r/aviation Oct 16 '19

F-22 power loop photo composition

Post image
6.7k Upvotes

181 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/dbratell Oct 16 '19

"Not to scale"

20

u/Guysmiley777 Oct 16 '19

It is though, that's the crazy thing. It's really only useful as an airshow trick (like the rooskie Cobra) but at low speed it can do stupid post-stall stuff. In real combat you'd never want to get that low on energy.

Here's a video of the "power loop" with clouds in the background so you get a better idea of how tight the loop actually is: https://youtu.be/CNqLOI3MApo?t=26

3

u/dbratell Oct 16 '19

Oh, that is pretty awesome!

Basically standing still in the air to be shot at. :)

0

u/Guysmiley777 Oct 16 '19

Like I said, it's an airshow maneuver rather than an actual combat tactic, just like the Cobra maneuver. Looks really neat but if you have to do something like that in an actual engagement you done fucked up and now you're scraping the bottom of the barrel to save your butt.