Comments by "Geoffrey Lyons" (@granatmof) on "Max Afterburner"
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There isn't going to be any major improvements to the F22. It's how it is. The SU57 "could" improve, but Russia doesn't have the resources. The F22 is the superior fighter and the 57 is an attempt for Russia to say they're keeping up with 90s US technologies. They're not.
And as far as the shoot down of the F117 is concerned, that was a failure of operational policies, not a failure of stealth. The F117 followed the same path and schedule as it had done the previous night. The ground radar scanned once, and got nothing. Stealth was a success. The radar crew scanned a second time, stealth was a success. At this point any radar commander would have boot and scoot to avoid any anti radar missiles, but instead they broke protocol and scanned a third time, and got the hit right as the bay doors were opening on the F117.
As far as competition goes, the arguments of onee VS the other are meaningless outside of air shows. The fact is, neighter of these would go head to head one on one. The US is going to have other resources in the sky in a Top Gun like situation. The SU 57 is exportable, the F22 is not. The US has decoy missiles, hunter seeker anti radar missiles.
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I'm saying this having watched the movie.
The F18 was chosen for the movie because the two seat capacity of the F18 allowed the actors to actually be able to get in the aircraft while in the air. If the F35 was used, there would be nothing they could have flown for practical effects.
As for Maverick's Age, remember this was made in like 2019, and was in development hell through the pandemic. Cruise was lower age, and more believable.
As for the mission capacity in the movie, I'm surprised there aren't more videos online breaking down how the missions parameters they used and handwaved in the film isn't how the mission would have proceed. That's not to say I don't respect the writers for addressing the obvious elephants in the room, and gave the audience reason to suspend their disbelief. For one of the issue is electronic warfare, the Navy alhas the E18 growler to shut everything down, they have radar seeking missiles. They will use the F35C from a distance to laze the target for another system to launch a missile. They will just bomb it with cruise missiles and bunker busters, like they did the airfield. Or since it's the Navy, they'll send marine force recon to get eyes on target for a missile strike. The path they take is a little more than 2 minutes long by flight, so less than 50 miles. Marines can make that in a week no problem while evading enemy patrols. They'd also be able to deliver instant updates on target strikes.
That said, the death star run they created for the movie is so much more better than anything they could have created.
At the time it was made, the SU57 was considered a possible threat, but if the 5th Gen fighters, the SU57 is the least capable and is more akin to a F18 in capabilities with added stealth. Also since the movie was made, there's been like 14 SU57s in the world. The countries that ordered them have canceled their orders because of ongoing developement and reliability issues, if you can believe it from a Russia weapon system. But the way the SU 57 fights isn't how it would go down. "5th Gen fighters" are about engaging from long distance. As soon as the F14 is determined to be an enemy, the solution is to let it get away and fire missiles at it until it dies. Ironically enough the f14 has the capacity to fliy at a higher speed than the Su57, though it can't make the same tight turns, but it still can't outrun missiles. The fight is therefore the result of gross tactical error by the Su57, and reasonable that Maverick could win against a worse pilot. If a fighter is close enough to use guns they're too close, and the 57s got too close.
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Think you make a good point about the US military combined arms doctrine. The F22 was designed to fit inside a specific niche in the American arsenal, and what it's going to do its going to do extremely well.
The F22 is being mothballed without ever engaging in an air to air combat. The US military hasn't engaged in a peer adversary with an air force since maybe the 90s and generally the US is quick to take command of the skies.
Even if the F22 has smaller weapon capacity, is an older design, and has outdated sensor packages the air force doesn't want to budget upgrading or replacing, I'd still hand it to the F22 in air to air combat against really any of the adversarial competition. I'm not sure if the safety limits on the air frames were ever pushed to see what the air frame was really capable of, although I know it can turn fast enough to knock out most pilots.
The Air Force wouldn't be retiring the f22 if they considered the "5th Gen" fighters from China and Russia to be of any significant threat. Russia has demonstrated its a paper tiger, and I don't think China quite has the engineering capability to innovate an advanced fighter instead of simply cribbing from American notes. China is still really a generation away from the educational legacies and conventions of producing quality innovative engineers who don't copy off of others, and with the authoritative cultural structure, I'm not sure if they ever will. China needs societal shifts to really become the powerhouse it has the potential to be. It seems more like human wave tactics applied to visibly engineered systems from China. Plus China at this point is completely untested in combat. Battle plans are the first casualty when making contact with the enemy, as Russia found out.
I still see the f22 and F35 as really experimental platforms for US aerospace defense. There's technologies that were proved to be capable of being developed in the program. Personally, Im really curious what the Air Force has been developing off the books for the last 20 years since the planes were deployed.
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@roseivory8496 no nation in the world attacks with out of date tech if they don't have to. The goal is to hit fast and hard to achieve overwhelming battlefield dominance that the oppositional force has no choice to surrender. Longer conflicts do mean that nations may develope newer weapons during the war that they roll out as they become ready. Look at Desert Storm/Sword. Coalition Forces hit the 4th largest military in the world, fast and overwhelmingly. Stealth fighters fly around the world to attack communications infrastructure before the main assault begins. Attack choppers fly low to the gore to evade radar to take out key forward radar locations. With the gap in the radar the assemble air assault begins in earnest. It's and overwhelming onslaught. Weeks later, the Coalition forces push in with the latest and greatest Abrams and Bradleys. At certain battles, a couple dozen take out hundred of enemy tanks. How? By using the latest and greatest technology first.
Russia has not used the SU57 in any meaningful role. Why? Because it's the Bismark: its expensive, there's few of them, and it's deployment has a greater loss than benefit should it fail in combat, even accidentally. If Russia had dozens of them, they could risk losing them. Instead they have maybe a single dozen with carrying states of unreadiness.
However I'm biased. I'm and American, and I think Russia is a big loser. They used to be great, but a culture of corruption from the top down to the bottom has hollowed any any greatness. American readiness is certainly effected by inefficieny. But overall, the US fields the largest and best military in the world bar none. Us military hegemony has protected most of Europe from major conflict for nearly 80 years, and American engineering prowess and scientific and technological research and contributions have completely transformed the world in those 80 years. No matter where you are in the world, if youre reading this, it's on a American website, accessed from a device probably using American made hardware running an operating system made or influenced by American companies. You're on the internet, when has its earliest roots in American military research, and ethernet protocols developed by Americans, so much so IP address used to be assigned by an American based group, which is why the US government has such a dominant market share of IP addresses. What have been Soviet or Russian contributions to global peace and global trade and global technological advancements? There's been plenty. But they're under whelming next to the overwhelming American contributions.
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