Posted on 09/29/2006 8:41:29 AM PDT by MARKUSPRIME
The F-22 Raptor fighter jet, the United States Air Force’s most expensive weapon, is designed for global air dominance. But its biggest battles have not been in the skies, but in the corridors of power in Washington, where it has just taken on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Washington budget-cutters — and won. But their efforts were rebuffed this week by the powerful F-22 lobby, a combination of the Air Force, Lockheed Martin, which makes the fighter jet, and their allies in Congress. The Senate is scheduled to vote this week on the $447 billion Pentagon budget for 2007, which contains a measure promoted by backers of the F-22 that could extend the jet’s production run beyond its 2011 termination date and reduce Congressional oversight of the program. The measure could open the door to additional F-22 purchases above the 183 budgeted by the administration and could extend the life of the program a few years by using a multiyear procurement contract rather than subjecting the F-22 to annual Congressional review. The Air Force thus far has taken possession of 74 F-22’s, which are being sent to bases across the country. The plane has not been used in combat yet. Six more are in production. Critics say the F-22 represents technological overkill at a time when United States air superiority is unquestioned and the nature of warfare has changed. It was originally designed for aerial combat against the Soviets. Still, even these critics concede that the plane is an engineering marvel, a Maserati of the skies. It can fly at 60,000 feet, twice as high as any other plane. Its cruising speed is Mach 2 and its top speed is a Pentagon secret. And its radar-eluding stealth technology allows it to fly at supersonic speeds — invisibly.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Raptors make me drool.
They make me feel warm and fuzzy.
Man, if they could make a non-stealth unarmed courier ... or even something that an executive to ride passenger on a joyride at 60K feet .... they could probably get some upper atmoshpere tourism going.
Guess this idiot hasn't seen the price tag for a B-2.
I can't WAIT to see this baby!
Wow, someone needs to proofread these things....
I'm pretty sure the F14, F16, F18 and even a 777 can fly higher than 30,000 feet. I am glad to hear we're buying more though!
Kinda puts the rest of the article in the "might be true" category.
We need to still think strategically. We wont be in Iraq forever, and our future enemies will probably be communist china or even a belligerent russia,or maybe even a china/russian/iran alliance against us. We see these nations forming alliances against us now and we need to stay vigilant.
Our legacy aircraft do a fine job and will be around for many years, but we have to keep our edge over other militaries. We need the F-22.
The fact that we currently have know enemy that would require such a advanced weapon, is in fact irrelevant. In the future we will have an adversary with the capability to test us. We need to make sure there test's are failures.
The argument has been made that we may not need very many currently, that is a good argument, and one that has been taken to heart, with a reduced purchase plan of only 182.
That seems reasonable for an aircraft that is so superior to anything in the skies that it will achieve air dominace just by taking off. I've seen reports that it is so superior that it has never lost in a combat exercise in a 10 on 1 situation. The enemy will simply not take off for fear of getting shot down, like the Iraqi's during the first gulf war, where they ran for Iran.
Fighter aircraft are destined to get much cheaper in the future, because the technology has already out stripted the human stress threshold. The F-22 is fly by wire, partly because the computer in-between the pilot and the control surfaces will not let the pilot make extreame changes in direction because the pilot could literaly die from the capabilites of the aircraft used to it's fullist.
Future fighters will not have a pilot inside the aircraft but may still be flown by remote and computer control.
This alone will reduce the cost of the aircraft because a large percentage of the cost of manufacture and design is the human pilots safety.
To have an aircraft that is superior and puts no pilot at risk it seem to me is the holy grail of air combat.
Our children who play flight sym's may very well be our next aces.
I would love to see one! Enjoy the show.
I'm on the Left Coast so I'll have to check the air show schedules out here.
Darn near everything can break 30k ft. The first Jet fighter the US had, the P-80 cound break 46,000.
..........yup; that's why it is called the "B-2" -
cots $2 billion per copy.....
what is it that the late Senator Everett Dirkson
said...? A billion here, and a billion there, and
pretty soon you're talking about real money.......
New York Times Amazing Fact of the Week.
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