Posted on 01/31/2008 9:02:42 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Posted on Sun, Jan. 27, 2008
The F-22: expensive, irrelevant and counterproductive
By PIERRE SPREY, JAMES STEVENSON and WINSLOW WHEELER
Special to the Star-Telegram
On Dec. 12, the Air Force announced with considerable fanfare at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia that its F-22 fighter had reached "full operational capability." Air Combat Command commander Gen. John Corley called it a "key milestone."
Brimming with pride, a spokesman for the manufacturer, Lockheed, stated: "The F-22 is ready for world-wide operations" -- and then added, "... should it be called upon."
His afterthought makes the point: There are, of course, two wars going on, and the F-22 has yet to fly a single sortie over the skies of Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor has the Air Force announced any intention of sending the F-22 to either theater.
The Air Force is quite right to keep the F-22 as far as possible from either conflict. The airplane is irrelevant to both, and were it to appear in those skies, it almost certainly would set U.S. and allied forces back.
Not only would it impose an unwanted burden on the already overstretched support forces in the region, but its primary mission -- shooting down enemy aircraft -- has no meaning in 21st-century warfare. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have no air force, nor do they want one.
Although the F-22 could carry two bombs to attack ground targets, that capability is so modest that our opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan might not even notice. It also would be ungracious to compare the F-22 to the ridiculously cheap, simple, and quite old A-10 close-air-support aircraft that has been operating in both wars -- and even more ungracious to point out that each A-10 can deliver more than 10 times that load.
Destroying from the air enemy tactical units directly on the battlefield is an essential part of modern warfare -- a mission that the Air Force was forced to embrace reluctantly when it developed the low- and slow-flying A-10, its first and only purpose-built close-air-support aircraft. Data from Afghanistan indicate that U.S. and allied forces might have killed more innocent civilians than the enemy has in the past year, and from Iraq we read report after report of civilians killed as a result of U.S. action. A major part of those "collateral" civilian casualties come from air attacks from aircraft flying too fast and too high to know and positively identify exactly what they are guiding their munitions to.
In a form of conflict in which winning over the civilian population is key to success, F-22 participation -- along with that of other high-flying, high-speed aircraft -- may be much worse than irrelevant.
Corley and other F-22 advocates would leap to argue that in its intended role -- shooting down enemy fighters -- it is unsurpassed. In fact, the airplane's many advocates seek to expand the F-22 buy beyond 2009, when current production is scheduled to end.
Let's pretend for the moment that there exists, or will soon, an enemy air force for which the F-22 would be relevant. How, then, could the F-22 help?
As an individual performer in real-world air-to-air combat, the F-22 is a huge disappointment. The Air Force vociferously disagrees -- based on its untested-by-combat hypothesis that air wars can be fought and won by long-range, radar-controlled missiles fired at enemies you cannot see or reliably identify. If ever the F-22 finds itself in an air war against a serious opponent, all of us will find out who is right.
Three issues matter here:
Force size -- The U.S. Air Force initially decided that to fight any serious opposing air force would require 750 F-22s. For development and procurement, Congress is providing $65.3 billion -- a huge sum. However, because no stakeholder was interested in exercising discipline over the design, weight and cost of each F-22, that $65.3 billion will buy only 184 aircraft. Given the need to maintain a training base in the U.S., and considering the demonstrated daily sortie rate of similarly complex aircraft already in our inventory, the Air Force will be lucky to be able to fly 60 deployed F-22s per day at the start of a major conflict overseas.
That number would shrink as inevitable combat attrition and maintenance down-time take their toll. But even that generously estimated initial 60 sorties per day would not be a meaningful force against the major threat air force that the F-22 advocates hypothesize to make the F-22 relevant.
Pilot skill -- We can expect that same tiny F-22 force to attrite all too rapidly in combat because the Air Force funds only 10 to 12 hours of flight training for F-22 pilots per month. That amount of realistic training is completely inadequate. At the height of their prowess in the 1970s, the Israelis gave their fighter pilots 40 to 50 hours of flight training per month.
The history of air warfare shows that the most important determinant of who wins an aerial dogfight is pilot skill, not aircraft performance. Because they have raided pilot training accounts to feed increasingly voracious procurement programs (such as the F-22), Congress and the Air Force have virtually guaranteed high pilot losses in any hypothesized, large-scale air-to-air war.
