came up with the best answer I could think of: Networking.
Networking between the planes, between the planes and their missiles, and between the planes and even the other planes’ missiles. The result is coverage you can’t escape, and threats you can’t outsmart. And Will said: “Exactly.” I think he might even have clapped. On the other hand, we were both quite drunk at the time.
Anyway, how you best deploy networked weapons systems, capable of flying very fast and not being seen, is what I’ve tried to describe.
Bear in mind, please, that I’m not pilot. I’ve never served a day as even an airman in the Air Force. This is just what I’ve come up with, based as much on Monty Python’s “How Not to Be Seen” sketch as anything I know for sure. And yet mine is still a very lethal doctrine. Now, imagine what the “Jedi Knights,” who fly these things for real, have figured out how to do.
What the F-22 does is highly specialized work — that’s the primary reason Raptors cost so much. (Well, that and all the R&D which will reduce the flyaway cost of the F-35 and any future air-combat drones we’ll build in the future.) The F-35 is built for a different mission; it’s a strike fighter, not an air superiority fighter. Can it do the Raptor’s job?
Well, the F-35 has got the wrong airframe, the wrong radar, the wrong avionics, the wrong weapons compliment, not as much stealthiness, not as much speed, and the wrong pilot training. Oh, and it’s not in service yet and is two years behind schedule. Then again, American servicemen have a knack for digging trenches with screwdrivers, when the need arises.
So can the F-35 do the F-22′s job?
Maybe. Maybe even “probably.”
But more Americans will die to get that job done.
Another fair question is: Does that job even still exist? Are we spending tens of billions on the World’s Best Buggy Whip?
There’s no definitive answer to that question. If we ever have to fight China (or Russia, or “kick in the door” to Iran, or abort a Future Caliphate, or even knock Hugo Freakin’ Chavez and his Mini Russian Air Force down a notch), then the answer is “oh my yes.” The worst threat is China, and I’d put the odds of having to fight them at one-in-four and shrinking. But: These things can change, and quickly.
Fighter design, testing, procurement, and operationalizing takes decades.
Threats can materialize in months, or weeks. Or hours, if some smartypants catches the Coup Flu in Beijing, and needs to kick some shit in Taiwan to prove his mettle.
Eventually, someday, UAVs will do the Raptor’s job. But that day isn’t here yet. And in between, there will be a period when drones augment our F-22s, maybe long before they replace the Raptor. Or maybe we’ll always want humans in the skies.
With drones, each F-22 would become even more lethal. Each pilot could control an AWACS-like radar drone or two, expanding everyone’s godlike vision even farther out. And each Raptor could also co-pilot a UAV missile gunboat or four, exponentially increasing everyone’s lethality. The possibilities are endless — and unknown.
But for the foreseeable future, the question remains: Can our worst-case air-superiority needs be met by a mere 60 airframes in any given theater, or should we have a thicker margin of error?
Before you answer, remember that it’s the F-35 pilots who will have to pay — in blood — if we’ve measured our needs short. All you’ll have saved is a little money.
FULL DISCLOSURE: My wife works for Lockheed-Martin, the primary contractor for the F-22. However, none of the programs she’s involved in are in any way related to the Raptor, its weapons, or any of its subsystems.
Nice article. I hadn’t seen all the pieces (and speculation) put together quite this way before. Something to think about.
If the networking capabilities are as potent as you think they are, then I sure hope they’ve been “hardened” against on-the-fly hacking. The bad guys have some pretty good smarts in that area. We’re going to have to employ some extra sci-fi chewiness, way beyond frequency hopping and encryption key switching. I can’t even imagine how much work has to be put into this to make it as flawless as possible. Five 9s would be considered a proximate first step in the reliability and redundancy features.
Good to know we’re killing of production of the rest of these beasts. :/ How much work would it take to retrofit some of our older airframes with these networking capabilities, though? Granted, they wouldn’t have the stealth, but having God’s vision in an older body ain’t a bad thing!
Can you say “force multiplier?” I knew you could. In fact, you just did.
Mike –
Will Collier emailed to say he thinks the anti-radar role is even more important than the Raptor’s air superiority mission. I thought about that last night when I wrote this, but was at least one martini too late to think that hard.
But maybe next week…
Like the write up, good ideas for how it would go in a real fight. With the networking, think one of the Dale Brown books (Day of the Cheetah I think) and have the plane control 2 or 3 drones to use as either bait or the trap in a combat scenario. MPW
As a retired USAF combat fighter pilot, I’ll give you a big thumbs up on that summary. The clearest explanation of the concept and the issue. We simply can’t equip the force for the next 30+ years based on the counter-insurgency of today. We also can’t equip at the level of a small third-world AF. The current buy of 187 when looking at development airframes, training units and normal attrition leaves you with less than five squadrons operational world wide.
