Deep Intel on the F-22 Raptor

all right joining me for this episode is Andrew van timuren call sign scar so the first question that my viewers will always ask scar is how did you get your call sign uh suffice it to say it involves uh if flight at Nellis which most good stories should involve uh high-end training at the Nellis test and training range uh bad weather uh and uh a number of jets uh falling apart maintenance wise so uh scar is an acronym uh I'll hold what it means for myself uh but uh again Nellis Las Vegas uh high-end high-end training uh all goodness all around okay so it's it's an acronym call sign that's exactly right like Moto Master of the obvious things like that yeah that's exactly how it is all okay and they have good stories that's right fair enough fair enough and we'll let the viewer just you know figure out what the acronym actually is there you go so tell us a little bit about your background what was your path to to the Raptor grew up in West Michigan Grand Rapids area uh not a whole lot of military impact with my family didn't grow up in a heavy military area just woke up one morning no kidding in the seventh grade it was like I want to go fly Jets and so what is the path to go do that I didn't know anybody who went this path but you know sounds like the Air Force Academy is a reasonable way to go do this and so worked hard in school got into the air force academy uh did well enough at the Academy to get a pilot slot and then uh was able to go to Vance Air Force Base good old Enid Oklahoma where I spent a year flying there went from the T6 to t-38 and then was fortunate enough to drop Raptors at that point so I was in the that was in 2011 is when I joined the Raptor Community uh and haven't looked back since think how much technology has changed in the last 20 years so why are so many of us carrying the same types of wallets that our dads used the ridge wallet expands to hold up to 12 cards plus room for cash all while remaining as Slim as possible compare the ridge wallet to your old bulky wallet you know the one chiropractors everywhere are happy you're still using the ridge wallet comes in more than 30 colors and styles including carbon fiber burnt titanium forged Ember and burnt Damascus mine is burnt titanium and the durable material means each wallet comes with a lifetime warranty Ridge wallets are also designed with RFID blocking materials that protects you from digital pickpocketers and they feature optional air tag attachments so you'll never lose your wallet again the ridge team is so confident in this wallet that they'll let you test drive it for 99 days and you can send it back for a full refund if you don't love it the bottom line is Ridge has redefined the wallet and they're making Father's day gifting easy with one of their biggest sales of the Year use my exclusive Link at ridge.com smooch for 40 off through June 15th that's ridge.com the first time I heard what the Raptor was for was from a guy who was an academy classmate of mine who went on to be the commander of the Naval Air systems command a guy named decoy Dunaway Hornet pilot so he was working Aisha radar for the brand new Super Hornet which was an acap 1D program within an acap 1D program and I'll again we get into the procurement nerding out here that's right but in any case the way that Decoy put it to me he said the F-35 is the truck the F-22 is the Ferrari so that was the original concept for the air force of how they're going to use those two airplanes together that is not at all how it played out in terms of price per aircraft and in terms of roles and missions so talk to us about the history of the F-22 and then we'll get into your specific experience in the airplane the aircraft is designed for the air-to-air role it is hyper design and optimized for that and that is actually born out of history in Lessons Learned dating all the way back to the origination of Air Combat so if you think about the the air domain you are not just fighting against the other guy in his jet or in his biplane with his dude who's who's shooting uh at you you're also working against the integrated air defense system the iads those are the surface-to-air missile systems those are the AAA batteries it always goes down to the guys you see it Ukraine in in Ukraine right now with those shoulder remounted uh missiles those man pads you have a whole ecosystem of things on the ground that you have to deter as well as be survivable against the things that are flying around in the air as we realize as we got into Vietnam um that overlapping coverage of radar was becoming more and more of a challenge you had to get further and further away in order to remain survivable against the surface they air capabilities but also against those air intercept Radars that are flying around and also trying to search for you because the adversaries ability to reach out and touch you is also increasing through their missile capabilities so you have to kill and survive in a highly contested overlapping RF coverage area and at the time the F4 was the Workhorse the f-105 was a major Workhorse we're talking in the in the 60s and 70s and getting into the 80s the f-16a model is just coming online as well as the F-15 a model uh is also just coming online but those are not survivable in this highly contested environment especially at the time of the design of the Raptor the bear Russia the USSR was our principal threat and so what did we have to do we have to come up with an aircraft design and technology that Inc increases our ability to Mez pen what I mean by that is missile engagement Zone penetrate against the error capability and the ground capabilities of our adversaries and so that brought on the the need for stealth there was a program called have blue that turned into F-117 that was the that was a DARPA project