Originally Posted by
typerated
Hi Ken, care to elaborate on the lack of legs with the F-22? Low drag, internal weapons carriage, twin engines and a big air frame should have plenty of places to stuff fuel and a big wing. I'd have thought the F-22 would be in F-14/15 territory?
Looks like others have answered for me and the bottom line is, no, the F-22 has OK but far from stellar range/endurance. And F-35A has more fuel capacity than F-22 and a single engine to feed so F-35 has superior range/endurance than F-22. And the big wing C model has even more fuel capacity, although it carries around more weight. And neither F-22 nor F-35 has enough for what Japan wants to do. Further, F-22 weapon bay is optimized for AMRAAM. The Japan mission requires a much longer ranged (and hence larger) missile that simply would not fit in the F-22 weapon bay. In short the F-22 airframe simply cannot do the mission Japan requires irrespective of the avionics stuffed into it.