Electronic Warfare Plane Beats F-22 Superfighter
February 26, 2009
According to this from Flight Global, the Navy’s new EA-19 Growler has bested the USAF’s best fighter, the F-22 Raptor in recent wargames:
I noticed a Boeing EA-18G parked on the side, and struck up a conversation with the pilot.
As we chatted about interference cancellation systems, I couldn’t help but notice an odd decal decorating the side of the fuselage. I asked the pilot: What’s that aircraft decal on the fuselage?
“That’s an F-22,” he said.
Well, why is it there?“Because this is the EA-18G that killed an F-22,” he explained.
If you don’t believe me, check out the photo of said warplane at the link! Maybe the USAF is buying the wrong plane. Wouldn’t be the first time they have “gone Navy“!
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4 Comments
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So instead of buying the F-22 the USAF should’ve bought E/A-18s — which is a jamming aircraft and has a totally different mission?
And this is all based on the fact that one E/A-18 had an F-22 silhouette on it?
(Mike — tell one side of the story much?)
I don’t think the fact that an EA-18G was able to get one (probably lucky) kill on an F-22 proves anything. The fact that the aircrew chose to paint it on the bird indicates to me that it’s probably a pretty isolated event.
I doubt the F-22 guys are painting F/A-18 silhouettes on their bird, although from what we’ve heard the kill-ratios are astronomical.
The kill ratio is a few Hundred to one, congrats on the one but I wouldn’t call that anything more than it is.
A Growler gets one, lucky simulated kill against a Raptor in who knows how many tens or hundreds of attempts and all of a sudden the USAF shouldn’t buy Raptors anymore?
We have to take isolated kills in exercises with a healthy grain of salt. We don’t know anything about the circumstances. How many times was the Growler killed by the Raptor before it got its lucky AMRAAM shot off?
I read about an ecstatic F-16 pilot who also got an F-22 kill a while back. Does that mean the Raptor is somehow on par with the F-22?
No. His entire flight of F-16s had already been killed several times by the Raptor. He got lucky or the Raptor pilot got sloppy.
We’ve seen massively lopsided kill ratios favoring the Raptor in exercises. Isolated kills going the other way doesn’t change this.