but then along this along that time as well was the ATF or the advanced tactical fighter program which then created the yf-22 and the yf-23 the yf-22 built by Lockheed Martin and then the yf-23 built by Northrop Grumman that was the the competition of prototype uh aircraft and ultimately Lockheed Martin was selected in the 90s to build out the Raptor and then the Raptor itself became ioc I believe in 2005 out of Langley Air Force Base and then ultimately has proliferated across a number of bases down in Florida Virginia Alaska Hawaii and then we are on call uh 24 7 all around the world was the original program of record to replace the f-15cs one for one with f-22s was that the original buy I I think that was part of the original game plan you want to have a mix of high low high low mix is what it's called so you want to have some Exquisite capabilities on one end of the spectrum but you maybe want to have lesser less than Exquisite capabilities it's not to say that the C model Eagle is not a great aircraft it really is it is the world's greatest distributor of MiG Parts is what they will tell you uh but they are not survivable as a giant radar reflector out there and so the Raptor program originally had a buy of I believe 700 that was ultimately curtailed to the the high 300s and then it was secretary gates in the late 2000s who stopped the buy at 196 of which I think we have 180 uh something of them flying the exact numbers based on maintenance and mishaps and whatnot change um but yeah we were going to have uh uh closer to a thousand than not was the was the original acquisition plan for the Raptor um in in you know I'm not gonna get after leadership decisions or disparage thought processes there ultimately when secretary Gates made the decision to curtail the buy of the Raptor he had uh guys on the ground dying from IEDs and in in Iraq and Afghanistan and he had this mrap program that needed money and he had this Exquisite platform that we hope to actually never use in a high-end fight and so we had to you know pay for today uh maybe at the sacrifice of tomorrow uh and so that's what we're living with right now so that's the calculus that is always going on uh Paco our good friend Paco and I have talked about some of the give take programmatically over the years and including uh what secretary Gates's calculus was uh based on this asymmetric threat that we face for about 20 years right the Taliban didn't have an Air Force um Al Qaeda didn't have an Air Force Isis didn't have an Air Force and uh so this is what you get so what was the cost per copy at the sort of high end of the production of the F-22 so in production the last aircraft rolling off the line were just under 150 million dollars a copy uh that was inclusive of the block 20 capabilities and we could get into some of those as much as I can uh on where the blocks are differentiated but uh uh um yeah is is just is about 130 million dollars is my understanding it was the last uh aircraft that rolled off the line you can look back in the in the news history on the original copies and again the exact same you know the arguments in the history here is is cyclical and so this this overwhelming you know unobtaining price of the early raptor is the exact same thing we heard about the B2 it's the exact same thing we're hearing about the F-35 it's also what we're hearing about the the forward class carriers but then as you get into production uh those price you get efficiency these uh you get bulk volume pricing on sub supplier purchases uh and sub components and you can bring those prices down so you're you're a raptor baby you you you have you ever flown the eagle no I went straight from paletrating into the Raptor okay so let's do the Pepsi challenge in turn let's start with with dog fighting air combat maneuvering what advantages does the Raptor have over a fourth gen airplane well let's talk about the the maneuverability provided by the flight control system but then also through the immense Power of Two by f-119 engines by Pratt Whitney equipped with thrust vectoring so if you ever get close to a raptor the flight control surfaces are massive the the horizontal stabs are I call them barn doors because they are huge and when you get this amount of metal canted even just a couple of degrees the amount of force that they generate is immense and then you also have uh these candid vertical Tails equipped with reasonably sized Rudders that are able to create an incredible amount of yaw again because of the size in the degree in which they are able to maneuver you also have flapperons and ailerons not just one or the other you have both and both of those are used at all speeds in in in in Alpha uh limits you combine that with an incredible flight Control software so for people who may not have seen the Raptor cockpit it is a side stick it is not a center stick it's very much like the F-16 where but this the stick moves about three quarters of an inch all around and you as the operator provide a request to the flight Control software so say I want to pitch my nose up I'll pull slightly aft on the stick in the nose will move up and in a standard airplane like a Cessna you may see the horizontal stab a horizontal move in order to move the nose up in a classic flexible way but the inflectional system in the Raptor is optimized based on a whole bunch of parameters where you are in the air your AirSpeed your Alpha Etc and it will move whatever the control surface is to get you that result the quickest which which may not at all be the horizontal tail and so it's it's an optimized software solution that gets you incredible performance uh that you wouldn't achieve if you were pulley and cable connected to Individual flexual Services and so combine all those amazing flexible surfaces with an amazing flexible software and here's