When we buy ultra-expensive fighters such as the F-22 that gobble up already scarce training and support funds, we make our own pilots more vulnerable. If the advocates of more first-line fighters for the U.S. were serious about winning air wars and saving pilots' lives, they would double (and then triple) the amount of money available for pilot flight training before spending a penny on new aircraft. Instead, Congress cut Air Force training accounts in the new Department of Defense Appropriations Act by $400 million.
Cost -- The current plan is to buy 184 F-22s for $65.3 billion, or $354.9 million per aircraft. The Air Force contends that such a calculation is unfair; it distributes the cost of all testing and development -- thus far -- equally to every aircraft.
The Air Force contends that a more meaningful calculation for a prospective purchase is what it calls "flyaway" cost, which considers the development cost to have been sunk and that the only cost that should count now is the "cost to go." That cost, the Air Force contends in an October "fact sheet" on the F-22, is a mere $159.9 million per fighter.
Even at the Air Force's advertised price, the F-22 remains history's most expensive fighter aircraft. Considering the tiny inventory and reduced pilot training that the unprecedented cost implies, it's still no bargain.
The Air Force has failed to reach a point in F-22 production where it can be bought more efficiently. There is no "bargain" in going beyond the 184 that the taxpayers have already paid for.
The most telling characteristic that Lockheed and the Air Force are pushing to acquire additional F-22s is demonstrated in recent newspaper articles and advertisements. Nowhere do these items talk about a dangerous threat that makes more F-22s mandatory. Instead, they address how money for additional F-22s would be spent for defense corporations and jobs in more than 40 states.
Perhaps these articles and advertisements really have it right: Congress' lust for pork, and the perverted thinking that jobs and profits (not the threat) should drive defense spending, will determine the size of the F-22 fleet.
Not so fast ...
Deputy Editorial Page Editor J.R. Labbe, writing Jan. 20, took a sharply contrasting viewpoint, arguing that the "F-22, with its speed, maneuverability and stealth ... is the ideal first-day fighter against enemy air forces. It blows the screens off the porch and kicks down the doors on Day 1 to make sure that nothing jumps up to contest air superiority."
She noted the argument that the Raptor is an aircraft for yesterday's wars but asserted that "in the zeal to respond to the tactics of today's enemy, the United States can't be too quick to dismiss the potential for a well-funded nation-state to turn into tomorrow's adversary."
From the same article-
Pierre Sprey was one of three designers who conceived and shaped the F-16; he also led the technical side of the US Air Force’s A-10 design concept team. James Stevenson is former editor of the Navy Fighter Weapons School’s
The Fort-Worth Star Telegram - Like Pravda but with a Texas drawl.
What...and the AF only put thousands of its most experienced and qualified officers out of the service to pay for it.
Another stroke of genius by the leaders who spent much of the Global War on Terrorism making changes to the uniforms. Thank God we got that PT uniform, though...now the country is safe.
None of these guys has ever flown a fighter, let alone this fighter.
One would get another story from the guys that do, and the guys that have gone against it in initial trial combat operations.
What is sad is that the MSM and the left wing politicians actually pay attention to these agenda driven fools.
It would be interesting if this guy wrote a similar article in 1932: "Why should we spend money on the tools of war? There are no wars!"
If the Chicoms ever attack, I'm sure they'll give us plenty of time to develop new weapons.
“Pierre Sprey was one of three designers who conceived and shaped the F-16; he also led the technical side of the US Air Force’s A-10 design concept team. James Stevenson is former editor of the Navy Fighter Weapons School’s”
Are you saying they have a conflict and are not qualified to comment?
I agree with many of the points in this article.
...but oh so pretty!
Or in 1913: “Now that we have the machine gun, there’s no reason for any other tactics than direct frontal assaults.”
Ouch! That makes me feel old. I can recall when an F-111 cost only $8 million.
A-10, designed for Vietnam and it works OK for the sandbox.
I would hate to be the pilot that goes up against a generation 6 5 Chinese/Russki fighter in anything other than a F-22.
You wonder if the author wished we still flew SPADS? (A1E)
January 16, 2008
AFA members and Congressional Staffers, many of you have commented favorably on the “elevator speech numbers” I sent you.
It’s January ... so here are some revealing data on the “State of the Air Force.”
