Posted on 07/17/2009 11:41:24 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The White House today flags Defense Secretary Gates’s speech yesterday to the Economic Club of Chicago in which he makes a case against additional funding for the F-22.
"The F-22, to be blunt, does not make much sense anyplace else in the spectrum of conflict," Gates said. "Nonetheless, supporters of the F-22 lately have promoted its use for an ever expanding list of potential missions. These range from protecting the homeland from seaborne cruise missiles to, as one retired general recommended on TV, using F-22s to go after Somali pirates who in many cases are teenagers with AK-47s – a job we already know is better done at much less cost by three Navy SEALs. These are examples of how far-fetched some of the arguments have become for a program that has cost $65 billion – and counting – to produce 187 aircraft, not to mention the thousands of uniformed Air Force positions that were sacrificed to help pay for it."
Gates said that 187 F-22s are "sufficient" and told President Obama that.
"The reaction from parts of Washington has been predictable," Gates said.
As we've covered, President Obama has indicated he will veto the National Defense Authorization Act if the final bill presented to him contains $1.75 billion in additional funding for the F-22. Earlier this week he joined with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to eliminate more F-22s from the defense bill. (That vote was postponed.)
Gates, you don’t make much sense as the Secretary of Defense.
Now that the Taliban, Al Qeda are no longer targets and Cheney is, he makes a valid point.
No way I would want Gates as SecDef.
Maybe Gen John W. Corley will make a better SecDef (if I were POTUS).
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-060709-1.html
Somebody with a brain and who cares about America, show Gates “the gate”, fast before he destroys us.
/src
The F-22 is a deterrent. Like our nuke subs, They are not battle tested.
Hopefully, they will not be be.
Gates thinks it "makes sense" to negotiate with the Holocaust Denier loudly bragging he'll erase Israel to create the chaos to coax the Twelfth Imam from the well near Qum where he's hidden for centuries.
Gates doesn't think it "makes sense" to continue to have American air dominance uninterrupted since the Korean War.
Does Gates think the Chinese or Russians will keep him around in the manner of a jeweled poodle as a depository of table scraps.
He's responsible for the mess at CIA and is now responsible for the gutting of American defense.
Gates is the main item in this equation which does not "make sense".
Go look over at the maintenance issues of the F-22. It requires more care than the current F-15 or F-16. You might have gotten a superior aircraft but it sits in maintenance more than a 15-year old fighter that we have currently today. What good is a aircraft that spends more time in the hanger than the previous aircraft?
You have been reading to much of the Washington media.
Link
http://www.f-16.net/news_article3621.html
Attacking the F-22 with Yellow Journalism
187. An oddball number such as that would make sense to a bureaucrat. Anyway, if we get that many, it’s a lot better than none.
Nodding.
He must have gone to school on the short bus!
I seem to remember people saying a lot of other aircraft didn’t make sense anymore, like the B52, F16, F117, B2, A10, etc.
They were wrong.
I apologize, the moron went to my High School.
wait till we are facing the combined PRC and NK air forces
Then it will make perfect sense.
Moron and more beltway morons are living on BO tubesteak
I can understand, MAYBE, not buying 500+ F-22’s, but not shutting down the production line.
Twenty-nine combat squadrons of Raptors is the optimum number for gaining air superiority in three theaters of war and defending the CONUS.
Note from AFA President — F-22
AFA members, Congressional staffers, Civic leaders, and DOCA members, there is a fight going on in Washington about the F-22. In short, the Obama Administration thinks 187 aircraft are enough, while many in Congress think we need more.
AFA sides with Congress on this issue. We point out that the 187 number is already 186 since one has crashed. And we say that 186 means only about 100 operational — given those in training, depot, test, etc. Can we really believe that in the next 30 years, we will not be faced with a situation where our ground forces will not depend on air dominance; where we would not want the skies clear so our A-10s and UAVs can operate freely; and where the US military won’t be called upon to strike a highly defended target? We believe 100 operational aircraft presents a higher risk than is necessary for the nation. Others agree with our assessment.
