I occasionally preach humility here on SP (not that anyone listens), so can I remind the gentleman that all of F-22's wins are adminstrative or PAPER wins?!?!?  F-15's 104-0 record (IIRC) is written in blood and fire. 

 

Yes, F-22 is the baddest thing ever SO FAR, but let's not break our arms patting ourselves on the back.

Someday there will be a better a/c.

 

Against sufficient odds (8-1?)  the F-22's W/L ratio will drop.  E.g., if the F-22 costs the same as 9 MiG-25, I think I would rather have the 9 Foxbats (assuming I was safely on the ground at mission control, ha ha).

 

 

I've always believed the real do-ers don't have to be the big talk-ers.

 

I'd say that's not at all necessarily true.  Aside from the questionable price math (could we get Lockheed to build us 9 MiG-25s for the cost of one F-22?), the questionable value of such a low-tech approach (why fly several crappy fighters and possibly lose some pilots and fighters when we can fly one great one and not lose any?), and the flat-out wrong assumption regarding quantites in the real world (i.e., scenarios in which the USAF/USN/USMC are actually outnumbered at all are few and far between, and outnumbered by several to one require some significant assumptions to even make plausible), entering a fight at any odds more than about 4-to-1 for F-22s is probably going to yield about the same results:  three pairs of AMRAAMs down three enemy fighters, and two AIM-9M-9s get one or maybe two more.  After that, the F-22 goes home.

 

If the F-22 gets "merely" four kills per sortie, it will be the most incredible fighter in history.  I'm not saying that's going to happen, I'm just trying to inject some historical perspective.  However, I think it is pretty clear that for the first time in the jet age, and really for the first time in the history of flight, the F-22 makes it likely, not just possible, that **every** contested sortie will result in multiple kills per F-22.

 

 

Is that right?  Were Messerschmitts that much better than Spits or Hurricanes?  Did not know this.

Of course you took it up the arse in Asia.  How'd you let those bucktoothed wogs get over on you anyway?  Totally destroyed your face in the Orient for, oh, eternity.  Surely their tech wasn;'t better than yours!

You're a ruddy clown, you know that?   Never mind us, how about the Poles, the Free French, etc.?  Not to mention Lend-Lease, etc.  Didn't read where you sent it back.

Well the way you sods are always whinging about that, what choice have we?  'Cause nothing in life matters to us as much as pleasing YOU lot. 

 

And of course it would be totally unfair of us to ask Europe, er, not to HAVE the bloody things!  But don't let us raise an eyebrow at Chamberlain or the Cliveden set, oh no.  So what can we do but try to anticipate your every whim, oh mawster?

 

Put it this way - remember Firefox?  Not the browser, the Craig Thomas novel/Clint Eastwood movie. 

 

If the Sovs or heaven help us the FSU or current PLAAF came out with the F-22(ski), and we were stuck at 4Gen a/c, would we curl up and die, or would we come up with some sort of coping strategy?   Steal the tech, boobytrap their CPUs,  gimmick up an Achilles-heel seeker of some sort?

 

The wy to die is to sit there and think I-am-in-the-best-ever-tin-can-and-I-don't-have-to-fly-the-crap-out-of-it-every-minute.

 

 

I would have said its quite likely the F22 ends up like HMS Warrior (First steam warship, now in Portsmouth?). That is, being so advanced and dominant for a period, that nobody even bothers challenging it in combat.

If that is true, then it is the wisest possible use of military money. The best war is the war not fought. If we have such dominance that no one dares challenge it, then what could be better? Doubt it would have the level of deterrance that nukes would, but it could have a deterrant effect at a lower level.

 

 

Would love to see the Su- 27 "Wanker" try to take it on.