Fighter Aircraft - average age: 20 years; average flight hours 5400+
Bomber Aircraft - average age: 32 years; average flight hours 11,400+
Tanker aircraft - average age: 44 years; average flight hours 18,900+
C2 Fleet - average age: 22 years old; average flight hours 32,000
ISR Fleet (excluding UAV) - average age: 30 years old; average flight hours 18,000
Key Groundings/Restrictions
F-15A-D - 163 of 441 are grounded for structural issues
B-52 - 6 are grounded - past due PDM grounding date - authorized a one-time flight to the bone-yard.
EC-130 - 2 of 14 are grounded due to center wing box cracks
C-130E - 3 are grounded and 13 are restricted due to Service life and wing cracks
KC-135Es - 26 of 86 are grounded due to engine strut corrosion.
AC-130U - 4 of 17 are restricted due to lack of 30MM weapons
B-2 - entire fleet is restricted due to windshield bolt hole cracks
C-5s - 39 of 108 are restricted due to crown skin restrictions (weight limiting)
Additionally:
219 of 223 F-15Es have training restrictions due to vertical stab structural issues
Majority of Block 25/30/32, block 40/42, and block 50/52 F-16s need structural modifications
All 356 A-10s will need new wings and new aircraft skin - many have landing gear issues ... and all need new engines.
C-130Hs have Center Wing Box issues
C-32As have bulkhead structural issues.
Looking across the FYDP - between 2008-2013 - the Air Force will divest itself of 749 aircraft and procure only 698 aircraft (260 of which are UAVs).
To give you the idea of the scale of all of this:
When the AF grounded its 600+ F-15 fleet, it grounded more aircraft than the entire F/A Navy. The F-15s it presently has grounded equate to a bit more than 3 aircraft carriers of aircraft.
The 356 A-10s that need renovations equates to more aircraft than the fixed wing USMC
The Air Force has about 5800 aircraft ... and presently about one-third are either grounded or restricted in one way or another
The central important part of this data is that this is not a third-world Air Force ... And the question we should ask ourselves, why don’t we fund it to ensure our children and grandchildren are safe and secure?
2nd Subject -
Chief of Staff White Paper - Gen Moseley published an exceptional White Paper ... which lays out the strategic foundations for the Air Force of the future. If you haven’t seen it, you can find it on the AFA website: http://dailyreport.afa.org/NR/rdonlyres/868196FC-AABB-4230-84EA-F5358B0C4B34/0/CSAF_white_paper.pdf
My favorite quotes in it are:
“No modern war has been won without air superiority. No future war will be won without air, space and cyberspace superiority.” Page 2.
“With the oldest inventory in history, battered by 17 years of continuous combat, the Air Force’s ability to fulfill its missions is already being tested.” Page 2
“... our reliance on assured access to space will increase exponentially.” Page 8
“The Air Force is smaller in December 2007 than it was in December 1941.” Page 10
For your consideration.
Mike
Michael M. Dunn, Lt Gen (Ret)
AFA President/CEO
THIS JUST IN:
The Star-Telegram is expensive and irrelevant.
Obviously the authors are correct that using fast, high-flying platforms like the F-22 for ground attack is ridiculous.
But it’s equally ridiculous to decree that we no longer need an air-superiority fighter when there is still a China, a Russia, an Iran, out there. I don’t care what the qualifications of the authors are, that’s just stupid.
“One would get another story from the guys that do, and the guys that have gone against it in initial trial combat operations.
What is sad is that the MSM and the left wing politicians actually pay attention to these agenda driven fools.”
Which part of the story? the maintenance hour per flying hour part? The cost part?
These guys didn’t say the F22 wasn’t a fine aircraft, they basically argued it costs too much, is not presently deployable, and is not capable of missions beyond air superiority that are necessary in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Why must they have cockpit time in an F22 to make these points, which are quite relevant?
No kidding. You have to keep your military up to date. Make it obvious to your enemies that they will be smacked down so hard with overwhelming superiority that they dare not TRY to attack.
That said, I’m very suspicious about the true costs of these aircraft, and how badly managed some of these programs are.
If the Chicoms attack, they will hit our navies and be laucnhing missiles at the mainland.
On the one hand, they tell us that we are wearing out our equipment; on the other, they tell us we shouldn’t get new equipment.
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