As an F-22 pilot, Randy Gordon, said in a lecture he delivered at MIT, made it clear that when you are flying the Raptor you are not thinking about flying the Raptor, you are thinking about using the Raptor. Flying is secondary. That sentence explains why a training experience in a set of 2012 continues to get under the radar of aviation. In Alaska during multinational exercises, German Eurofighter Typhoons were strolling back to Alaska with notional eliminates against the American air-superiority fighter of the time, and were later reported with F-22 eliminate badges and the much-infamous quote “Raptor salad for lunch.” The scene was impossible to resist: a figure that seemed to be bypassed by an allied, fourth-generation form.
The engineering story behind that headline, however, is not so much about one jet overpowering another and more about the engineering of modern air combat by constraints rules, configurations, start conditions, and instrumentation than by radar cross section, thrust, and turn rate.
What is being known is that, Germany took eight Typhoons and 150 personnel to spend two weeks in Red Flag Alaska. That involved part of that event was Basic Fighter Maneuvers, the in-visual-range aspect of training that is meant to put a strain on the decision-making and energy conservation of pilots after pushing high-end sensors, stealth, and beyond-visual-range tactics to the background on purpose. Pilot statements give one-on-one work in which the F-22 was occasionally carrying external fuel tanks-equipment that can drag and make the aircraft difficult to manoeuvre, and enlarge the signature of the opponent. In the meantime, at least some Typhoons were to flown in a stripped version. The field of play in that small slice of air combat is now one of classic “rate fight” abilities and not the strength the Raptor uses to its advantage, making decisions when to start the fight.
Even the most glorified trick of the Raptor, thrust-vectoring can be turned into a two-sided weapon in that place. High-alpha, high-performance maneuvers are able to turn the nose around in a short period of time, but they also cost energy. Energy is life in close combat: speed and altitude was the price that purchased options. A commentary by the German pilots of the time had made the aim to remain near, turn hard and to take advantage of the opportunities where an offensive action had left the F-22 unpowered and a periodically vulnerable target until it could accelerate once more. The thrust vectoring is not negated by that dynamic: it only serves to emphasize the fact that the laws of thrust vectoring of the Raptor and the technique of the pilot are as important as the hardware.
At the same time, the Typhoon is not a mere foil. It was constructed as an air-superiority platform initially, with a delta-wing/canard arrangement that is optimized to handle high-G maneuvering and sustained turn manoeuvring, and developed into a multi-role jet with considerable electronic warfare potential. Its EJ200 engines accelerate it to approximately Mach 2 (as compared to the Raptor with approximately Mach 2.25) yet at high speed being of no use once two aircraft are within visual range and fighting each other.
This is one of the details that are usually missed in internet versions, and that is that “wins” in training are the product of measures and judgment. Large exercises are based on pods and tracking systems that recreate every engagement to the referees and debriefs, whereas the smaller events may be based on calls, video recording, and post-flight reconstructions. One summary of air-combat training by a practitioner goes on to state, However, “First person to the chalkboard wins,” a shorthand briefing that discipline in debriefing and agreed-upon rules define what constitutes a eliminate.
The enduring lesson of the Third season episode, Typhoon-versus-Raptor, is not that stealth “failed.” This is the deliberate creation of the circumstances, in which stealth becomes less decisive, since real pilots can still be obliged to join a merge, to be able to carry external stores, and to commit a tactical error. The Raptor is an aircraft designed to minimize such instances using stealth and sensor fusion but the whole idea of Red Flag is to push the limits sometimes with a lot of noise until it is found out somewhere that is not finished with decals and jokes.
