" http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_defense_story.jsp?id=news/aw010807p1.xml " 최근에 배치되기 시작한 F-22 훈련결과에 대한 기사가 올라왔네요 F-22 설계자는 BVR로 적기를 격추시키거나 특별히 사이드 와인더를 이용해서 격추시키는 경우는 있을 수 있으나 기관포를 이용하는건 좀 구시대적이기 때문에 (가능하면) 사용되지 않기를 원했다는군요. 지난여름 알래스카에서 있었던 훈련에서 F-22는 첫째주에는 144대를 격추시키는 동안 3대를 제외하고는 모두 BVR로 처리했고, 두대는 사이드와인더, 한대는 기관포를 사용했다고 합니다. 훈련에서 F-22는 J-Turn,d 코브라기동, 고영각비행, high-off-boresight(AIM-9X 가 아직 공급되지 않은듯), unique nose-pointing capabilities(무슨뜻인지???)을 보여주지 않고도 우위를 지켰는데, 적들이 F-22가 접근하여 격추시킬때까지 제대로 알아차리지도 못했답니다. 다른 전투기보다 높은 고도에서 연료를 절감하면서 순항하고, 레이더와 각종 전자장비로 공중과 지상의 적들을 쓸어버렸고(감시했고), 수백마일 거리의 거리에서 적들보다 빨리 수퍼크루징으로 날아가 정찰기, 조기경보기, 급유기를 보호했다고하네요. 또한 F-22의 매우 중요한 능력중 하나가 각종 센서들을 이용하여 손쉽게 적과 아군을 구분할 수 있어 지원기들의 도움없이도 임무를 수행할 수 있다고 합니다. F-22의 레이더는 100마일 정도라고 얘기되지만 실제로는 125~150마일로서 일반적인 F-15 레이더 탐지거리마다 56마일정도 더 길고, 빔의 폭을 줄이면 250마일 또는 그 이상의 성능이라고 합니다. ~~~ 중략 ~~~ F-22 성능에 대해서 정리하자면 "기체성능뿐 아니라 레이더는 AWACS 같고, 각종 애비오닉스는 지원기가 필요없는 수준의 전투기이다"로 요약되네요. 결론은 F-22 만세! 아마도 다음 기사는 이번 결과를 상기시키며 "F-22 더 사줘!"가 될것 같네요. Raptor Scores in Alaskan Exercise   By David A. Fulghum and Michael J. Fabey   01/07/2007 09:51:16 PM   As the F-22 begins its operational life, interest has turned to assessing just how well suited the stealthy Raptor is to its role as the premier air-to-air fighter, while taking a peek at some of the surprises for pilots and maintenance crews as they explore what the aircraft can do. As part of the research for this series of articles on the F-22, Michael Fabey flew in the back seat of an F-15D while the Eagle and Raptor pilots demonstrated their aircraft's capabilities in the air-to-air ranges at Tyndall AFB, Fla. (For additional details of the Raptor's unique air-to-air capabilities, see AW&ST Sept. 6, 1999, p. 84.) The F-22 is proving it's a dogfighter after all. While it wasn't part of a hard-turning furball, an F-22--with its Amraams and Sidewinders expended--slipped into visual range behind an F-16 and undetected made a simulated kill with its cannon during the stealth fighter's first large-scale exercise and deployment outside the continental U.S. Those and other revelations about the F-22's emerging capabilities are increasingly important as the first combat unit, the U.S. Air Force's 27th Fighter Sqdn., begins its initial Air Expeditionary Force deployment this month to an undisclosed site. And the first F-22 unit, the 94th Fighter Sqdn., will participate in Red Flag in February. The gun kill is a capability Air Force planners hope their F-22s won't use. The fighter is designed to destroy a foe well beyond his visual and radar range. Within visual-range combat and, in particular, gun kills are anachronisms. In amassing 144 kills to no losses during the first week of the joint-service Northern Edge exercise in Alaska last summer, only three air-to-air "kills" were in the visual arena--two involving AIM-9 Sidewinders and one the F-22's cannon. The 27th Fighter Sqdn. aircraft--on deployment from Langley AFB, Va.--didn't get to show off their J-Turn and Cobra maneuvers or their high-angle-of-attack, high-off-boresight (which actually will arrive with the AIM-9X) and unique nose-pointing capabilities. The reason, those involved say, was because the victims of the three encounters, flying conventional fighters, never had a clue they were being stalked by F-22s until they were "killed." Raptor pilots agree that their preferred location for the fighter while in the battlespace is at high altitude, well above the other fighters, where they can adopt a fuel-efficient cruise, sweeping both the air and ground with radar and electronic surveillance for targets. From a superior altitude, the F-22 used sustained supercruise to range across hundreds of miles of airspace before an enemy fighter could threaten friendly high-value surveillance, command-and-control and tanker aircraft. Perhaps the most important revelation by the 27th Fighter Sqdn. was demonstrating the F-22's ability to use its sensors to identify and target enemy aircraft for conventional fighters by providing information so they could engage the enemy sooner than they could on their own. Because of the advanced situational awareness they afford, F-22s would stick around after using up their weapons to continue providing targets and IDs to the conventional fighters. "We always left F-22s on station to help, but we didn't designate any one aircraft to provide data," says Lt. Col. Wade Tolliver, the