Posted on 06/07/2016 11:42:00 AM PDT by bkopto
US Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh made comments at an Air Force Association event on Thursday that were uncharacteristically bullish on the prospect of restarting the F-22 program.
Lockheed Martin shuttered the F-22 program almost five years ago. Since then, the top Air Force brass has been focused on the troubled F-35 program as well as looking decades forward to the Next Generation Air Dominance program.
In April, however, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said in Congress: "In light of growing threats from a resurgent Russia and an aggressive China, further exploration into restarting the F-22 line is deserved."
Welsh's comments on Thursday represented a shift in the Air Force's official attitude toward reviving the F-22; it had previously said doing so would not be cost effective.
"I don't think it's a wild idea," Welsh said, as Defensenews.com notes. "I mean the success of the F-22 and the capability of the airplane and the crews that fly it are pretty exceptional. I think it's proven that the airplane is exactly what everybody hoped it would be."
"We're using it in new and different ways and it's been spectacularly successful and its potential is really, really remarkable," Welsh continued. "And so going back and looking and certainly raising the idea well, could you build more? It's not a crazy idea."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Happy BRRRRRRTday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvIJvPj_pjE
When I was at Camp Pendleton at the conclusion of a field exercise, I had the opportunity to sit on a hilltop with some first-rate grilled chow and an officially issued can of beer and watch Navy fighters coming in off of the ocean doing gun runs in the valley below us. It sounded like Godzilla roaring. This was in the mid-Eighties.
Nice moment.
And cheap, too.
Kill the F35 program, refund everyone’s deposit and build enough F22’s for the US, Israel and Japan. 500 should do the trick.
Why do I fly the A-10?
On the account of it kills .... period.
And that’s the name of that tune!
From a standpoint of clean design, the B-29 was certainly one of the prettiest planes ever built.
Bloody hell ... we should have about 500 of these things, and trickle production to keep the line open. I know: they’re not cheap. I don’t really care which welfare schemes or entitlement programs have to be eliminated to pay for it.
The A-10 Warthog is the first plane I thought of when I saw the thread title ......... GMTA I suppose!
“How is it the most lethal fighter if it hasnt been tested in combat?”
The hydrogen bomb hasn’t been tested in battle, either.
More Warthogs please!
F14’s?
That must have been a great downtime show.
Basically, that’s a Super Tucano. OK, the Tucano isn’t quite as badass, but it’s kind of a modern variant.
The F-35: not a fighter, but a mechanism to move money from the tax coffers to the Military Industrial complex so it can trickle down to complicit congressmen and military leaders.
PC and lawyers must have put the stop to such warlike demonstrations.
Love it. Absolutely love it!
I don’t remember what they were, it’s been so long. It was a great show, and it came right after we secured and showered up and put on some clean PT gear. Top day, couldn’t beat the show.
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