Can a F-22 fly like this?

[1K3]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
I didn't know Asia was European. Glad my kids don't attend the skools you do.

On a serious note, the F-15K is it still based on an airframe that's roughly what, 34 years old now? It's really reached it limits compared to the newer 21st century fighters that are NOT being exported, like the F-22.

what I'm trying to say is that US still exports advanced weaponry.

[mandingo]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
I think I'll listen to a real military jet pilot before the opinion of an online gamer.

 

[/B][/QUOTE]

ok mary, dont forget your starbucks.

[JB73]

Originally posted by eagl
...The F-22 remains fully controllable through the demo and does not rely on the natural or computer-enhanced stability of the plane to recover from any airshow maneuvers....

I will say if you watch close seeing the elevators move opposite of each other a few times amazed me.


but my question is this? does the pilot have independent control over each elevator? if so how?


or am what I see as elevators really function as ailerons?

pretty confusing if you ask me.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by mandingo

ok mary, dont forget your starbucks. [/B]

I don't drink coffee.

[AKIron]

Originally posted by Wes14
wonder who would win in a good ol' fashion Cannon dogfight

I would say that it'll never come down to that but I think they made that mistake several decades ago. I think we're just gonna need a good old fashioned air war to really prove superiority.

[eagl]

JB,

I think the technical term is stabilators, although we called them merely the "horizontal stabs" in the F-15 even though they do move somewhat independently to provide both roll and pitch control.

But yes, the left and right horizontal stabs on the tail of all modern US fighters will move independently to provide both pitch and roll, and any associated yaw moment produced by the independent movement is also accounted for in the flight control laws.  The pilot doesn't have *direct* independent control over each individual stab, because the fighters still have conventional controls.  Instead, the flight control laws will interpret the pilot's control inputs based on a set of predictable rules and move ALL control surfaces appropriately in order to make the plane maneuver as directed.

As a simple example, at high angles of attack with the control stick pulled back, the F-15E flight control laws reduce aileron deflections to near zero in order to control adverse yaw, prevent tipstalls, and avoid spins, so rolls at high AOA in the F-15E are accomplished primarily through differential deflection of the horizontal stab and rudder.  To make the ailerons move more, the stick must be moved forward first.  However the pilot inputs for rolls remain the same, lateral control stick movement, at any angle of attack and any stick position.

This is of course not true in older aircraft such as military trainers.  In the T-37 and T-38, if you get to high angle of attack and move the stick left or right, the ailerons will still move.  That means in order to maneuver at the edges of the flight envelope in older/simpler planes like our trainers, the pilot must know and understand how the aerodynamic forces work for that particular plane.  With the modern fighters, you should understand aerodynamics but it's more important to know how the plane will maneuver in response to any given control input, based on it's particular flight control laws.

Example - In the T-37, if I want to rapidly yaw the plane to the right or begin a right-hand spin rotation, all I have to do is pull the stick back until the plane is in a mild stall or approach to stall condition, and add in some rudder.  That makes the nose slice very nicely in a spin entry (or snap roll if going too fast).  In the F-15E, to do the same thing I need to get the plane to a medium-high AOA first, add in pro-rotation rudder, but then move the stick slightly forward (to regain aileron authority) and maybe add aileron opposite of the desired rotation direction.  If done right, the F-15E will pirouette on command, just like a T-37 entering a spin.  Neither maneuver breaks the laws of aerodynamics and both can be dangerous maneuvers if accomplished un-intentionally, but if you know what you're doing then it's just one more "feature" of that plane's flight envelope, completely predictable (and avoidable) and controllable.

The F-22 simply takes this all to the next level.  While the Flanker and it's advanced variants can maneuver to extreme angles of attack, the plane and software is not designed to allow full controllability throughout the entire flight regime that can be entered.  It's a bit like entering a tail-slide in an F-15...  It's possible to get an F-15 to a ludicrous angle of attack, but once you're there, you're along for the ride until the pointy end goes back into the wind.  The Flanker is a heck of a lot better at that than the F-15, but the F-22's next-gen flight controls are designed to keep the plane controllable longer than any other operational fighter in the world.  It's still not a UFO and you're not going to see airshow pilots flying it around backwards or sideways for any length of time, and it's yaw control isn't nearly as authoritative as it's pitch/roll control, but it's designed to be controllable at flight-path angles that would be considered completely uncontrollable just a few years ago.  As far as total yaw control goes, I think not having total yaw control was probably the result of a combination of cost and stealth tradeoffs.  3-D vectoring nozzles would probably be a lot more costly or reduce the stealthy nature of the plane (or both), and at high angles of attack you can use pitch/roll/yaw coupling to get the nose pointed pretty much wherever you want it even without full authority in one axis.