unit's commander. "It was critical that every F-22 out there provided all the data he had." With its high-resolution radar, the F-22 can guarantee target altitudes to within a couple of hundred feet. Its ability to identify an aircraft is "sometimes many times quicker than the AWACS," he says. "It was a combination of high-resolution sensors and being closer to the targets." The F-22's radar range is described only as being more than 100 mi. However, it's thought to be closer to 125-150 mi., which is much farther than the standard F-15's 56-mi. radar range. New, active electronically scanned radar technology--optimized for digital throughput--is expected to soon push next-generation radar ranges, in narrow beams, out to 250 mi. or more. The ability to close on the enemy without being targeted also allowed the F-22s to operate in threat areas where conventional fighters could not survive. This enabled the Raptor to engage targets at a greater distance from the aircraft and homeland they were defending. Raptor pilots had all the available data on the airspace fused and displayed on a single, easy-to-read screen. "When I look down at my scope and put my cursor over a [friendly] F-15 or F/A-18, it tells me who they are locked on to," he says. For example, "I could help them out by saying, 'You're double-targeted and there's a group over here untargeted' . . . to make sure we g ot everybody." F-15 targets will be latent because of the radar sweep. However, these messages are less and less verbal. "When you watch [tapes of the Alaska] exercise, it's fairly spooky," says Gen. Ronald Keys, chief of Air Combat Command. "There's hardly a word spoken among Raptor pilots." That silence also previews some of the fighter's possible future capabilities. "Because of the way the aircraft was designed, we have the capability to do more," Keys says. "We can put unmanned combat aircraft systems in there with Raptor. You've g ot three fairly low-observable UCAS in the battlespace. An air defense system pops up, and I click on a UCAS icon and drag it over [the emitter's location] and click. The UCAS throttles over and jams it, blows it up or whatever." In Alaska, because the F-22 remained far forward at high altitude, with an advanced radar it could monitor rescue missions that the AWACS 150 mi. away could not. "We could see the helicopters down in the valleys and protect them," Tolliver says. In addition to AWACS, the F-22 also can feed data to the RC-135 Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft to improve situational awareness of the battlespace. "If a Rivet Joint is trying to get triangulation [on a precise emitter location], he can get more [voice] information" from an F-22, Keys says. "If an AWACS sees a heavy group 40 mi. to the north, Raptor can come up and say it's two F-18s, two F-15s and four F-16s." Moreover, Keys says, modifications are underway to transmit additional target parameters--such as sensitive, high-resolution infrared data--from the F-22 with a low-probability-of-intercept data link. "Getting data into an F-22 is not hard," Keys says. "Getting it out [while staying low observable] is more difficult. We bought the links, but we just don't have them on yet." The F-22's advanced electronic surveillance sensors also provided additional awareness of ground activity. "I could talk to an EA-6B Prowler electronic attack crew and tell them where a surface-to-air missile site was active so they would immediately know where to point their electronic warfare sensors," Tolliver says. "That decreased their targeting time line considerably." In addition, the F-22 can use its electronic surveillance capabilities to conduct precision bombing strikes on emitters--a capability called destruction of enemy air defenses. "And future editions of the F-22 are predicted to have to have their own electronic attack capability so that we'll be able to suppress or nonkinetically kill a site like that," he says. The F-22's operating altitude and additional speed during the Alaska exercise also garnered praise. "We stayed high because it gives us an extra kinetic advantage with shooting, speed and fuel consumption," Tolliver says. "The Raptor typically flies way higher than everybody else and it handles like a dream at those altitudes." Tolliver wouldn't confirm the operating altitude, but Pentag on officials have put it at 65,000 ft., which is at least 15,000 