the here's a hidden secret for the listeners out there mooch the Raptor is way easier to fly than a Cessna if you are a private pilot out there and you find yourself going man I am like this Cessna is hard to fly the Raptor is easier than that the reason is and this is this is why bad Pilots like me you know look at least mediocre is because you have so much else going on in the Raptor outside of flying that you need to handle and so flying needs to be easy or like brainless as much as it possibly can because you have Mission command you have your flight information to worry about you've got the overall battle space you may be managing uh and so you've got a lot else going on one thing I haven't talked about here is are the engines so uh two by f119 engines by Pratt and Whitney equipped with thrust vectoring if you ever watch the air show I would highly recommend you do that I am still in awe every time I see the air show and what this jet is capable of doing it seems to defy and create its own physics at times but those those thrust vectoring engines are able to kick the nose around in a way that other aircraft in our inventory are unable to do so when you put 70 000 pounds of thrust which is what you get when you're in a b canted up or down you swing around quick and so the jet is capable of high degrees of maneuverability because of all those things put together so basically wherever you point the nose it can go there and that's something that the Tomcat absolutely could not you know we're managing all kinds of different parameters angle of attack air speed you know before digital flight control systems like you're talking about you know in the later years just like with any digital airplane because the Tomcat was not a digital airplane until the end of its life but if you put the stick somewhere you would move the appropriate flight control like you're saying like a Cessna in the Raptor if you put the stick somewhere at high alpha how the computer's kind of going okay I know what you meant to do right so it's not going to move flapper on or aileron it'll move Rudder or whatever to affect the outcome that the airplane knows better than you that will get you what you want so that's amazing and when you add thrust vectoring like you said you look at that air show and just watching the nose pivot and that pancake move it's like I don't know how you would ever beat a raptor in a slow speed fight it is a it is a unique capability that we love to exploit I'll just say that uh and so there are gameplay every aircraft has a game plan and so some aircraft you want to maintain air speed because you are a rate fight player you get the greatest degrees per second out of your jet by maintaining moderate to high levels of energy there are other aircraft who their game plan is I can get to high degrees of alpha it'll remain maneuverable and maybe that's a preferred game plan against a particular adversary the Raptor mixes all that together and so when you fly against another aircraft who wants to maintain high speed turns out the Raptor can maintain extremely high speed and be maneuverable you see an aircraft that goes into a high alpha regime of course which I have to talk with my hands so you can get into a high alpha regime to scrub some knots and remain maneuverable in the you know the Raptor the Raptor looks at that and goes Anything You Can Do I can do maybe better and so then it can also scrub knots again that's where bad Pilots like me can at least pretend to be mediocre because it can get you out of get you into some bad situations but also get you out of bad situations extremely quickly so what was the G limit of the Raptor nine nine G's okay so that's two and a half G's more than your average Navy airplane the Tomcat certainly I think the Super Hornet can do uh nine eight yeah I have uh I have been at nine and accelerating we call that the Pain Train where you are uh you are pulling full aft on the stick and you're and you are g-straining in order to save your life and you are watching in the HUD that AirSpeed increase so what's the high end speed of the Raptor how fast have you been in the Raptor uh Mach 2 so we're capable of uh silver ceiling is 60 000 feet and uh Mach 2 let's talk about 60 000 feet first so we are capable of going up that high but we don't go any higher because we don't wear pressure suits so I'm not saying the Raptor is incapable of going higher what I am saying is that the the pressure is so low once you get into higher altitude if you had a rapid decompression you could be above what's called I believe the Armstrong line where fluids in liquids start to boil due to low pressure that would also include you and your blood in the cockpit and so that's why you too or you see SR-71 or other pilots wear suits is because of the low pressure of the atmosphere around them we don't wear those and so the jet is still highly capable but we don't go above 60 000 feet and then uh Mach 2 has to do with materials and other limits so let's come inside the airplane now let's talk about some of the systems glass cockpit you don't have symbology in your visor did you have some of that or was it just a HUD airplane so the Raptor was was built designed and still as a 2023 is flown with the classic helmet with no jehemics so makes this joint hell and mounted queuing system that is the on the visor quote-unquote augmented reality that is displayed to F16 F-15 f15e super horny other Pilots the Raptor does not have that right now but you have a fully glass cockpit that's right mfds touch screens it is not touch screen so the F-35 led the way with the with the touch screen we have four big displays so in the in the if you look at the picture of the cockpit you'll have What's called the SD or the situation display that's in the center uh it's the biggest display in the cockpit