Military AI Works

Great little article on the F-15 , from the new issue Air&Space magazine http://www.airspacemag.com/military-avi ... inger.html

That is still a sweet looking fighter from certain angles like the one in that picture.

The article leaves me confused though. Here are these Eagle drivers talking about how bad ass they are and how they don't need all this technology that the 5th gen fighters have, yet they take the reporter out to the flight line and the first thing they show him is their data link system and their helmet mounted cueing system, the same systems found on the 5th gen fighters.

"Real" fighter pilots don't need all that stuff according to these guys.

Read it at the bookstore, and I do agree Mike, but I guess in the end they are trying to justify why the Eagle is still good with the latest upgrades to the "Golden Eagle" fleet (FDL, JHMCS-AIM9X, AESA Radars), but the last comments by the F-22 demo pilot/former Eagle driver squash the "57 Chevy with new parts" adage. I was shocked to see the difference between costs per flight hour between the 2 jets. Naval Aviation fan first, but will always like the F-15, still waiting for the Raptor to prove it's worth outside of dynamic air show displays, although recent Red Flags have show the Raptor is the jet to beat, as it should with that $$$ tag!

They also kept trying to pin the "multi-role" tag on the F-22. Funny cause I'm pretty sure there is a "multi-role" version of the Eagle as well. I'm also pretty sure the F/A-22 or F-22 whatever you want to call it, was designed as a dog fighter first and foremost to completely dominate the battle space, just like the F-15 when it was designed. Yea it can drop bombs but so could the F-14 at the end of its life and you didn't hear those guys whining about how that multi-role capability diminished their role as a hunter killer of other aircraft.

I also doubt you'll find a single F-15 pilot who has transitioned to the Raptor, who after getting his Raptor wings, requests to go back to the Eagle. The F-15 may very well go down as the best modern fighter jet of all time based on actual air to air combat results. 104 to 0 is a record that will probably never be matched. But it IS 30+ years old and that's a fact that barring anything short of a complete makeover program, can't be denied.

Do you think Raptor pilots will be complaining in 20 years that they are the only "real" fighter pilots left because those darn UCAV's are not even flown by humans any longer? That will be the day.

When they took the gun out of the F-4 because the missile was supposed to take over , it was a costly mistake that took the F-15 to help the Air Force recover from. But we're nearly 50 years beyond that oversight and missile technology is light years ahead of where it was back then. They don't even have to point their nose at the other aircraft these days. They simply have to get their missile "truck" close enough to point the cuing system at the opposing aircraft and call "fox 1", the missile and technology does the rest. I know they still practice close in ACM these days but in all reality even the dog fights that occurred during the two Gulf wars and in Kosovo were all BVR missile kills.

I personally believe the days of true close in dog fighting are long over. I could be wrong but I have not seen anything in the last twenty years to tell me that I am indeed wrong about that. They still put a gun on the Raptor (don't know about the Lightning II) but if the Raptor is ever using its gun in an ACM fight, a whole lot of things have gone wrong first and he's probably fighting alone at that point, another unlikely scenario.

Long live the Eagle but dang these guys need to come to grips with reality.

Mike when you say the gun has become useless I must disagree.

Yes it has become useless in conventional Air to Air combat, but it still has many other uses certainly when the aircraft is used as a multirole platform. I read that the F-22's did Close Air Support missions during Red Flag so they are in fact multirole. Now our Belgian F-16's in Afghanistan have never fired a missile or dropped a single bomb so far during real CAS missions, but they have used their gun at every occasion where show of force was necessary which ended the conflict most of the time without making casualties. The guns were even used when they had to go engage as a GBU would have caused too much collateral damage.

Guns are also very useful during air policing missions (the primary operational role of the F-22 at the moment I guess) where the fighter DOES come close enough to the target, if only to issue the procedural warning bursts.

Just my 2 cents

Mike when you say the gun has become useless I must disagree.

No where did I state that I believe the gun has become useless, not sure where you're getting that vibe from.

No you're right you didn't use the word useless, that was a bad formulation from my part.

But you did say that it is unlikely that the Raptor would ever be in an ACM scenario where it would have to use its gun because times have changed, yet they still put one in. As I understood it you were wondering why they did that.

What I tried to say is that the gun serves the F-22 (and certainly the F-35) well during other missions as the Air Force seems to be using it as a multirole platform.

Hope things make more sense now my friend. Sorry if I just misunderstood

We're on the same page. No worries. I'm sure they'll put a gun in the 6th gen fighter as well. Well maybe a laser by then....