Why is the f35 even a thing, when the raptor was still relatively

>>31841352
Because the Raptor is expensive as shit.

>>31841352
Because the Raptor and F-35 fulfill different roles.

>>31841352
It's the F-16 to the F-22's F-15.

>>31841362
And the f35 isnt?

>>31841380
Nope

>>31841362
per unit, if the raptor had as many built as the f-35, it'd be cheaper.

The amount of pork in the f-35 is insane.

>>31841424
>per unit, if the raptor had as many built as the f-35, it'd be cheaper.

lmao

>>31841362
No, the raptor wasn't expensive enough, so they invented the JSF program to give even more money to Lockheed.

>>31841352
Raptor was not for sale. F35 is. More countries - more planes - more profit.

>>31841352
because they went full post-CCCP yardsale on the jiggs and shit used to make the F22. They couldn't make F22 just like that even if they wanted now (which they/some of them actually do want according to news bits every now and again). TL;DR: corruption!

>>31841472
>>31841460
>>31841481

God you fuckers are dumb.

Why even post in threads with topics you're so obviously ignorant about?

>>31841472
What does this have to do with the US military? Why would that stop them from procuring more raptors

>>31841484
I read some War Nerd articles. Therefore I am now a military expert with a decidedly cynical bent.

>>31841352
Money, my dear boy.

This is clearly a troll thread but I'll answer anyway.

Our legacy aircraft are literally falling apart due to age a fatigue so we're given the option of either

>make legacy aircraft and pay out the ass for a mediocre aircraft for us and all of our allies which allows China and Russia to catch up to us.

Or

>make a new VLO multirole that is multiple times more efficient in AtA, SEAD, deep strike, etc... and pay slightly more. This ensure we have air superiority for the next 30 years or so.

F-22 isn't multirole and is pretty shitty at AtG so we built the F-35

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F35 and F22 a shit, my mig ftw.

>>31841352
Alex, what is high-low mix?

>>31841541
Congress forbade LM from selling the F-22 to any allies. What prevents the Raptor from going back into production is cost. As I understand it, the toolings and data needed to produce the F-22 were preserved after the line was closed, but to reopen it would be very, very costly.

If Congress were to lift the export restriction, we could share the cost with close allies (Japan etc...) wanting the Raptor, but it would still cost hundreds of millions of $ per unit.

>>31841743
Unit cost is a very odd thing, mainly due to how it scales with unit count. Because of the end of the cold war, the enemy that the Raptor was developed to one-up didn't really exist so orders were slashed from what they probably would've been.

>>31841743
Why does it cost so much more than the 35?

>>31841763
Immature technology and low production run. The F-35 has been designed to be the affordable workhorse rather than the edge pushing extreme machine. That's not to say that the F-35 isn't a remarkable beast in its own right, but the F-22 is the successor to the F-15 in terms of utterly ludicrous performance relative to its era.

File: F22 & F35 formation 3.jpg (3MB, 3000x1997px) Image search: [Google]

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I would be extremely surprised if the F22 went back into production. Especially since the F35 is turning out to be a very capable BVR fighter. However I'd not be surprised if we saw some of the tech from the F35 (EOTS/DAS, data links, sensor fusion) ported over to the F22 as the F22B.

>>31841796
My understanding is that they're looking at stripping out the 90's supercomputers and replacing them with systems based on the architecture of the F-35. Which is to say, easily upgraded and modified relatively modern hardware.

The F22 has lackluster avionics and no sensor fusion. No IRST! It's really disappointing.

File: F22 afterburn.jpg (75KB, 1024x731px) Image search: [Google]

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>>31841820
The AESA radar is pretty good as I understand it, but yes, mostly 90's tech.

>>31841362
Not a valid comparison.

>>31841829
It's a performance beast but it's so gimped in terms of electronics. It was rather foolish of the US to make such a specialized aircraft given the cost of production now. All the modern air superiority fighters of other countries can multirole.

>>31841853
It was basically the modern interpretation of the original vision of the F-15. Not a pound for air to ground and all that. It was meant to be a next-gen performance beast to best whatever those damn commies could come up with next. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and it became apparent that Russia had neither the skill nor the money to develop a 5th gen of their own in a timely fashion.

>>31841872
Given how great the Strike Eagle is, the USA should have made a successor to that. Lockmart swindled the US.

>>31841380

All modern fighters are, but F-22 took it to whole different level for operationally deployed designs.

>>31841352
Because the F22 was not a viable replacement for the aircraft that F35 is to replace.

F35 and it's variants will replace F18, Harrier, various versions of F15 and F16, Tornado, F4 Phantom. F22 is firstly not suited to many of the roles those aircraft performed, secondly not being produced, thirdly not being exported and fourthly lacking in performance compared to competing aircraft.

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>>31841553
>I read some War Nerd articles. Therefore I am now a military expert with a decidedly cynical bent.

jesus i'm dying

>>31841743

I read they actually lost quite a but of the tooling

The F-22 is probably the last of the specialized aircraft, other than maybe the bomber acquisitions. Everything is going to be multirole from here on out because it's too expensive not to be.

