Wednesday, October 1, 2014

F22 Raptor finally goes to war

They sent a couple of F22's into Syria the other night to bomb some big building in the boonies of Syria.  Aviation Week has before and after reconnaissance photos.  Shows a multi story flat roof building, surrounded by a paved parking lot and outside the parking lot, a really stout fence.  No cars in the parking lot, not even painted lines.  The after photo shows a whacking big hole in the roof and piles of debris all over the parking lot.  Hole in one.  You can see where ISIS has shoveled paths thru the debris to get vehicles in and out. 
   Of course you gotta wonder why Aviation Week gives such nice coverage to a fairly plain vanilla ground attack mission.  An old F-4 Phantom could have done this one.  F22 is the super expensive, super secret air-to-air fighter that got so expensive that defense secretary Gates canceled production after getting billed for only 187 aircraft.  Final price was $130 million per airplane, which is a helova lotta money for a single seat fighter. 
  F22 is stealthy, hard to see on radar.  To get stealthy, all ordinance and fuel is carried internally so it won't give a radar return.  F22 had cute little missile bays, just big enough to take a Slammer air-to-air missile.  To do the Syrian building, the F22's used 1000 pound, JDAM smart bombs.  Those certainly won't fit in a missile bay barely large enough for a 4 inch diameter missile.  1000 pounders are better than a foot in diameter.  Aviation Week didn't say how they hung the 1000 pounders on the aircraft, presumable on non stealthy under wing rails. 

No comments: