The F-22 Thread

The Superhornet Growler is also used for ECM warfare. They both have large AESA radars and that's no coincidence. :)

F-16CJ only supresses SAM's, its not a dedicated jamming platform per se (it can just for self defence like any other).

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-cenciotti-us-f-22s-escorting-jordanian-planes-over-syria-2015-2

Last week the Pentagon provided some details about American support for the Jordanian air strikes in Syria that followed ISIS's killing of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh.

 

According to the Air Force Times, US Central Command Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) tasked F-22 Raptors and the F-16CJs, along with an unspecified unmanned aircraft that provided intelligence gathering and surveillance, to escort the Jordanian aircraft launched against Islamic State positions.

 

The American stealth jets are now embedded in the “standard strike package,” which includes US and coalition aircraft committed to attack ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren said.

 

 

 

Read more: http://theaviationist.com/2015/02/10/f-22-escorted-rjaf-jets/#ixzz3RNrdEiyp

Edit: beat me to it, good article Sith, mine was derived from your more detailed report.

Regarding AESA and jamming capabilities:

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/fa-18ef-to-use-aesa-as-jammer-208213/

Boeing's F/A-18E/F Block 2 Super Hornet is set to become the first fighter to use its active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar for electronic attack, with a planned software upgrade to allow its array of transmit/receive (T/R) modules to be used as a powerful directional jammer.

 

Under a "sensor integration" plan being drawn up, the Raytheon APG-79 AESA will be linked to the Raytheon ALR-67 radar warning receiver (RWR) via the fighter's fibre-optic network switch. The radar's ground mapping capability will then be used to pinpoint emitters detected by the RWR.

 

"This will allow us to begin single-ship geolocation of emitters," says Capt BD Gaddis, US Navy F/A-18 programme manager. The F/A-18E/F's BAE Systems ALQ-214 electronic countermeasures suite will also be integrated so the aircraft can jam emitters. "We will put the -214 jamming signal through the AESA T/R modules to put power on to the emitter," he says.

 

Although the capability has been widely discussed, it appears the Block 2 Super Hornet will be the first aircraft able to use its AESA for electronic attack. Rival radar manufacturer Northrop Grumman says its APG-77(V)1 and APG-81 AESAs for the Lockheed Martin F-22 and F-35, respectively, will have the capability, but it is not in currently funded plans.

Somewhere awhile back in the Su-35 vs F-22 thread, there was an article I posted that said the F-22 will get all available upgrades that trickle down from other advances in aviation technologies, so I wouldn't be surprised if it has the capability.

Seems very strange to me that the F-22 is the one getting technological hand-me-downs, and from other than the F-35 no less.

Seems very strange to me that the F-22 is the one getting technological hand-me-downs, and from other than the F-35 no less.

I don't think that's strange at all. While both are 5th generation aircraft, the F-35 is a whole sub-generation younger than the F-22, thus will obviously contain more modern technologies which were developed post-F-22. Due to the fact that so much of a modern fighter's kit is software driven these days, it's no surprise to see these sorts of retrofit. Potentially much easier than it used to be.

:)

I said OTHER than the F-35. The article says that the Super Hornet is getting something that isn't even budgeted for the F-22 or F-35 yet.

Its like hand-me-downs from the 4th gen to the 5th.

I said OTHER than the F-35. The article says that the Super Hornet is getting something that isn't even budgeted for the F-22 or F-35 yet.

 

Its like hand-me-downs from the 4th gen to the 5th.

Sorry, my bad.

Well, we're dealing with public sources of info, but if you can find info that helps tie the jigsaw puzzle together and get an idea of what might be going on.

The F-18's AESA are made by the same company that makes the F-22's AESA, and F-35's AESA, Raytheon.

