Much is made of the impending rollout of the F-22 Raptor, the workhorse of American air supremacy in the 21st century.
There are just a few wrinkles in the way, chief among them being that there is already a competing fighter with many of the same cool characteristics...and not nearly as expensive.
That would be the upgraded Sukhoi-27 Flanker, the most advanced prodigy being the Su-37 Super Flanker.
More comparison after these messages.
First, the F-22 Raptor
Cause Ammurrica always comes first. :)
Full specifications on the plane here at FAS.Org
The F-22 has
- 70,000 lb thrust, versus (estimated based on, of all things, a video game) 62,000 loaded weight. (note: there are two engines but this plane requires long land runways for liftoff, perhaps a consequence of the stealth configuration.)
- a max speed of Mach 2+ per the company website (guess: Mach 2.2, or 1450 mph)
- a crusing speed of Mach 1.5, (1.72 per the company website)
- two AIM-9 Sidewinders
- six AIM-120C AMRAAM missiles
- one 20mm Gatling gun
- two 1,000-lb JDAM smart bombs
- First flew on September 7, 1997, back when Clinton was still modernizing America's military.
- Was expected to be operational in 2004, but they are still test-flying the production model, with unsatisfactory results such as this crash that has grounded the planes for the duration.
- Sticker price (per GAO'97) $200MM, a figure that is attributable to the lower volume of units required in the post-Cold War era. GAO link here
- And the plane is billed as a stealthy fighter, plausible given the angular configuration of the craft and its 'clean' (no external armaments' design).
- I am not sure if there is such a thing as a carrier-portable stealth fighter, however, which raises questions as to the what the Navy plans on using in the 21st century for its air wings.
- Highly fuel-efficient relative to older fighters; 'can cover at least three times the range of an F'15', with a standard range of 2,000 nautical miles, and a ferry range (external fuel tanks, empty payloads, the occasional mid-air refueling) much farther than that ( 7,500-9,000 miles).
- Fly-by-wire avionics; the only limiting factor is the training, experience, talent and reaction speed of the pilot.
- Swivel nozzles allowing the pilot to direct exchaust for tighter turns and more exotic moves in true dogfight situations.
- Billed as easily maintained and reliable. (Did I mention there was a crash grounding all F-22s earlier this week?)
- In computer simulations the F-22 experienced ten times fewer casualties than hypothetical enhanced conventional fighters, which was sufficient to justify its costing almost ten times as much as the hypothetical ECF.
Rather well-informed sales pitch for the F-22 here
Another useful site for F-22 stats
Short form: There's so much to like about the F-22 Raptor, that's it's unfortunate that while fighting so hard to keep it exactly as perfect and perfectly expensive as it is, someone else came along and built a better mousetrap for a fraction of the sticker price, and one that can be launched from carriers, too.
Oh, yes. No one's mentioned that; you can't maintain stealth aircraft at sea, and the traumatic launches and landings from a flight deck are bad on stealth components something fierce.
Nope. It's a land duck, alright
Although the Navy would like to adopt a variant of the F-22, the current design is only capable from operating from long, land based air strips. This model does not have a strong enough frame to handle the violent jolts incurred from landing on a short, moving aircraft carrier deck. The Navy maintains the option to begin work on their own variant in 1997.
Of course, the way things are going now, the carriers could be mothballed, thanks to the cost of the Iraq war
With the mounting cost of the war increasing an already record-high federal deficit, the Air Force and Navy are being forced to consider major cuts to weapons systems they had grown attached to even as they grew outdated. The Navy may cut its aircraft carrier fleet from 12 to nine, taking $12 billion worth of ships out of the water, and reduce its submarine force. The Air Force's F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, Cold War relics the Pentagon couldn't bear to part with, may also be junked. If the costly Iraq war also puts an end to the misguided and expensive "Star Wars" missile defense system, the ill-conceived action may pay some dividends.
Yep. The F-22 Raptor plane we are talking about, the one that the Pentagon could not do without, is in jeopardy thanks to the one war that the Bushies refused to do without.
But that's a diary unto itself.
But enough about this warbird. Let's go for some Sukhoi
The Su-37 doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the F-22. But let's see what it does has, using the same list format:
- 62,000 lb thrust, versus 75,000 lb full payload weight...and the Su-37 is carrier-friendly.
- a speed of Mach 2.3 (1516 mph), nominally faster than the F-22
- cruising speed: Mach 1.3 (870mph), slower but still supersonic.
- R-73 and R-77 Air-to-air missiles, rockets, guided bombs, anti-surface missiles, and electronic countermeasures pods -- up to 18,000lb on external pylons
- one 30mm GsH-30-1 gun, larger-caliber (those Russians, always going for overkill)
- Rear search radar; the Su-27 pilot has no blind spot.
- It gets better; there's a rear-facing missile pylon, just like in the old Clint Eastwood movie Firefox...and in fact, that fictitious plane and the Super Flanker look very similar, down to the forward maneuvering canards.
- First flew on April 2, 1996, a full 17 months earlier than the F-22.
- The Su-37 is expected to enter full production in mid-2005, but it is interesting that the Indian Air Force has already deployed this craft, and tested them in mock combat against the current-standard American F-15s.
The results were a compelling argument that perhaps we do need an upgrade, after all:
Just this year, the Indians gave us a good old fashioned butt-kicking in an air-war exercise called Cope India 2004
The Indians flew a number of different fighters, including the French-made Mirage 2000 and the Russian-made MIG-27 and MIG-29, but the two most formidable IAF aircraft proved to be the MIG-21 Bison, an upgraded version of the Russian-made baseline MIG-21, and the SU-30K Flanker, also made in Russia, Neubeck said. He emphasized the fact that U.S. forces were always outnumbered in these scenarios, but said the missions proved more difficult than expected.
