Comment upgrade: F-22 v. Su-37

I asked Dave Fulghum, our Senior Military Editor at Aviation Week, if he'd seen the F-22 from the Langley air show and pointed him to the post where I put it up. Dave left some great comments on that post, and I'm moving them over here to their own post.

Turns out David wasn't that impressed with the F-22 maneuvers, because he's seen the Su-47 before:

This demonstration is interesting, particularly the low-speed, low-altitude 360 degree somersault, but it was nowhere near as exciting as the Russian displays I saw at the Moscow air show a few years ago. The reverse sweep Su-47 Berkat, was literally doing somersault after somersault at low speed and low altitude. (That's where the Russian air defense engineers told us they had the pieces of the F-117 that was shot down in Serbia.) I know the F-22 can do some incredible maneuvering, but most of their work is done at altitude and involves quick vertical and horizontal changes in direction (see Aviation Week & Space Technology Jan.8, 2007 special report on J-turns, high-alpha turns and the Cobra with the F-22). They're not doing that at the air shows -- so far, anyway. In the operational squadrons there is a lot of emphasis on doing what the aircraft is supposed to do operationally and not on developing an air show routine. Also, you won't see what the F-22 is capable of as long as it's at low altitude. However, I suspect the envelope will expand as time goes on. But in the U.S., there are a lot of safety rules to be observed. So, interesting, but not stunning, yet.

Ok, that sent me to YouTube to find the right Sukhoi footage.

Let's start with this one of the Su-37, which actually shows the more impressive maneuvering (unfortunately, embedding for this video is disabled, so you'll have to click over to YouTube to see it). You also see the thrust nozzles move from pretty close up, and there are some nice diagrams that help show what's going on. (I'm sure the Russian explanations are very helpful, too ;-)

Next we have video of the Su-47 with its distinctive reverse sweep wing. The maneuvers aren't as impressive in this one, but still worth watching:

Credit to Big Rocket, who first pointed to the Sukhoi's superior maneuverability in the comments.

Next, a commenter calling himself Small Rocket maligned the F-22:

You have GOT to be kidding (reference to original blog entry). This is STEALTHY? Its big, you can hear it coming no doubt its loud, you can DEFINITELY see it coming -- so much for stealth, what a joke. So what, it can fly straight up. For $250 million, we get a plane that can make some tight turns? Big whoopy do.

Dave answered:

What you get with the F-22 is an incredible intelligence collecting platform that can penetrate sophisticated air defenses to collect at close range. Physics is physics, and getting closer to electronic emissions lets you analyze them faster and with more accuracy. The F-22 is going to be important for establishing an almost instantaneous electronic order of battle, creating situational awareness for any friendly with a datalink, electronic attack and identifying and targeting aircraft and other objects for conventional aircraft at ranges of over 100 naut.mi.

I'll interject here, too, that Small Rocket is either making a joke about stealth or doesn't know what he's talking about. No airframe is stealthy within 100 yards and over the airfield. Stealth means relative 'invisibility' to radar and has to do with low observability, radar absorbing materials, etc.

Dave continues:

I just doubled checked my memory with Robert Wall, Aviation Week's Paris bureau chief. He says, indeed it was the Su-47 that was so spectacular and that compared to the F-22 airshow demonstration, "The Su-35 with its all-axis thrust vector control and the similarly fitted mig-29 (OVT I believe) also are more spectacular. Of course, a nice cobra maneuver is good for air shows, but I'd rather have supercruise and an AESA radar in combat." And with that I'd agree.

The strengths of the F-22 are impressive: engaging and re-engaging from 100 miles away at up to 65,000 ft. (even the latest Sukhoi's have a service ceiling of about 57-59,000 ft.), so there never is a dogfight; and electronics that allow it to identify targets that far away, engage in electronic attack, and gather  and coordinate intelligence.

It maneuvers well, but the plan, should it ever come to combat with late-model Sukhois, is to shoot them down before their weapons ever get in range.

--Dave Fulghum and Sean Meade

Comments

[Bill]

Just a note WRT to the "Cobra" manuever done by Russian aircraft (or at least the Su-37) - this tears up their engines. They essentially have to replace them after this.

[Peter Rutten]

Yah,

But what is the Su-37 oilots decide NOT to use their electronic equipment and have acces to equipment that can detect emissions of the F-22. After all, any radio or radar emits. Without a return signal there is no way to know the presence of an aircraft. This would negate the long distance advantage of the F-22. On the short range the visual or infra red spectrum becomes more important.

So it seems that the effectiveness of the F-22 is much dependent on the opponent not detecting any emissions of the F-22. That seems to me a rather shaky assumption.

It seems that this kind of warfare is more evolving in 'the first one to emit (anything) is being shot at by a sneaker.

So it would more look like the submarine warfare of sneaking around till the next guy makes a mistake.

So it seems that Stealth is usefull but rather overvalued. The trick it seems is to have sensors outside any strike range of the opponent. The scenario it seems for the oposition would be to knock out AWACS and other AEW assets as quick as possible at an as long distance as possible. This would negate quite a bit of the network info adanvantage and reduce much of the fighting to a close in knife fight where infra red quided missiles and guns are of more importance than long range radar guided ordnance.

How impressive the F-22 may look, I would not put all my money on a safe bet myself. It would be unwise not to expect the opponent try to find new tactics to negate the F-22 advantages.

[Bill Sweetman]

Just to clarify that I'm not the Bill in the above post. The fact that the Su-27 family engines keep running at peculiar angles is not an accident. TsAGI developed a special ground rig to test an inlet/engine combo at simulated high alpha/low speed conditions.

[dave fulghum]

Remember, the F-22 has a low-probability of intercept, active electronically scanned radar that can see the bad guys at hundreds of miles away. It also gets fed data from space and large platform sensors elsewhere in the airspace. The radar is also designed to detect small and stealthy targets with its 1000-element array. And if the battle were to reach the IR and visual range and the F-22 has already shot off its Aim-120 AMRAAMs, it will have a couple of Aim9X missiles which may be the best IR missile in the world. The British and the Israelis have some good new products, but the worry would be Russian and Chinese designs that are on the world market. Fighter pilots are cocky, but both U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots say that at least for the moment they aren't losing any sleep about the foreign designs they've been briefed on.

[Peter Rutten]

The AESA radar will give anyone a much better chance in a confrontation. And I would presume that currently the state of technology is superior in the F-22. But these kinds of radars are already proliferating quickly. And I would expect that that also holds true for improved methods to detect the emissions from these radars. The problem is not with countries such as Korea or Iran. These kind of countries do have neither strategic depth nor the money to build an competing defense network. We could even beat them using the (sort of) venerable F-15 and F-16 fleet.

But if I am not too badly informed Russia did put considerable effort in anti satelite warefare and it has some specific designed AAM ordance specially intended to attack AEW assets on very long distance. I also heard that a number of Russian short range AAM designs, in particular the IR missiles are not really inferior to western designs. And if Russia has it, China will have it soon. China too is working on things like anti sattelite warfare.

Looking back in the past conflicts it shows that although quality was an important issue the USA always depended on sheer power of numbers to win conflicts.

All well to have the best aircraft (if that is indeed the case) but if it is soo incredibly expensive we can afford only a few of them it means that just a few lucky shots or unconventional attacks (fe commando raids) will degrade airpower soo quickly it really does not matter. Numbers do count even if you have the better quality ac!