This article mentions the upgrades of the F-22 from F-35's:

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-fields-first-upgraded-f-22-raptors-369886/

The unit's flagship, tail number 4115, is the first aircraft to be equipped with the modifications, which add a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capability, electronic attack, better geo-location capabilities to find enemy radars, and the ability to carry eight 113kg (250lb) GBU-39 small diameter bombs (SDB)

The Northrop Grumman APG-77 radar's SAR mode creates black and white photo-quality images of the Earth's surface, allowing pilots to pick their own targets, while the new electronic attack capability allows the F-22 to jam enemy radars using the sensor.

http://www.dailytech.com/F35+Stealth+Coatings+Applied+to+F22/article21321.htm

The F-22 and the F-35 are similar in that they are both fighter aircraft that are designed from the outset to have stealth characteristics to make them harder to see by enemy radar. With the F-35 being the newer aircraft, it has more advanced radar-absorbing coatings on the surface than the F-22. Lockheed has announced that it is now integrating some of the more advanced coatings the F-35 uses onto the F-22 fighters coming of the assembly line.

 

"Some of the [low observables] coatings system and gap-fillers that the F-35 had an advantage on, we have incorporated into the Raptor," said Jeff Babione, vice president and general manager of the F-22 program for Lockheed Martin.

 

Defense News reports that Babione claims that the new coatings don’t change the radar cross section of the F-22. The coatings according to Babione are simply to reduce maintenance costs. He said, "[The F-35 program] had some more robust materials that were more durable and we were able to pull those back on to the F-22. So our system is better, and the life-cycle cost of the F-22 is reduced."

However, some doubt that the new coatings won't improve the radar visibility of the F-22. Goure also noted, "I would be very surprised if this wasn't an improvement in stealth characteristics."

From this Air Force Article: https://secure.afa.org/joinafa/login.aspx?returnurl=http://www.airforcemag.com/magazinearchive/pages/2014/february%202014/0214raptor.aspx

Senior USAF leaders have said in recent months that in addition to the F-35, KC-46 tanker, and Long-Range Strike Bomber, a top spending priority under sequester is to continue to enhance the F-22 and make it, as Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III said, “all it can be.”

So, as you can see, info slips out there sometimes in articles, the other articles only serve to reinforce the idea that any Raytheon AESA radar has electronic attack capabilities, and I'm sure the F-22 probably gets first crack or updated software and equipment as it becomes available as mentioned from the other guys in this thread. I would not be surprised if the thing already has other upgrades we just don't hear about in public circles.

The F-22 and F-35 have a radar built by Northrop-Grumman, the Super Hornet has one from Raytheon.

On the surface your correct tflash, but the U.S. defense industry has a long history of working together on projects.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/an-apg-77.htm

Northrop Grumman's and Raytheon's AN/APG-77 for the Raptor (Northrop Grumman has the larger workshare) was originally designed as a pure air-to-air system.

A Northrop Grumman-led joint venture with Raytheon is developing the active-element electronically scanned array radar. Northrop Grumman is also responsible for the radar sensor design, software, and systems integration.

http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/apg79aesa/

In addition to the APG-79, Raytheon supplies the F/A-18E/F aircraft with several other systems.

Either way, the companies have their hands in it, along with other AESA systems together, some of the advancements are shared or updated later on on legacy products.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/electronic-attack-role-next-upgrade-for-raptor-radar-212317/

the F-22's Northrop Grumman APG-77(V)1 radar is scheduled to get an electronic attack capability as part of the Increment 3.2 upgrade to be funded from fiscal year 2012. An "in-band" electronic attack capability for the Raytheon APG-79 AESA in US Navy Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets is to be funded from FY2008.

Raytheon says its AESA upgrade for the Boeing F-15 has already demonstrated in-band electronic attack capability in USAF flight tests, and the company has demonstrated the wideband ISR datalink using its own testbed aircraft. Raytheon is under contract to develop the radar common datalink (R-CDL) standard, providing 274Mb/s bandwidth and allowing the AESA to send and receive synthetic-aperture radar images.

Although the (V)3 is primarily an air-to-air radar, Raytheon says it is capable of being upgraded via software to provide in-band electronic attack and wideband ISR datalink capabilities.