ft. higher than the other fighters. "There were times we went lower, maybe to visually identify a threat or if we were out of Amraams and there was a bandit sneaking in at low altitude," he says. "The Raptor would roll in and kill him with a heat-seeking missile." The lopsided combat ratio resulted because, "they never saw us," Tolliver says. "We g ot there without being detected, and we killed them rapidly. We didn't do any major turning. It's not that the J-Turn maneuver isn't fun, but we didn't get a chance to use it." The F-22's Mach 1.5 supercruise capability also g ot a workout in Alaska. Because only eight F-22s were ever airborne at once during the exercise, four of them were constantly involved in refueling from tankers flying orbits 150 mi. away. Supercruise g ot the fighters there and back quickly. On station, the fighter would conserve fuel by cruising at high altitude. "We also used supercruise quite a bit because the fight was on such a large scale," Tolliver says. "The airspace was roughly 120 mi. by 140 mi. We could sit up at high altitude and save our gas and watch. We don't hang out at Mach 1.5. With our acceleration, when we saw the threats building, because we could see them so far out, we'd dump the nose over, light the burners and we were right up to fighting speed." During a typical day in the Alaska "war," 24 air-to-air fighters, including up to eight F-22s, defended their aerial assets and homeland for 2.5 hr. Air Force F-15s and F-16s and Marine F/A-18s simulated up to 40 MiG-29s, Su-22s, Su-24s, Su-27s and Su-30s (which regenerated into 103 enemy sorties in a single period). They carried AA-10s A to F, Archers, AA-12 Adders and the Chinese-built PL-12. These were supported by SA-6, SA-10 and SA-20 surface to air missiles and an EA-6B for jamming. Each day, the red air became stronger and carried more capability. As a result of all the emitters in the battlespace, the F-22's ability to map the electronic order of battle (EOB)--what's emitting and from where--proved critical. "I love intel, but it's only as g ood as the last time [analysts] g ot a data update, which could have been hours or even a day earlier," Tolliver says. An F-22 "gets rid of the time delay. I can plot an EOB in real time. I'm not saying we're better than a Rivet Joint, but I can g o places that it can't. If he's 150 mi. away, he's probably not g oing to be able to plot a high-fidelity threat location as quickly as I can." The adversaries were wily and didn't want to lose. "We had guys running in at 500 ft. off the deck," Tolliver says. "We had guys flying in at 45,000-50,000 ft. doing Mach 1.6, trying to shoot me before I know they are there. They would mass their forces and try to win with sheer numbers. None of it worked." A tactic used by the F-22s was actually developed and practiced in smaller scale at Langley before the exercise. Raptors worked in pairs, integrated with F-15Cs or F/A-18E/Fs. "I could help target for them from behind and above," Tolliver says. "We really don't have a name for what we were doing other than integrated ops. I was able to look down and smartly target F-15s or F/A-18s to groups at ranges where they could not yet [detect] the target." Yet, there are a number of F-22 capabilities that are shrouded in mystery, including electronic attack, information warfare and cruise missile defense. "It's no secret that one of our mods is to put electronic attack on board and then we will play a role in combating networks," Tolliver says. "We're already involved in the collection part. When we come back from a mission, we have the ability to download EOB data that's turned into intelligence pictures. This makes us an intelligence platform doing nontraditional ISR by bringing back emitter data so that teams can g o out and conduct information operations." The next step will be to pass the detailed information about surface-to-air missile locations, capabilities and emission details (called parametrics). "If I have characterized, say an SA-10, I can send it verbally to AWACS and they can send it out to other platforms," says Maj. Shawn Anger, an F-22 instructor with the 43rd Fighter Sqdn. at Tyndall AFB, Fla. However, "I can't pass the parametrics characterization. Hopefully, we'll be able to shoot it up the radar"--a new capability for the radar, which is being developed to send large, high-bandwidth imagery files. (Video courtesy of Lockheed Martin)