What can save American top tier air?

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
506

More than enough to annihilate an entire armored column when its loaded with GBU-53/Spice 250 racks.

This question has been asked so many times online as a sort of gotcha against the F-35. And the answer has always been the same. Because you’d end up spending more money. With the F-15E, you need some CAP escort, some SEAD to go along with it, probably some stealth fighters for deep strikes, and so on. So when you’re sending it somewhere where it would face a decent opponent, you need a whole lot of other squadrons coming alongside it and all the maintenance, fuel, etc. It’s expensive and a logistical nightmare.

With only 1 F-35 Squadron, you can do all of these missions progressively, ranging from deep CAS in stealth configuration to radar hunting, to CAP, to heavy CAS once the AA is dead.

507

Can someone in short tell me If F-22 is better, worse or equal to Rafale and Eurofighter in dogfight?

508

Better

509

At equal pilot skill, so much better its one sided.

510

They can ride the hype train all they want but it’s probably only marginally better.

Certainly much better at low speed. But the eft has monster power and can likely extend in the canted vertical and win.

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511

But why?

What actually puts it so far ahead of everything else?

It gets sensor fusion? So does the all the Euro-deltas
Its get a good HMD? So does the EFT
Its get a good radar? so does the Euro-delta

The only thing really unique for the F-35 is the 360 IRST

512

The F-35 can tell you the location of every person on the ground it’s that silly.

It’s got very good range on internal fuel alone even the B.

The HMS shows more things a full 360 and the radar is probably equal to the eft:

513

But isn’t that also true for F-22? It has Thrust to weight ratio of 1.27 at 50% fuel, At least that what i was able to calculate

514

So more or less than the 18x Brimstone/Spear the Typhoon can carry?

and bar the SEAD, why cant a Euro-delta do the same?

it can fit more A2A weapons at the same time as carrying more A2G weapons than an F-35 in a single role?

Its literally just seems to be massively overhyped to me

515

I’ll post my calculation here so if something is wrong one of you guys can point it out

516

It is and it isn’t

Think tornado Gr.4 vs harrier Gr.9 they can do a lot of what the other can but in some areas one is better:

517

Too many factors to consider

Guns only or are we talking IRIS-T vs Aim-9X?

High alt or low alt?

1v1 or 2v2?

A lot of factors could change the outcome.

US mains will always say the F-22 will win easily. But reality is that its probably quite close, but in-game that wont matter, because US mains are terrible and will probably still have a bad K/D with it

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518

It can’t jam missiles while notching or going cold though.

519

Yeah, but there is an attitude that the F-35 is always better. No matter what the situation, the F-35 will be superior

520

1V1 same pilot skill guns only

leave them out of this. They are stupid I seriously want to know now and get as much info as i can

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521

The truth is no one knows unless they have performance charts of both F-22 and Rafale in front of them.

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522

Purely gun only?

F-22 probably, but I wouldnt go as far as to say the F-22 would always win. Like I have actually gotten gunkills vs F-20s in the Tornado GR4

523

More, it can carry 24 GBU-53. 8 internally, and 8 on each wing.

524

Well no and we both understand that.

In limited numbers as a strike aircraft operating in enemy territory the eft is outclassed significantly by the F-35.

If you just want to blow up as much stuff as you can eft is much better.

525

With no A2A missile though right? and no stealth

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