Roger Thompson
In his new article, “Inside the U.S. Air Force’s Plan to Make Sure the F-22 Raptor Dominates the Sky” writer Alex Hollings makes several controversial claims about the F-22 Raptor and the role of pilots that I think must be challenged. Firstly, he says that the F-22 is unquestionably the world’s best fighter, and to back that up he quotes a former Raptor pilot who says nothing in the air can touch this aircraft, including USAF F-15 Eagles. “The Raptor was so good that in 2002, three years before reaching operational service, former Eagle driver turned Raptor test pilot Mike ‘Dozer’ Shower and three of his F-22 flying peers wiped out 12 F-15Cs in less than two minutes in one of several air combat exercises that saw Eagles falling time after time to America’s newest bird of prey. The F-15 had never lost an air-to-air engagement to an enemy aircraft, with an unmatched air combat record of 104 wins and zero losses, but even the Eagle was all but defenseless when it came to engaging the Raptor.”
I think this claim has been overstated. It may surprise Lieutenant Colonel Shower to know that Canadian CF-104 Starfighters had little difficulty taking down F-15s in simulated combat back in the 1970s and 1980s, and I have already documented this in a recently published article. The CF-104 was small and fast, but certainly not a “stealth” aircraft and was nowhere near as expensive as the F-22, but it achieved tremendous success in simulated combat by virtue of the high-quality pilots that flew it. The same goes for Royal Navy Sea Harrier pilots who achieved simulated kill ratios of 7:1 against USAF F-15s, according to Commander Sharkey Ward. I mentioned this statistic in my book as well and I hope this puts the claims by F-22 advocates in perspective. (p. 131)
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