and then you have the left right and Center mfds which are called multiple multi-function displays around those are buttons uh called osbs and you can select the various sub menus within all those displays uh as you as you cycle through whether you want you want to manage your weapons you want to manage your fuel you want to see your engine situation you want to see navigation data all that can be controlled via all those displays so as you've already said Raptor optimized for the air-to-air mission again this is something that the Air Force can do in terms of specializing you know A10 F-16 F-15 Raptor all very specialized airplanes Navy has to start with can it land on the aircraft carrier and then we grow from there yeah right so what would your average weapons Loadout be for your standard cap Mission what would your weapons Loadout be so in an air-to-air Mission we're focused on an offensive counter era a defensive counter air roll we're going to be what we call six by two by gun and so six being amram that's your aim 120 uh two being your heat seeking missiles those are the side weapons Bay is the Jet and then we have 480 rounds of m61a2 gal Gatling gun uh available to us those are 20 millimeter rounds uh and those are all internally fed and kept in the jet where did you deploy during your career so I've been to Europe and I've been to the Middle East uh so in that time uh spent some time fighting against Isis so in September so September 22nd 2014 was the first combat Mission so to say the Raptor where we took we took Jets into Syria you can find public information about this um and they dropped some bombs on on a on a terrorist Hideout or an Isis Hideout uh I was there on the scene about a week later and relieved those guys and then we immediately got into the the Isis fight again this is in 2014 when they were actually taking land and we were losing that fight um uh on the ground and they were getting close to Baghdad and we were flying in both Iraq and Syria for a few years um uh this has also before the Russians showed up in Syria so it was a pretty permissive airspace uh with not a whole lot going on because the Syrian Air Forces um you know less than optimal and so that is uh that was not a huge deal but then we went to Europe um or that was a good time it was a big deal I should say not a huge deal from a threat lay down at that time standpoint and then uh went to Europe as well uh and flew with it's and a whole bunch of NATO and Ally Partners there in Europe that was a blast integrating with them and then obviously flown all around the country would be Nellis or Edwards or other places as well so you're talking about dropping bombs in Syria um was that sort of like the Tomcat that the airplane was modified along the way to have air-to-ground capability or was it always resonant and what sort of ordinance did they deliver the aircraft was originally known actually as the fa22 uh we dropped the a because uh and you can find like old Legacy toys or maybe knock off still available let's say fa22 that's how you know it's still a knockoff uh but uh in order to continue to get funding back in the early part of the program you still had even though we were optimized for air-to-air to survive Some Cuts in the budget and whatnot we had to say we could do air ground and so we are not your air-to-ground Specialists we are capable of doing air to ground but we only carry the gb32 which is a thousand pound GPS guided bomb and then we carry the sdb which is a 250 pound GPS guided bomb we do not have lasers we do not have IR we uh pods we don't carry any of that and so what we are capable of doing is bomb on coordinate so we either generate coordinates or somebody passes those coordinates we put those into our system those get layered into the into the weapon itself and then we release so sort of poor man's strike capability yeah uh this is this is where I would rely on a on a Super Hornet uh to to provide me with the coordinates and allow me to get all the glory you know but what we can do is get high and fast and throw bombs are pretty long ways and so there is a capability to use the air-to-ground ordinance on a Raptor to achieve effects still far away based on the speed now too is we can fly and release that so did you have any symbology in the HUD or was it just you injected a Latin long and that was all the weapon needed then you just pickled it and it was off on its way that's a great question we'll talk about how this happens so we either generate coordinates or somebody passes Corners Let's Pretend as Super Hornet has passed this coordinates so North X or south x East West uh and then gives us we have to have an elevation as well for where the weapon has to impact and so then I put that into What's called the ICP that's that's where the numbers and other buttons are right in front of my face that's directly underneath the Hut you put in the the lat long elevation and maybe some other weapon earring do you want it to or fly in from the Northeast do you want it to hit with a particular degree of impact angle you could find all sorts of Open Source information about how we weapon your web uh bombs across the across the military so now I put that in and now on my the big display in the dead center again that's called the SD or the situation display I see something show up which is called the Lar it's called the launch acceptability region yeah LR2 that's the same acronym we used yeah there you go perfect I would fly my jet into the lar at which point uh I would hit the pickle button the doors would open the bomb would release uh if you if you drop it outside of the lar you are not guaranteed to achieve the weapon earring that you put in and so you want to make sure you get inside the lar before you release so remind me I should know this but what is the status of the