10. Oops. Forgot to mention: The SU-30K is a primitive version of the Su-37.
The article explains all the caveats and then some, but it paints a picture of an American air force that not only lacks to appropriate tools but the appropriate training to go head-to-head with anything but a woefully incompetent military power.
The good news is that with the F-22 raptor, at $200MM a pop, we'll only have to worry about the training.
- With integral ECM pods, some stealth capability is attained without sacrificing with reduced payload, thrust to weight ratio, carrier compatibility and quite expensive paint requirements. This is perhaps enough to blunt the edge of the Raptor advantage, a true concern if any conflict between F-22's and Su-37s in which American air supremacy is not established right away.
- The stealth and cruise speed advantages of the F-22 are reduced by dependency on land bases, which are much easier to neutralize than nuclear carriers, and consideraly less maneuverable.
- Standard range of 1,730 nautical miles, comparable to the F-22 Raptor. Add to this that the Su-37 can jump to speed and perhaps to a faster speed than the F-22, and you can see how it makes for a very effective interceptor against the 'dominant fighter aircraft of the 21st century'. It is unlikely that the Super Flanker would be an efficient long-range strike aircraft against the Raptor as defender, but neither is the Raptor cost-effective against a defender with Su-37s protecting home skies.
- The Su-37 is insanely maneuverable; the Russians showcase the Flanker series all of the time at airshows. Per Area51zone.com
The F-22 was designed so the Russians and other countries wouldn't kick our butt. Really. Before, the Russians had the Su-27, MIG-29, and other planes that are available to them and any country with enough money to make/buy them. The F-15 was basically still better than anything the other countries had to throw. Then the Russians created the Su-37. The Su-37, which is seen as the F-22's "big rivalry," can flip left, right, or backwards, while standing on its tail at a speed of almost zero. That scared us, and because we have to remain on top of all the other countries whether they like it or not, we made the F-22. The F-22 can't maneuver as well as the Su-37, but it is stealthier, since you can't have both stealth and maneuverability. Our commanders and generals think that stealth is infinitely more important than maneuverability.
- The Su-37 has vector exhaust controls, too; ie., the swivel nozzles allowing the pilot to direct exchaust for tighter turns and more exotic moves in true dogfight situations.
- On reliability and ease of maintenance; in a word: Kalishnikov. Another: Sputnik. The Russians make a lot of crap, but they make war machines for Russian environmental conditions. And they have a fairly respectable aerospace pedigree, too.
And last I checked, they and the Chinese are the only ones sending up manned spacecraft these days.
17. In a real battle exercise, a primitive version of the Su-37 (the Su-30Ks of the Indian Air Force) obliterated the current F-15s. I'm not sure how that compares to the simulated exercise that justified the F-22 program, in any other way except favorably.
Oh, there's one more thing out of Russia
It's an even more advanced plane called the Mig 1.42 MFI
And some cool pix
It's a true corollary to the F-22...only it costs $70MM instead of $200MM as the Raptor does.
As for the Su-37 sticker price? The Indians paid $30MM a pop for 40 Su-30MKK's, which are the next best thing; expectations are that the true Super Flanker will sell for about $35MM...that is, until word of how good they are gets around.
Per one lamentation:
The Su-37 made a fascinating debut at Farnborough '96 even though it had been known about for over two years. It is the latest in the line of many Flanker variants produced by Sukhoi, the leading member of the "dead" Russian aerospace industry. It is remarkable, not only from the standpoint that it represents perhaps our most dangerous threat and competitor, but also from the fact that it exists at all. The following is an attempt to summarize the design approach characteristic to Sukhoi fighters and with that some of the information learned about the latest of the line, the Su-37 Thrust Vectored Control (TVC) fighter.
Christmas Defense Shopping, 2010
Say you are a hostile foreign power with some moneybags, and you're concerned about the 400 F-22 Raptors that the USA just bought for a combined sticker price of about $80 billion in today's bucks.
You know that the Raptor is ten times better than the F-15 that the Indian Su-30s wiped out of the sky back in 2004, and figure that the Americans actually learned something valuable from that exercise, and the Su-30's are 'merely' five times as effective as the F-15s.
Thus, if you were buying old tech, at $30MM a pop, you would need twice as many Su-30s to even think of meeting the Americans in the sky...and it would cost you $24 billion for those 800 planes, that is, if you were out to challenge the USA for global air supremacy.
But you're not; you're just interested in holding your own skies, which even for a large country like Russia shouldn't be quite so challenging; so cut that order down to $8 billion for 267 Su-30s.
Now, we size up the advantages and disadvantages of the Su-37, the newer plane, versus the F-22, and decide that so long as you're on defense, it's at least a push and possibly better; the Raptor can't outdodge you, and your own medium-range missiles have as much stand-off range as the AMRAAMs of the Americans; electronic countermeasures are a wash, as well. You figure you're going to cough up $40MM per plane, a significant bump from the Su-30, but that's a lot cheaper (and more available) than the $200MM each that the Americans are paying.
So, it goes to budgets. The Americans can afford $80 billion for their planes, you have one-fourth of that, or $20 billion. What does that get you?
It gets you 500 Super Flankers versus 400 Raptors, that's what it gets you.
And the planes rate as an even match.
Perhaps someone else will be air traffic controller going forward.
Or, moral of story for the putative good guys
Perhaps we should shop around a little more, before we commit to a purchase.