F-35 will be remarkable but it isn’t now, never was, and never will be an air dominance fighter. It is a synergistic weapon to work with the Raptor, not as the replacement.
(mpw280: Skip the Dale Brown concepts. Fantasy of a BUFF-nav, nothing more.)
Thanks for the thumbs up, Ed. I just sent the link to my father-in-law, who flew Phantoms over Vietnam and Vipers all over Europe and the Med. I’m hoping he doesn’t poke too many holes in my thinking!
Nice article…
As someone who’s been in the business, so to speak, and utilized stand-off weapons systems(AIM-54 Phoenix), I can say that your scenario is not too fanciful, and probably very close to the truth…
As NukemHill said, a lot is riding on how hardened the networking is. But, I can see these playing not only an invaluable air superiority role, but a “wild weasel” one as well.
That’s why I’m so dismayed at the short sightedness of the F-22′s opponents. While there are admittedly bugs to be ironed out vis-a-vis maintenance and the actual skin and coatings of the aircraft, this is not uncommon nor unheard of; anyone remember how the Bradley vehicles were “deathtraps” and the M-1 Abrams a “useless boondoggle”..? And the critics that point to the price disingenuously mask that the unit price decreases with the number of aircraft fielded, as the R&D costs are amortized over a greater population.
The F-22 is not only important now, for air superiority and perhaps anti-radar roles, but as a bridge to the future; one that will include fleets of UAV’s accompanying one human piloted vehicle in the battlespace of tomorrow.
Interesting. My biggest concern is that we are well into the age of asymmetric warfare and can be pretty much assured that we will be challenged to fight the war we are NOT ready for.
So, if we are not ready to seize air supremacy in a main force confrontation, you can expect that someone will put us in a position where we have to achieve it without the proper tools or force structure.
Given the choice, if I can’t have it all, I might prefer to deter the conventional main force attacks that directly and immediately threaten my vital interests and even homeland, and accept some risk that I might have to deal with far-away insurgencies in a somewhat ad hoc manner.
The really scary thing is that I don’t see the geniuses in Washington thinking even two steps ahead.
Very compelling analysis! When you say you calculate the odds of having to fight the Chinese as being one in four and shrinking, do you mean shrinking to one in two or shrinking to one in eight?
Marty, that is because for a politician, thinking two steps ahead means thinking about the next election.
Windy –
Shrinking in the good way – becoming less likely.
One other theoretical tidbit that may or may not be applicable here, is that one way to overcome stealth technology (i.e., to find and identify stealthy planes) is through processing simultaneous data from multiple radars. Just saying….
I’m still struggling to grasp the political angle of this. These kind of actions don’t need to make sense technically or strategically, but they ALWAYS have to make sense politically.
Is it possible that F-35 production will be centered in some more favorable districts? And/or are the major contractors for the F-35 better politically connected? That could explain a lot.
And then again, Obama has promised to cut defense spending by 10%. Maybe they’re killing the F-22 now, because they can. And while they’re making claims that the F-35 will fill the role of the missing F-22’s, they’ll try to limit F-35 production too, a few years down the road….
While I’m a fan of the F22, I am appaled at the price gouging we are facing on it. That’s why the F22 is such an attractive political target. Its a big ticket item that’s a sympton of the problem rather than the problem itself. The Congress, the GAO, and the Pentagon need to seriously revisit the entire procurement process. Too many contractors know that they can run crazy with budgets, and count on America’s concern for the safety of its soldiers to cover the bill. Its not even viewed as shady, its just how business is done. I don’t think its a choice between dime-store procurement and solid-gold fighters, there should be a middle ground.
On the network aspect, I thought that was already established. The last scenario for the F22 I saw was 2 F22′s vs 24 Fulcrums, resulting in partial damage for 1 F22 and all 24 Fulcrums being destroyed, which is pretty amazing considering the F22 doesn’t carry enough missles to kill 22. But the scenario was actually 2 F22′s and 2 B1(R) missle carriers. The F22′s get in close then light up the Fulcrums for the modified Lancers which are carrying 10 or 12 AMRAAMs each. B1′s launch from long range, then turn and supercruise out (the B1R will have the same engine design as the F22) while the F22′s pick over the remains. Really, its not even sporting.