My guess from the above is that Raytheon was able to get ahead on the AESA electronic attack capability on the software side and so these useful advances get rolled back to the APG-77 which they had a hand in with Northrop Grumman. As you can see in the above link, the upgrade for electronic attack is a software upgrade, not a hardware one. And below you can see another large defense company working with Northrop Grumman and improvements to the APG-77's and other AESA's upgrades.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/elec-tricks-turning-aesa-radars-into-broadband-comlinks-01629/

Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that Northrop Grumman and L-3 Communications came up with an interesting finding while doing private research in this area: active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars external link can also be modified to send and receive large amounts of information at high data rates.

 

While the demonstration was done using the F/A-22’s ultra-advanced 1,500+ element AN/APG-77 radar, the engineers involved say the idea should work with any AESA radar (the F-15C/SG’s new APG-63v2/3, the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler‘s APG-79, the F-16 E/F Block 60’s new APG-80, or the F-35 JSF Lightning II’s APG-81). The system may even get increased bandwidth from bigger AESA radars like the MP-RTIP radars planned for the RQ-4 Global Hawk and some new AWACS (Airborne early Warning And Control Systems) and ELINT/SIGINT(Electronic/Signals Intelligence collection) planes. Unsurprisingly, US Air Combat Command is very interested.

For the testing, the F-22 Raptor’s AN/APG-77 radar was linked to an L-3 Communications modem. The modem is software-programmable, which means it can be adapted to send and receive using various protocols (“waveforms”). For the test, they used a modified CDL [Radar Common Data Link] waveform, and the entire array of elements in the radar. They then demonstrated the transfer of a 72 MB synthetic aperture radar image in 3.5 seconds at a data rate of 274 Mbps. That would have taken 48 minutes using Link 16, which is the standard data exchange system in US and allied equipment. In practice, that means the sensor data is downloaded and communicated only when the plane lands.

 

What if that sort of thing could happen in near-real time instead?

 

Aviation Week reports that the researchers eventually demonstrated lab transmission rates of 548 Mbps, and receive data rates of up to 1 Gbps.

The U.S. Air Force has started the integration phase of the AIM-9X missile on the F-22.

http://alert5.com/2015/05/08/usaf-starts-guided-test-launch-of-the-aim-9x-from-f-22/

^^^^^massively overdue, that it's not even funny. :)

I thought they had the X already, but no JHMCS.

AIM-9X was to long for the F-22 cheeck bays AFAIK. I guess the have finally made it short enough on the latest version.

"coming out of the assembly line"? didn't they shut it down years ago?

"coming out of the assembly line"? didn't they shut it down years ago?

What? I don't follow. Which assembly line?

Lest we not forget that everything in this thread is based on that in the public domain. ;)

And also let us not forget that a single aircraft doth not an airforce make. F22s are vital during the "zero hour" phase of operations, yet other machines are required for actions in hours one, two and three, in different applications and different methods of action.

After all, the preferred method of action is still to send in the AH-64s!

:)

P.S. It is no coincidence that NATO decided to develop the weapons they have in the order they were developed. God forbid we consider NATO might be "coordinated"!

Why is it so Tabo to talk about the F-22

I'm curious why is it Tabo to talk about ask to have one added to the line up of planes. I've flown the lasted version of the F-22 by a developer that made it for another sim and it flies great all the systems work the pit is as it should be etc. the 3d modeling looked great. And the development team tested these f-22 on DCS, but for some reason a version never made it into the game. WHY??????

The U.S. Air Force has started the integration phase of the AIM-9X missile on the F-22.

 

http://alert5.com/2015/05/08/usaf-starts-guided-test-launch-of-the-aim-9x-from-f-22/

Is it the AIM-9X BlkII?

uFAyc1SHOGg

first F-22 with desert camo!

http://alert5.com/2016/01/15/09-0174-maloneys-pony-is-the-first-f-22-to-go-into-combat/

F-22 for export?

http://www.reuters.com/article/india-boeing-superhornet-idUSKCN0VC0IB

Muilenburg also flagged the F-22 Raptor, a fifth-generation fighter jointly developed with Lockheed Martin Corp, as a future sales prospect for India, calling it "an area of future investment for which we are interested".