Replies

CD,

You make some good points. However, the USAF needs to sell this thing to John Q public. Why is it better than an F-15? You know and I know (Jeez, supercruise alone is revolutionary, and that is one DETAIL of an integrated whole) but I talk even to fighter pilots who don't know.

If this program dies it will be USAF mismanagement that killed it. A few examples of that include the sudden repurposing it as the F/A 22 after what, 15 years of development as an air superiority fighter? It makes the AF look like whores.

Finally, failure to think intelligently about costs has *always* been a characteristic of USAF planning, and still is. As the size of the buy shrinks, the unit costs grow, which shrinks the size of the buy further. It's as if no one in the Pentagon has ever heard the engineering saw, "the best is the enemy of the good."

If, in a conflict with China 20 years from now, we have two dozen F-22s and otherwise are relying on 1970s engineering in the form of the F15 and -16, are we better off? What if the chinese can match our F15s ten to one with F15-equivalent Su27s or successors?

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

In the end I agree. It is really up the Rummy and the WH to peddle it. The problem, of course, is that Rummy and the non-airforce E-Ring crowd are using the threat of cancellation to whip the contractors into shape. Of course the Press and the Democrats on the Hill pick up an this and manufacture an issue. The same old same old. Let me tell you, I will be right PO'd if they cancel this. It is not just the flyboys that will die. It will be troops on the ground.

All I can say is that with the bucks being spent on missile defense in the Pacific, someone somewhere finally gets the ChiComs. So I imagine that they will get this program and eventually get close to the original flight. The same thing happened with the C17 - it took them a few years to get order back their original numbers. Also, there are a great many people (mostly Dems) that now look pretty silly about only building 21 B2s. I am a little more optimistic here, assuming that Bush gets another term.

Bottom line: Lock in the program and spend the money now because 1) you never know what the Dems will do down the road, and 2) in the next deacde we will have build out the bomber wings and the strategic subs. That is what we get for letting Clinton in the WH for 8 years.