I like the concept of drones, but I beleive they all use satelite telemetry. Since we already know the Chinese plan to knock out our satelites, I think they have a pretty significant achilles heal. Same reason I’m not a huge fan of the JDAM.
Obama wants to cut the F-22 and missile defense so he won’t have to apologize further for American superiority.
Nice scenario. Assuming that the enemy isn’t working like Chinese demons to defeat it. Having worked on the F-35 program at LMA Forth Worth myself, I’ll confirm that the F-35 isn’t an F-22, and it isn’t intended to be. It’s a multi-role airplane that’s supposed to follow the F-22 into enemy airspace with stores targeted for ground assets, but able to defend itself if need be.
History tells us (if only we will listen) that the Chinese WILL try for military hegemony at some point, and we’ll need all the technology we can deploy when that day comes. Unless there’s something much, much better than the F-22 in the Skonk Works, we’d better have as many as we can get. Quantity has a quality all its’ own.
BTW the SOUND of that engine is just awesome, and the thrust is equally so. I watched a test flight takeoff of an F-35 one day. The two F-16 chase planes that dive in to join with the thing just after takeoff had to light their burners to keep up, even though the F-35 had only just tucked away it’s gear. Like watching two Honda CRVs trying to keep up with a Corvette.
Jeez, Merlin, all I’ve been hearing is how heavy the single-engine Lightning II is, and now you tell me it can smoke Vipers?
Maybe the plane doesn’t suck that bad after all.
Mauther, you really don’t understand how much work, research, and time went into the F-22 R&D, do you? State of the art, bleeding-edge projects will always be expensive. The trick is to run the production line long enough that the fly-away price drops to a sane level, which is why come congresscritters are trying to get the Raptor unlocked for export. Certainly Australia, Japan, and Israel would like to get some.
I’m less worried about how many is “enough,” than what happens when we shut down the production line? As Stephen has pointed out more than once, after that line is gone, we’ll never see another Raptor built, and 187 ain’t that many, especially in a shooting war.
Old joke: when you’re short of everything but the enemy, you’re in combat. If we get into a shooting fight, we’ll see ready rates go down, unpredicted shortfalls of parts & support, and un-flyable F-22s in hangers.
I’ve said it in previous threads, and repeat it here: smart tactics and smart pilots can beat “better” planes. Just because we haven’t come up with a solution doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and the enemy always has a vote.
The USAF could have given the supporters of the F-22 a huge boost by using it in Iraq or Afghanistan. Even a symbolic use would’ve been something. That fact hurt its standing and might’ve made a difference in the budget disuputes. We are always preparing for the last war.
Sorry, I just can’t believe that our Military and Government leadership can just say “Oh, too expensive, No competition at this time, Not needed!! I flew seven models of KC-135′s in my career, and I, like the Captain in the movie “Tuskegee Airman” want the best to protect my ass. Yes , we have budget problems; but, robbing our safety and future by going “half-assed” is sucide. Of course we haven’t used the F-22 in a combat role. WAKE UP! It is an AIR SUPERIORITY Weapon system. The US has not used an AIR SUPERIORITY system since Gulf War 1; and, that system was the F-15. Oh yes, it was, What, at least 15 years old. If we had still been using F-105′s, F-4′s, and F-100′s: I, don’t think the overwhelming numbers would have happened. So, let’s re-think this thing and stop making it political. Remember this; in WWII, it wasn’t until we had the P-51 before we really gained AIR SUPERIORITY over the Nazi’s; and, we started behind the eight ball. The next threat will not allow us to have the spool-up and build-up time. It will be OVER!
American troops have not had an enemy bomb dropped on their heads in over 50 years. The last American soldiers to die from an enemy bombing attack were killed on Chondu Island Korea on April 15, 1953. The American military has been so successful at establishing and maintaining Air Supremacy and Air Superiority that it is often assumed whenever anyone discusses or wargames future military conflicts.
The sad fact is, regardless of how you feel about the F-22, our ability to fly fighter, bomber, and refueling aircraft continues to atrophy as the nation turns its back on procuring new planes to replace the aging fleets our maintenance crews heroically continue to repair and prepare for their aircrews.
Steve, you have very ably captured the picture, the scenario and the result. It is sad that we continue to place ourselves as far behind our adversaries as we think we can get away with and challenge our Warrior Force to overcome the Politics and the Military Budget shortfalls.
I am very pleased that you put real Pilots in the cockpits Steve, it would have really hurt to have a member of my own Family forsake the manned Fighter. Excellent writing!