Is this actually true? The commonly told tale is that the F-22 was meant to fly super high, an altitude at which control surfaces lose their efficiency thus necessitating thrust vectoring.
The nozzle is just a general part of all aspect stealth.
Honestly (this isn't about you specifically) I'm finding many of the comments here to be super cope regarding TVC. The supposed ""bad sides"" of TVC all seem bullshit to me. It's just complex and not really necessary for a jet with big ass control surfaces which won't fly at ridiculous altitudes or dogfight in an age of batshit missiles. If we had it, cool, but it's not worth pursuing. I dunno why people are coming up with some really far fetched cons for it though.
Like some guy here posted that TVC was a hindrance and "reduced air speed". How the F does that work? It doesn't reduce thrust or affect your turbines and compressors. This is the first time I've ever heard that the F22 had "reduced air speed" due to its TVC.
You need to read up on aerodynamic mechanics regarding thrust vectoring before you can make claims about TVC’s pros and cons.
For a fighter jet airspeed is life. If as a pilot you have lost great deal of your airspeed you are most vulnerable. Apart from the danger of stalling , to be able to recover your air speed is going to take time and that is when you are most open to getting shot. It was taken from a a German EF2000 pilot’s interview after his plane was tested against F22 Raptors that TVC at times became a hindrance as the plane lost so much of it’s airspeed after applying hard TVC manoeuvres that it was left vulnerable until it could regain it’s air speed.
TVC is great at times. But not a necessity.
Check this Pugachev Cobra Manoeuvre: If you haven’t lost your airspeed that you had at the beginning after second position, then you are a miracle performer. In any manoeuvre you will lose airspeed. It all depends how well you can manage it. TVC lets you lose it in abundance and that compromises the plane against enemy attack.
"The key to success in combat with all-aspect missiles is to shoot first. Supermaneuverability allows a pilot to gain a shot opportunity earlier than with conventional maneuverability.
"Because of the high energy bleed rate, the manoeuvre has no tactical value. It is just an airshow stunt".
Quote:
Because aggressive manoeuvres applied with TVC in close quarters fighting will strip the fighter off of energy, it may score a kill against the opponent in front of it, but it is left vulnerable to any others nearby. This inherent issue with thrust vectoring combat tactics is really why no other American fighters are equipped with it, and in fact, Raptor pilots themselves
will tell you that the real benefit of TVC in their aircraft is maintaining a degree of manoeuvrability while flying at a high angle of attack when control surfaces aren’t as effective, rather than performing air show manoeuvres in a dogfight.
Unquote.
Here is the excerpt of article about effect of TVC
Quote:
According to the German pilots, once the fighting began, the F-22’s thrust-vector control (TVC) actually
hindered the Raptor, rather than helping it when sparring in close quarters with the Typhoon.
“The key is to get as close as possible to the F-22 and stay there. They didn’t expect us to turn so aggressively,” Gruene
told Combat Aircraft magazine back in 2012. “As soon as you get to the merge… the Typhoon doesn’t necessarily have to fear the F-22.”
(The Merge, for clarification’s sake, isn’t just the name of a
great aviation newsletter. It’s also what fighter pilots call it when two fighters meet head-on in a close-quarters pass.)
TVC
does allow a fighter to perform extreme manoeuvres, but they come at a high cost. In a
dogfight, airspeed is life, and the exotic displays TVC allows all scrub a great deal of it. When the F-22 uses its thrust-vectoring nozzles to turn on a dime, the jet is vulnerable until it can regain airspeed. If it doesn’t manage to score a kill immediately after performing such a manoeuvre , the Raptor becomes easy prey until its powerful pair of F-119-PW-100 turbofan engines can get all
70,000 pounds of thrust to get fighter moving again.
Unquote.
If you really delve in to why they applied 2D TVC to F22, you will find that 2D TVC actually imparts a good deal of Stealth characteristics to the f119 engine compared to the one without. When they checked about 3D TVC, they found stealth parameters deteriorate drastically. (As per
@CAN_TR ’s post.)
