“Shogun, this is Hotshot three-zero. I’m an F-22 with 20 minutes of gas and 40 minutes from shore, my ejection seat has malfunctioned, and my canopy is sealed shut. I can’t eject and I can’t get out of the plane if I ditch. I need immediate clearance to land on your deck. Can you rig the barricade? Over.”
“Hotshot, this is Shogun Actual. Son, your country’s real proud of you and we’ll do everything we can, but you’re gonna die.”
Let’s get the ugly facts out first: as awesome as they are at their jobs, Air Force pilots don’t train to land on carriers in Air Force jets. This is a skill that is underappreciated in the question. You can’t wish yourself onto the carrier whilst smokin’ in at over 100 knots (best case).
Without at least a modicum of training, there’s no way this pilot would even get close to the safe parameters of a normal trap. A barricade landing is at least five times more complex and dangerous. You can’t get there from here.
While there are Air Force pilots who’ve cross-trained with the Navy and earned their carrier wings, they will be the first ones to tell you that you can’t just bring any ol’ plane aboard without training on that platform. It’s not a directly transferable skill (especially when it’s not designed to fly like that).
Secondly, no carrier CO is going to risk massive damage to his flight deck (essentially a major component of his only offensive weapon system) by letting 45,000 pounds of nasty slam into it.
While they could likely generate enough wind to get the approach speed down to 100 knots, that’s still far too much energy for the landing gear to absorb. While the F-22 probably has the specifications to be able to land in the netting ashore, those are systems where the aircraft lands and then enters the gear a couple thousand feet later. In this instance, the jets have to slam down into the deck immediately before the barricade.
At the descent rates we’re talking about the gear would collapse, likely just piercing through the jet and damaging the integrity enough that it would start losing parts either before or as it entered the netting.
The resulting conflagration could be catastrophic, and would likely shut the carrier down for a significant period of time (though it would be interesting to see what damage the impact would have on the steel deck). If the deck was undamaged, we could likely see launches again in 12–24 hours.
The crux is that no one has run this through the engineers and no sane commander would try it. Let’s not even talk about if the F-22 is too low and strikes below the round-down (the edge of the aft deck). It’s happened. If you have a morbid fascination about ramp strikes, search for videos using that term.
The other problem would be the tremendous forces on the pilot during the crash. Unless everything was done exactly correctly, the impact would simply rend soul from body. No muss, no fuss, no dramatic last quip, “Landing on carriers is tougher than I thought.
#1 In ordinary scenario, dead no.
Why? Cause an USAF guy would be flying it, and even if he’s the best pilot in the Air Force, he is not capable of doing a deck landing.
This doesn’t mean he’s dumb or something, simply Air Force pilots never land on carriers, so they’re not trained whatsoever to do so.
And despite Top Gun style approaches, landing on a deck isn’t easy at all.
Ask any naval aviator.
Differently from your average landing strip, you got a very short space to stop, you gotta do a precise engine procedure in order to be able to keep flying if something doesn’t work in the landing, the approach is very complicated, you got no reference points whatsoever cause water all looks alike, the flat area you’re trying to put the plane onto is moving and rolling…
No sensible captain, aka no captain, for this reason is gonna allow you to attempt a landing on his deck. Risking casualties on board and severe damage to a half a dozen billion dollar worth ship just to save one plane? I don’t think so. Not if the captain/admiral wants to keep being such.
#2 In a almost impossible scenario (maybe some kind of test, but it would be a pretty pointless and dangerous test, so…), meaning a Navy guy is flying the F-22? It could be possible, but as said almost surely not attempted.
The guy knows shit on how to put a plane down on a deck, however…1) the plane is different from the ones he’s used to 2) the raptor has no electronic carrier approach instruments whatsoever 3) no naval grade tail hook 4) its landing gear and airframe are not designed to take the heavy slamming of a carrier landing
As suggested by others, in this case a net could be put in place to catch the F-22. This is assuming the plane gets on the deck and kind of remains in one piece, which is very unlikely.
So i say, maybe possible in theory, super risky, and so reasonably it will never happen.
#3 In a super-impossible scenario, aka Lockheed goes crazy and equips the F-22 with an adequate tail hook and approach electronics? Yeah, kind of possible.
But again, the airframe or landing gear aren’t designed to take the punishment of slamming on the deck, and those parts can’t be just reinforced out of nowhere.
Oh and also, modifying the gear to allow catapulted takeoff would be impossible (again, airframe not strong enough for the job), so landing but no take off.
The Raptor is simply not designed for this job.
So for a one off, meaning you attempt a super risky landing for some kind of idiot and weird test and then you trow the F-22 away, it might work (in this scenario). That Raptor would be probably closer to being garbage than a fighter jet after such manoeuvre.
Talking realistic: no such tests as in points 2 and 3 would ever be carried out. The Navy has no interest for such stuff, nor does the USAF. On top, the Navy hasn’t a multi billion dollar ship to risk in this, neither the Air Force has Raptors to trow in the bin.
Talking #1, assuming an “emergency landing” or something, it won’t happen. As said, no captain would risk having his flight deck fucked up and maybe some of his sailors killed to save an Air Force plane.
The order would be to ditch and an helo would be sent out.
