-
If you enjoy the forum please consider supporting it by signing up for a NES Membership The benefits pay for the membership many times over.
-
Be sure to enter the NES/Pioneer Valley Arms April Giveaway ***Smith & Wesson SD9VE 9MM***
USA Bombs Iran
- Thread starter whatluck
- Start date
MaxStravinsky
NES Member
You'd also wipe out the Lemurs (a cool little primate), and seriously hurt our supply of good vanilla.
kevin9
NES Member
Absolutely
I don't think stealthy tankers are needed for this use case (though it would be nice). F22's have plenty of range to be refueled outside of the effective combat reach of Iran. One or two refuelings on the way in and out should be plenty to get them there and back.
whatluck
NES Member
Does anyone else think this is extremely sexy? Not just the whole insertion and exchange of fluids, but flying an F22 is probably hard and dangerous enough.
And who is the smart ass who came up with this shit?
engineer: 'hey i got an idea, lets take a 767 and fill it to the brim with JET FUEL, then have midair sex and exchange fuel at 4 bar!'
general: 'ok draw it up'
*engineer hands over crude drawing of 2 planes making a baby*
An F-22 can actually carry a refueling rig to refuel another F22 (I’m pretty sure) Same for an f-18 or f-15. Not that it’s feasible to do on a large scale.
By no means am I any kind of expert I just geeked out on the situation and watched a ton of videos on it and read a bunch of posts by the intel geeks on x.
By no means am I any kind of expert I just geeked out on the situation and watched a ton of videos on it and read a bunch of posts by the intel geeks on x.
kevin9
NES Member
The Navy is already deploying them: Boeing MQ-25 Stingray - Wikipedia. Problem is they can't refuel USAF aircraft like the F-22 because they use the probe and drogue system instead of the flying boom the USAF uses.
According to Wikipedia General Curtis LeMay was the general who made the request and Boeing engineers (back when they had engineers) were the ones that designed it.
Also note that the US Navy (and most other countries) use the reverse gendered probe and drogue system where the recipient has the stiff part and the tanker has the receptacle.
kevin9
NES Member
Not exactly. Some Navy fighters (ex. F18) can carry a rig to refuel other Navy aircraft because they use a probe and drogue system. All the system has to do is unreel the hose with drogue at the end of it and the recipient flies their aircraft to insert the probe into the drogue. AFAIK there is no refueling boom system that can be attached and detached from an aircraft, such as the F-15 or F-22. Part of the problem, besides the mechanical weight and complexity of the system, would be the need for an operator on the tanker side to fly the boom into the recipient aircraft receptacle.
While also alerting their IADS that shit is coming. It doesn’t have to be within the IADS missile reach to be a problem for the mission.
They would need a refuel near the Gulf of Oman in order to escort the whole way to hardened nuclear development facilities. That is well within Iranian early warning radar range.
Especially when we could easily have F-22s already in the CENTCOM AOR which could take off from elsewhere and be quietly patrolling for Iranian fighters while the B-2s are in Iranian airspace.
But we are developing low observable external fuel tanks that will extend the reach of F-22s, F-35s, and future NGAD/F/A-XXs.
There is just virtually zero benefit to having F-22s on Diego Garcia aside from providing possible ballistic missile defense for the island base itself. And any ballistic missiles couldn’t come from Iran anyway. They don’t have the range.
kevin9
NES Member
The Iranian Early Warning radar system has a range of roughly 100 miles, which isn't enough to fully cover the Persian Gulf. Refueling could happen over parts of the Persian Gulf, or over one of our nominal allies in the region, and an F-22 would have sufficient combat range to reach Iran's facilities and return.
Now, I do think the Diego Garcia basing of F22s is simply a show, and/or a waypoint. Launching out of an airfield in-theater (ex. Al Udeid) and then topping off overhead (or Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia) might be a less complicated mission.
You’re about 500 miles short. It’s 1,100km for early warning.
Edit: I see you linked the Kashef. That is OLD. And it is currently used for tactical purposes, not strategic. Iran has Over The Horizon (OTH) capabilities now.
Last edited:
Again, there is zero reason to launch F-22s from Diego Garcia for the purposes of escorting B-2s. We could easily have F-22s (or F-35s) launched from somewhere in CENTCOM instead of out in the missile of the Indian Ocean.
There is virtually no reason for B-2s to be there either, aside from sending a message.
There is virtually no reason for B-2s to be there either, aside from sending a message.
kevin9
NES Member
Mea culpa. A bit more searching has uncovered much longer range Iranian early warning radar systems. That's what I get for using a quick Google search and Wikipedia.
So maybe not as simple as I originally though, but I still think with some subterfuge and EW trickery an F-22 strike could be conducted. It's one thing to detect an object at +1,000km, but quite another to know what it is and what it's intentions are.
But once you detect the object, you can cue other sensors and systems. It increases risk unnecessarily.
Especially when an F-22 or F-35 can easily be launched from elsewhere in CENTCOM and reach any part of Iran that we’d want to strike. Not only is there no benefit to launching from Diego Garcia, but there are detriments.
Who said anything about nukes?
GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator
But to actually answer your question. Countries can see ICBM launches. It’s a pretty easy-to-observe indication & warning. A nuke quietly launched in the middle of the night from a low observable aircraft is a much bigger surprise. That likely would never matter for the U.S. though because we wouldn’t pre-emptively strike with a nuke… anymore.