As in any political fight, there are those who write and say things which are not factually accurate. That happened last Friday AM when the Washington Post published, on the front page, an article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903020.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR which claimed the F-22 had maintenance and other major problems. Both the Air Force and AFA have responded ... noting the many inaccuracies of the piece. We put on our web site a short paper which lays out the actual facts. You can find it here: http://www.afa.org/edop/2009/edop_7-13-09.asp
On Monday, the President signed a letter to the Senate, threatening a veto if funds for the F-22 were included in the Authorization bill. An additional letter was signed by Sec Gates and ADM Mullen. You can find both letters at: http://www.airforce-magazine.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Reports/2009/July%202009/Day13/ObamaF-22Ltr_SASC_071309.pdf and http://www.airforce-magazine.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Reports/2009/July%202009/Day13/Gates-MullenF-22Ltr_SASC_071309.pdf
Last week, the office of Sen Chamblis [R-GA) asked AFA for our views. I responded with a letter to Senator Carl Levin, (D-MI), that can be found here: AFA Letter to Senator Levin . Also, I penned an op-ed ... which has yet to be published. It can be found on our website at: http://www.afa.org/EdOp/2009/edop_7-14b-09.asp.
Another viewpoint is from an op-ed written by Senators Hatch and Inhofe can be found here at http://www.afa.org/EdOp/2009/edop_7-14-09.asp
Additional viewpoints from the commander of Air Combat Command can be found here at http://www.airforce-magazine.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Reports/2009/June%202009/Day17/CorleyResponse_060909.pdf and the Air National Guard can be found here http://www.airforce-magazine.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Reports/2009/July%202009/Day09/Wyatt_to_Chambliss.pdf
The state of play is as follows: The Senate votes today or tomorrow on the issue. Next the Appropriations committees of both the House and Senate take up the question. [The House has already added funds for the F-22 in its Authorization bill.] We will keep you informed of the status daily with postings on the AIR FORCE Magazine’s Daily Report.
For your consideration.
Mike
Michael M. Dunn Lt Gen, USAF (Ret) President/CEO http://www.afa.org/PresidentsCorner/Notes/Notes_7-14-09.pdf
It is no secret to those in the Air Force that older aircraft require much more maintenance and sit undeployable than newer aircraft. It just doesn't work the other way. Google "F-14, F-18 maintenance issues" to get a load of what the numbers of time percentage availability for aircraft on the same carriers were in the 90's.
In the mid-80s, I was stationed near Ramstein as F-16s went in and F-4s were phased out. The moral of the maintenance guys and gals that lived around me was way up, as the newer airframes were so much easier to work on. Exiting question:
Would you rather work on a 2010 Camaro, or a 1977 Jim Rockford model with 350k miles on it?
It doesn’t make any sense to keep paying out the nose to maintain our current F-15s and F-16s. That doesn’t mean F-22s are the best bang for our buck, though. I actually think building -more- F-15 and F-16s for air superiority and support missions against non-peer competitors (read: anyone but russia and china) is cheaper and more effective than trying to scale our fourth and fifth generation platforms to replace all of our current assets.
Like I said in the last post, there’s a plausible argument for skipping over the F-22 to the F-35. The best argument for keeping F-22 production is maintaining our industrial base. There’s a real threat we may end up with aerospace electronics -fabbed in china- if we let things slip further.
Gates was a A** Under the Bush Administration trying to cut programs while fighting a war...
Now he is proving to be a JackA** under Obama..
More spitballs!
This can be reveresed, just as Reagan did with the B1 bomber. They’ll have to wait a few years though.
Gates is an utter horsesarse. A 16 year old kid with an AK is just as dangerous as a 45 year old — if not moreso. We have one successful use of Seals, the pirates continue their operations, and Gates considers that a great victory has been won.
When the final biography is written of this maundering bozo it will conclude that he was the most egregious bureaucrat in the history of our nation.
When that happens we better be prepared with a superior Fighter force.Or we're going to be in big trouble.
Only if your subjective definition of "not too long" is extremely liberal.
F-15 fleet average age = 22 years
F-16 fleet average age = 17 years
Apaches or other attack choppers seem better suited to that duty, especially at night.
Seems the Pentagon was holding back on some vital info...
>>In not too long, most of our F-15s and F-16s will be in the 30+ year category.
>
>Only if your subjective definition of “not too long” is extremely liberal.
>F-15 fleet average age = 22 years
>F-16 fleet average age = 17 years
Not necessarily true. Take, for example, an Army motor-pool of HWMVs: let’s say that there are 10 of these all of which are 20 years old, making the average age 20 years old.
Now, due to requisitions and wheeling-and-dealing we add ONLY FIVE brand new HWMVs (age = 0). The average age becomes 200/15 years, which is 13 & one-third years old. So, as you can see, just by adding half of our original number to our group we vastly change the average age. (MOST of them are still 20 yr/old HWMVs.)
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