[JB73]

THANK you eagl, that was a great explanation, and sadly (in a cool flight sim geeky way) I get it

Just to make sure though, if I may condense a bit... flying something like that makes you "re-learn" flying at some even basic levels. In AH and in a "real" plane I know what is going to happen when I move X,Y,Z axis, and let's just take simple spin procedures, nose down, rudder opposite spin...

the flight controls of the F22, or even "older" planes like the F15 you mention are "overridden" but the computer, and do not actually move the control surfaces exactly as you input them?


saying in situation "A" a high nose roll would not be accomplished in the same way as oh let's say a Cessna 152?


granted the higher degree of maneuverability and overall control is a huge plus it must make for hulla training in those planes.

[eagl]

JB,

Once you understand the principle and relax to the inevitable (heh), it's not as tough as it seems.  Once you accept that moving the stick laterally will cause a roll, you don't really need to memorize *how* the plane makes that happen unless you're going to be teaching the subject or you want to be the next red baron.  The system is designed to be predictable and intuitive across the entire flight regime, so all you have to do is practice until you instinctively know what the plane is capable of doing in various situations and remember the few situations where the plane will turn around and bite you if you do the wrong thing.  Overall, it makes the planes easier and easier to fly each generation.  You spend less time thinking about how to fly and more time working on the tactical employment problem at hand.

But yea, to some extent you do need to re-learn how to fly.  But it's so easy, it's just not a problem.  Example - Even for an experienced fighter pilot, it takes 15 or more rides to become qualified to fly a T-37 (not instruct in it, just fly the damn thing).  It takes 6 rides to become qualified to fly an F-15E.

T-37 qual - 15+ rides.
F-15E qual - 6 rides.

I dunno how long it takes to get the basic qual in an F-22 and there is probably a lot of academics and many simulator rides before the first flight just because it's so expensive, but the basic instrument qualification checkride can't take more than a handful of rides to accomplish.

[AKIron]

I dunno if it was intentional or not but the F-22 in the video appeared to be in a flat spin after climbing out vertically for while. Was this a perhaps subtle display of complete controllabilty?

[JB73]

oh I get it, it is just amazing from a layman like myself.

1 intro flight in a 152 and I want to PWN the skies LOL

the way you explained it first with the situation of moving the stick forward to get the ailerons to actuate threw me, but now I "get it"


anyway <> to you sir for doing what you do!

[eagl]

AKIron,

In one of the vids linked in the thread, the F-22 does the vertical thing, starts the flat spin-like turn, but then pulls the nose up, stops the turn, and then starts turning the other direction before recovering back to level flight.  It should all be part of the demo.  One of the videos also showed a clip from operational testing that included a sharp pull-up followed by a yawing turn reversal that looked a lot like a hammerhead stall turn.  That was intentional.

[AKIron]

Maybe it's just my patriotism but in yer face control while falling flat is much kewler than that cober manuver.

[Elfie]

Originally posted by mandingo
Su37 is much more maneuverable than the F22, from what I know it has thrust vectoring in all directions, unlike the F22 which is primarily thrust vectoring in pitch.  

Which is fine, it doesn't hurt my American centric ego to admit that the F22 wasn't designed to be super maneuverable, it was designed to destroy planes from far away without being detected.  The thrust vectoring is only a bonus, not its main benefit.  

But the Su37 does look pretty evil...

One thing I saw about the F-22's thrust vectoring was that the yaw thrust vectoring was left out because it was determined that the yaw on the F-22 was already so good that it wasn't needed.

The F-22 was designed to be super maneuverable and stealthy and fast. It was also designed to dominate the sky, not just control it. I suspect there are many things we won't know about the F-22 for a long, long time.

