F-18F scores gun kill on F-22A

[Bilboone]

It had to happen some day. I guess the pilot of this Super Bug is pretty proud of himself. Here are two HUD captures from a VFA-11 F/A-18F acting as Red Air against an F-22A:





Looks like the Raptor found himself in front of a slow Super Hornet, which is not where anybody wants to be. The F-18F is at 15K feet, 20 degrees AOA, Mach 0.36, pulling 1.7G, with a peak previous G of 7.6 for the fight. HUD shows he has squeezed the trigger. It's not exactly what you'd call "comfortably saddled up in his six" or anything like that -- it's clearly a high deflection shot -- but it does show the Super Hornet can point its nose when it wants to.

[OO-TUC]

Really cool pics! How\where did u get them?

Btw, this doesnt suprise me that much, that an F18 can get a F22 in a dogfight. An Dutch F 16 did even kill a Serbian MIG 29 with his sidewinder rocket during the Kosovo crises, so also super jetfighters arent invincible

[Zorba]

Great pictures! 8)

[pietn]

yeah well, an F-16 shooting down a MiG isn't as "wow" as an F-18 killing an F-22. By the way, I don't think that Serbian pilot's aren't that well trained in comparison to dutch pilots.

but in addition to this: I once read an article about NATO plane's that kept circling above a downed target searching for any sign of life and not hasitating to use their gun.......(I think the article came from a downed MiG-pilot during the Kosovo crisis)

greetz, pietn

[regi86]

Does anybody know if the F/A-22 is equiped with thrust vectoring like the SU30 etc.?? This would be one of the only situations where a superbug has a bit of advantage over the 22 because of his slow speed/ High AOA characteristics...

Btw these shots don't mean the 18 would have killed the 22 in real life, seems that you need 10-15 frames of the gun camera shots to get a confirmed kill and we only see 2 frames here so anything is still possible!

oh and OO-TUC the Dutch F-16 didn't use the sidewinder but the AIM-120 AMRAAM and they fired atleast 20 km's away of the target, the mig almost didn't even knew what hit him.

and Pietn, I wouldn't really trust on what this article is saying, this used to happen in WO II etc. but I really don't see those planes go down low flying over Kosovo just shooting at a pilot while exposing them self to even small arms fire, also when returning to base they would have to explain the reason why they have used there gun ammo + the gun camera's that are active like in the F-18 so it would mean a big cover up by the airforce...

greetz

[n5528p]

@ Bilboone

Thanks for sharing the pics - could you go into more details concerning all the numbers and their meaning?

Especially the number above the Mach and g - values would be interesting, also the scale which moves from the upper left to th e lower right reading 20...25...30...35 would be interesting.

Thanks a lot,
Bernhard

[pietn]

The Raptor is equiped with thrust vectoring, but only for pitch movements (nozzles only move up or down, unlike the Su-37 where they move sideways to).

about the article: it came from an issue of Airforces Monthly. I don't know how much is true of it, but you have to edmit that NATO forces aren't holy either, there are many things we will never know, so maybey they do kept circling above a downed target, I could have been an order, but then that will be know by the officers and so, but they would never tell the media. just think of the war in Iraq, about what happed in those prisons.
maybey it is not the right example but it's kind of like that.

greetz, Pietn

[Bilboone]

Does anybody know if the F/A-22 is equiped with thrust vectoring like the SU30 etc.??

Yes, F/A-22 has thrust vectoring but only in the pitch direction up and down , like you can clearly see in this picture

could you go into more details concerning all the numbers and their meaning?

at left pos from down to up:

7.6 ---------> max G's during flight
G 1.7 -------> current G's
M 0.36------> current Mach number
alpha 20.3--> current angle of attack

number on the left in the rectangle ----------> current speed in kts
number on the right in the rectangle --------> current altitude in feet

on the right

200 Vc -------> target range rate in knots closing speed is positive
the big W is the Fixed Airplane Symbol
1000 Ft -------> closing altitude

scale left to the lower right reading 20...25...30...35 ------> the pitch ladder in degree at an angle half that of the flight path of the aircraft to the horizon, positive pitch lines are solid, and negative pitch lines are dashed like in this case and because it is projected under a angle is because aircraft is banking to the left , so that inverted fligth is easily recognised, this indication is infact a ADI indicator on a aircraft

the scale on top middle with the ^ index is the heading indicationwith the ^ as heading bug

the little aircraft symbol in the lower part of picture is the velocity vector, points to the actual direction the aircraft is flying, this limited to 8 degree radius circle if exceeded it begins to flash

so , I think this explains almost everthing of the HUD symbols

[regi86]

@ Pietn and Bilboone thx for explaining the thrust vectoring on the Raptor! And about the article, did it mention they shot at the pilots while descending or on the ground or did they just cirle around?
Indeed it could be very well possible they shot at the pilots but looking at how Milosevic played out the media throughout the war it wouldn't be a wise thing to shoot some bullets through a pilot who could eject and while the aircraft only got shot down by a missile

[pietn]

I'll search the article in my "library" and let you know all the details

greetz, Pietn

[n5528p]

@ Bilboone

Thanks a lot for the info - I really appreciate that!

Regards, Bernahrd