f-22s sunset program do you you guys still flying it is has it already gone away how's that going to go the Raptor has a couple of different configurations out there flying as we speak and I'll get into those here super quick so down at the schoolhouse at Eglin Air Force Base used to be at Tyndall I taught there uh we have what are called The Block 20 Jets those have some older I want to say old uh you know it's just the their software and Hardware is not at the black 30 level in their honestly mooch isn't much that I can share about that other than um it is still a highly capable jet but there are some software Hardware upgrades that they don't have and so those are down at the schoolhouse and then uh once you get out into the the combat Air Forces or the calf they have what are called black 30 Jets uh and they have the ability to do a little bit more air to ground in other uh capabilities um there was a push last year to retire the block 20 Jets because of the maintenance Manpower and funding it takes to keep those things flying they're still incredibly capable airplanes in a high-end fight I would probably still want to rather be in that than a different airplane a fortune airplane depending on the mission certainly but if we want to get close the Raptor is still good whether it's a block 20 or block 30 there was a push to have those retired uh last year that was stopped by Congress Air Force has put that back in as a retirement request for aircraft in the fiskier 24's budget which is being debated right now and we'll see how that goes otherwise the Raptor still has years ahead of it especially as we await Next Generation aerial dominance which I know you've done a video in the past shout out to the your Paco video on that it was a great informative video so thanks for doing that one and God has to come online still and so the Raptor isn't going anywhere so the other thing that viewers will remember in current events was the Raptor was used to shoot down the Chinese spine balloon what as you hear from the Bubbas about that Evolution was it a source of Pride or was it kind of like cringe-worthy that they were used in that way what was their takeaway I will just say for for the viewers who may uh you know I know you have it you have incredibly intelligent viewers but I think it's worth being said that that actually is a pretty non-standard and challenging problem when you have something that's flying that high and is at the whim of the Winds and is flying slower than you know we are used to uh and is not putting off normal heat or radar signature and uh it's again based on its altitude you have to be flying at a reasonable speed in order to maintain your own maneuverability at the whim of the wind that changes its direction in The Last Mile when they're flying that high in order to maintain the maneuverability you probably have to be above the mock I'll just say in a very general sense that means your reaction time and the closure on this thing that suddenly could be going from 150 knots with the jet stream to zero uh could change in an instant and when your missile both of them both radar guided and he seeking are not necessarily optimized for this particular Target uh you have to come up with ways to ensure the success of that weapon and ensure the success of your intercept which is something that we don't practice to and so yeah it is a is it we use a 5th gen fighter against something that could never shoot back but uh it was a challenging problem I'll just say uh in unique and worthy of taking some time to Mission plan which they did and so what it all comes down to and I know you also understand this move just much of the air war is one at the mission planning table and when you can when you can think about things at 1G and zero knots and collaborate openly with your friends and work through some of the challenges and contingencies and opportunities there that allows you to not do that Airborne under stress when you're dehydrated under G low fuel things are shooting at you and I'm not saying that was the case here but successful Mission planning meant that one shot one kill on that balloon so the bottom line is it is not as easy as they made it look it shows it is a testament to my friends who you know a friend of mine who took that shot texted him that night congratulating him and uh and all the guys who were airborne and the people who who were on the ground helping Mission plan that the maintainers who loaded the weapon appropriately right because when you think about that shot somebody had to pull that weapon somebody had to put it on the jet somebody had to plug it in appropriately it had to uh ID and initialize on the jet it had to not fail at law launch and it had to track all the way to impact and so there are uh you know in it was in Top Gun 2 it's a two Miracle Solution there are a whole bunch of Miracles that take place in order for any missile to work and impact its Target and uh the fact that those guys did make it look easy was because of all the work they put in beforehand well scar you're a very busy man thank you for making us smart on the F-22 and we look forward to talking to you again very soon I mean we should really appreciate the the time to chat uh thanks a lot all right that'll do it for this episode if you're not already a subscriber become one so you don't miss anything if you'd like to help support the Channel please consider using the super thanks the heart icon below or become a patron at patreon.com in the meantime I look forward to talking to you again very soon [Music]

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 184,129

Keywords: Ward Carroll, F-14 Tomcat, F-22 Raptor, Air Force, Andrew Van Timmeren, Chinese spy balloon

Id: cMOzbzh-Fpc

Length: 31min 15sec (1875 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023