If you check out eagl's posts, he points out that while the Su-37 can do very extreme maneuvers, in many instances while coming out of said maneuver it is uncontrollable. The F-22 otoh remains maneuverable at all times despite extreme AoA. I would think the F-22 would beat an Su-37 quite handily just based on that.

I gotta admit though, the Su-37 does look sexier than the F-22 does.

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by john9001
yadayadayada, americans build crap, your-o-peeans build better planes, cars, wine, hammers, saws, motorcycles, bicycles, toothpicks, and the euro is better than the dollar.

it gets boring.

John, I love my country, but the blood my family shed for it does not constitute blind loyalty to everything that is produced by it.
I'm only forming an opinion from the words of the colonel who was in charge of the development of the program.....but what does he know....


"Ultra-High Performance

The F–22 does not provide a Great Leap Forward in performance relative to the F–15C or MiG-29.At 65,000 lbs, with 18,500–18,750 lbs of fuel, with two nominal 35,000 lb thrust engines—it has the thrust to weight ratio of the F–15C, the fuel fraction of the F–15C, and a wing loading that is only slightly inferior to that of the F–15C, so it will accelerate, climb, and maneuver much like the F–15C for reasons of basic physics.

There are two differences from the F–15—thrust vectoring and supersonic speeds in dry thrust. Thrust vectoring allows the F-22 to maneuver controllably at sub-stall speeds, which other aircraft cannot. This, in the helicopter speed domain, is in seeming contradiction to an aircraft designed for supersonic engagement with slashing attacks using its beyond visual range missiles.

The flight test program to validate maneuverability is utterly inadequate. Using a single number—the maximum steady-state G at 30,000 ft at 0.9 Mach—on an aircraft that operates from 40 knots to beyond Mach 2, from sea level to above 60,000 ft is a throwback to the Dark Ages of aircraft evaluation. Proper presentations are global, all-altitude all-speed plots at the two major power settings. They must be compared to friendly and enemy aircraft. Comparison reveals progress, the whole truth, and even allows the formulation of battle tactics.


Stealth

The F–22 is not a Stealthy Aircraft.

Stealth means the proper suppression of all its important “signatures”—Visual Signature, Radar Signature, Infrared Signature, Electromagnetic Emissions, and Sound.

Visually—The F–22, one of the world’s largest, most identifiable fighters, cannot hide in daylight. Its role is in daylight. Stealth operations are night operations. Unfortunately stealth against radar invariably increases the size of a fighter making it more visible.

The radar signature is utterly inadequately reported.
Only a single data number is provided to congressional committees and the GAO—the average radar signature in the level forward direction within 20 degrees of the nose, presumably to enemy fighter radars. In the B-1B reporting fiasco, the 100/1 signature advantage over the B-52 became a real 1.8/1. One cannot design an aircraft to simultaneously hide from low and medium frequency ground radars and from high frequency airborne fighter radars. Properly, all the data should be portrayed and reported—for all azimuths, for all “latitudes,” and for all radar frequencies. Single data points constitute lying by omission and gross incompleteness.

The temperature increases of supersonic cruising flights make the F-22s beacons in the sky to infrared sensors."

(Col. Everest E. Riccioni)   (released Freedom of Information Act)



The F-22 is overhyped... a great plane... but overhyped.  The JSF will be much better though.. Yet, in a clear ACM, inside of visual range... I'd take my chances with a plane with a 1.4:1 thrust to weight ratio, and a 240 degree per second roll rate. (The Gripen)It's smaller (harder to spot) and more agile than the F-22, and carries the same weapon load.  (AIM9x and AAMRAAM, with the new METEOR being phased in)   F22 range is superior... but we weren't comparing that... we said ACM.  Pilot being the factor... in the hands of equals... I'll take the Gripen.


FYI... I did find stuff about an exercise in Alaska, where a Gripen squadron came over and ACM'd an F22 squadron to a kill ratio of 20:1... but I can't confirm it anywhere....There was a link to a defense newsletter, but the link came up down.

[ForrestS]

(correct me if im wrong)I dont think its really about maneverability anymore. Its who can fire the farthest away without being seen.

Btw i saw the Red Flag thingy in OKC's Omnidome.