>>31841820
The F-22 has decent sensor fusion; it's not about tying together RF + infrared, it's about using advanced algorithms to take data from multiple sensors (the radars and ESM systems of you and your wingmen, as well as things like the 2-way data link of an AIM-120D), and then correlating, interpolating and extrapolating on that data to get a more detailed picture. The F-35 has over 600 parameters it can use to describe a jet, the F-22 has over 200 parameters, an F-16C or something similar has ~10 parameters.

>>31842038
The F-22 is already a multirole; it's more optimised for A2A, but even back in the 90s the USAF had ordered Lockheed to add JDAM strike capability

>>31842064
Very true, but it wasn't conceived of as or designed to be one. It's like every other plane in the USAF's inventory, in having been jammed into the multirole role.

>>31841713
Is that you? What unit were you from?

>>31842019
No they didn't, all the tooling and manufacturing processes were saved and stored in shipping containers. They even made DVDs to show how it was built. They're all stored in a large facility called the Sierra Army Depot.

>>31841424
>The amount of black budget programs embedded in the F-35's budget is insane

FTFY

Where do you think Lockheed got the money for the RQ-170 from? It's going to be the B-2 all over again when we finally see all the stealth HALE drones, supersonic reconnaissance/strike platforms, and stealth theater transports for SOCOM that were buried in the F-35's budget.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Lockheed even leveraged their experience building the X-33 into a demonstrator for the USMC's SUSTAIN concept. The money for that from the USMC could be a HUGE factor for why the F-35's requirements were so heavily compromised to accommodate the -B model.

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>>31841887
It's not as simple as that. There were talks of an FB-22 and strike variant of the F-23, but that got dropped for what became the LRS-B, and the Strike Eagle is more than good enough for what we're doing now.

Unfortunately, a strike variant of the F-22 is a lot more complicated than creating the Strike Eagle was. You need new, larger bomb bays, because the F-22 right now has its bays optimized for missiles, not bombs, and you need a whole revamp of the avionics suite to optimize it for ground attack missions. Lockheed did look into it, but the result was so far from the original F-22 that it would be better to just start from scratch with a new plane.

>>31842082
>but it wasn't conceived of as or designed to be one

Ahem:
>In 1994, the USAF asked Lockheed Martin to develop an air to surface capability for the F-22. Provisions were later made to the lower weapons bays to accommodate one 1,000 pound GBU-30/32 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) per side. A simple GPS (Global Positioning System)/inertial system will guide the weapon to its target. Eventually later versions will have increased precision attack capability by including a programmable radar seeker. The F-22's air-to-surface operations will be carried out courtesy of its onboard synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode.
>In addition to the F-22's internal weapons bays, it will also be capable of carrying stores externally. Four underwing stations will be able to support up to 5,000 pounds.

The first non-YF-22 prototype F-22 flew in 1997.

>>31842099
As retarded as most of your post is, there is a bit of truth to what you just said. Most of the cost and budget overruns on the F-35 are the result of the decision to mature a bunch of technologies with the fighter. While it increased program costs and delayed the program to do so, the idea was that all those technologies would then be much cheaper to apply to newer and existing aircraft (like the F-22 or LRS-B)

>>31842191
Same retardposter here. I'm more on the money than you might think vis a vis the whole "hidden cash for black projects" bit, and my guess is that there are 3-4 of them.

But yeah, the F-35's maturation of all these new technologies just *screams* "resumption of F-22 production with F135 engines, F-35 avionics/sensors, and F-35 coatings" to build some sort of terrifying "F-22E Strike Raptor" just as the USAF stuffed F-16 tech and engines into the F-15 to make the -E.

Hell, I could even see them selling a stripped-down F22 with nonvectoring engines and F-35 export-grade RAM/avionics to try and claw back the overseas air dominance market from the Russians, the Chinese, and the Eurofighter.

what is this about competing countries?

no other country has aircraft that can compete with the f22

>>31842320
>But yeah, the F-35's maturation of all these new technologies just *screams* "resumption of F-22 production with F135 engines, F-35 avionics/sensors, and F-35 coatings
What we'll probably see is the refitting of the F-22 fleet with F-35-derived avionics and the F-35's RAM skin. The F135 itself is derived from the F-22's F119, and it's way too large to fit in an F-22.

And no, you're not getting a "strike raptor" without a major reworking of the entire airframe because its weapons bays are too small for a lot of the larger weapons in our inventory.

>>31842930
Why would you even make a strike Raptor when you have the F-35?

>>31842951
Personally, I wouldn't, but for the purposes of what the one anon I responded to, I'd say you'd want a "strike raptor" as a replacement for the F-15E, the idea being
>F-35's range, payload too short for deep interdiction
>LRS-B either too vulnerable, too expensive, or not fast enough for deep interdiction

>>31841796
>Especially since the F35 is turning out to be a very capable BVR fighter.
>Literally one of the few things it's good for
Well at least they picked something decent for it to excel in.

>>31841713

>squats internally

>>31843019

The Raider is intended specifically for deep interdiction.

>>31843804
>Well at least they picked something decent for it to excel in.
And Ground attack.
And SEAD.
And EWO.
And Recon.