Comments by "Geoffrey Lyons" (@granatmof) on "F-22 vs J-20 | Thunderbird Fighter Pilot Reacts" video.

  1. Important note about stealth. Stealth isn't about being invisible, but reducing visibility and radar cross section. If you see a goose on radar flying at Mach 1, you know it's something, but you don't know if its a missile, artillery, or a plane, and you may not be able to spot that goose until it's too close to do anything about it. Higher resolution radar, better intelligience and computational resources will eventually defeat current US stealth systems. The Air Force was hoping the stealth could last until the 2040s, but it may be closer to the 2030s. The Air Force is already considering mothballing the F35 and just ended the f22.
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  2. 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 Even if the F22 has smaller weapon capacity, is an older design, and has outdated sensor packages the air force doesn't want to budget upgrading or replacing, I'd still hand it to the F22 in air to air combat against really any of the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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