The recently held Red Flag-Alaska exercise has been the source of a lot of talk in military aviation circles, mostly regarding the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 Raptors versus the German Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoons. It was the first time both types met during dissimilar air combat training and gave some real insight into what both could and couldn’t do.
Next came the Eurofighter and F-22s, in which the exercise was held in the Within Visual Range (WVR) arena as well, and the Typhoons showed unprecedented performance. Most importantly: according to Typhoon pilots, Eurofighter, when flying without external fuel tanks, not only did not let itself be beaten but often outperformed the F-22. This was, of course, if the Raptor did not use its thrust vectoring too much, which did allow for rapid changes of direction but at the cost of considerable energy bleeding. In this way, the F-22 became subject to vulnerability in the case of its inability to confidently score a first-shot kill.
This observation is one that was similar to others in the fact that TV offers no value for the energy it expends unless the fighter is in a post-stall regime. The advent of High Off Bore Sight and Helmet Mounted Display technologies, both of which the F-22 does not have, further diminishes the relevance of TV in today’s engagements.
Even though stealth theoretically de-emphasizes the need for WVR engagements, the results of the exercise were that the Typhoons still scored some simulated kills against the Raptors. One German pilot even managed to quote “Yesterday we had Raptor salad for lunch” so things would appear to have gone all right for the Euro Canards.
Photographs from Neuburg taken on 18 July 2012 clearly show German Eurofighters achieving F-22 kills during the simulated confrontations. At this point, it should be kept in mind that the kills during dissimilar training do not prove the superiority of one aircraft over another. The results remain extremely dependent upon ROE and training scenarios in force.
The F-22 fights well beyond visual range with its superior radar and range-amplitude AMRAAMs. This is, of course, the kind of fight the Raptor was designed to fight. However, available historical data from a RAND study indicates that long-range air-to-air missiles have had much lower effectiveness than was previously predicted: in only 24 of 588 air-to-air kills since 1950 they notched beyond visual range.
Despite the F-22 Raptor being a very potent air-to-air fighter, it has been quite evident from the recent Red Flag-Alaska exercise that it is not invincible, especially at close quarters with an agile enemy, in this case, the Eurofighter Typhoon. It is a stern reminder exercise in the complexities and changes that are in-built into air combat, where technological growth and tactical finesse very often redefine outcomes continuously.