02-03-2021, 06:59 PM
Will Collier wrote:
[quote=Ombligo]
It will be good for foreign sales to countries looking to upgrade and not facing potential threats from China or Russia. Air Forces from Europe, Asia, or the US will be less enthralled by it. The fourth generation, non-stealth airframes have been shown to be cannon fodder against fifth-generation fighters and will be modern Brewster Buffalo's against the upcoming six-generation fighters. It really is an expensive stop-gap that will be pretty useless within a decade.
Yep. Friend of mine flew an early 2000's flight test fight, was supposed to be six F-15C's vs. two early production F-22's. The second 22 had to abort on the ramp, so they couldn't get the formal test in, but since everybody else was in the air (the Eagles had flown down from Nellis to Edwards, piloted by Weapons School instructors), they set it up anyway for practice.
Five minutes later, that buggy-avionics, single-digit-tail-number Raptor was the only live jet left in the sky. None of the Eagles so much as got a shot off. And that was almost 20 years ago.
That’s the thing about the Raptor, the fight’s usually over before there is even a fight.