Posted on 07/08/2004 1:01:01 PM PDT by Akira
It made sense to kill the Crusader self-propelled howitzer program, a bulky cold war left-over developing so slowly it wouldn't be available before the Starship Enterprise. We also didn't need the Comanche stealth helicopter when our problem is losing choppers to low-tech ground fire. But the stealth F/A-22 Raptor fighter, with apologies to those who consider every new military project a boondoggle, we need this jet. And far more of it than Congress plans to buy.
Even critics admit the Raptor is an incredible fighting machine. Slated to enter Air Force service next year, it blends key technologies that before only existed separately on other aircraft -- or not at all.
It has radar-avoiding stealth, of the F-117A Nighthawk, the agility of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, air-to-air combat abilities and penetrability of the F-15 Eagle, tracking abilities of the E-3 Sentry (AWACS), and, like the SR-71 Blackbird, it can fly faster than the speed of sound without using fuel-guzzling afterburners.
The F/A-22 also has better reliability and maintainability than any military fighter in history and can wipe out ground targets like radar, anti-aircraft sites, and armor formations as readily as it can sweep the skies.
IT'S NOT THAT WE'RE in danger of losing our air superiority edge -- we've already lost it. With "some foreign aircraft we've been able to test, our best pilots flying their airplanes beat our pilots flying our airplanes every time," Air Force Commander John Jumper told Congress three years ago. When U.S. planes go against the Soviet Su-27 Flanker "our guys 'die' 95 percent of the time," observes Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham of California.
Cunningham is one of only two American aces from the Vietnam War. He knows the value of even a slight edge in combat capabilities. "I'm alive today because of it," he told me.
The international arms market is now flooded with Su-27 aircraft, because the Russians will sell to anybody with a bit of loose change jingling around.
The independent American Federation of Scientists notes that the Su-27 "leveled the playing field" with the F-15, our best fighter but one that's 30 years old. Meanwhile, "The Su-37 represents a new level of capability compared with the Su-27." The Su-37, apparently close to deployment, looks frightfully effective against both air and ground targets -- meaning our soldiers.
Nor is it just Russian planes we have to worry about. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1999 that "Congress Should Shoot Down The F-22." O'Hanlon nevertheless admitted that even then the "Swedish Gripen, French Rafale, Eurofighter EF-2000" are "impressive weapons systems that rival the F-15 and F-16." As well they should be: One entered service in 2001, one in 2002, and one just last year. The F-15 is their grand-pappy.
No, we probably won't go to war with Sweden or France anytime soon. (Well, maybe France.) But we already face enemies with high-tech French weaponry. Rest assured in the future we will clash with them -- including the Rafale fighter. It's also rather pathetic that the Czech air force is about to take possession of 39 Gripen fighters, meaning this tiny country will be flying more advanced aircraft than the United States.
Fortunately even the Su-37 lacks one thing the F/A-22 has -- stealth capability. "Only the F/A-22 can compete with the Su-27 or Su-37," Cunningham insists, because "the stealthiness allows you to get inside his radar so you can have first [missile] launch."
Surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) also regularly improve, and potential targets like the North Korean capitol of Pyongyang bristle like porcupines with SAM sites. "If you target an area with the current SAM threat today, our planes will probably die before they ever get to the target," says Cunningham. "So the F/A-22 and B2 [stealth bomber] must soften up those radar sites." Cunningham knows a bit about SAMs, too. After his fifth "kill," he was splashed by an enemy missile that's a slingshot compared to today's technology.
ONE MAJOR CONGRESSIONAL criticism of the Raptor is the cost per plane, now over twice the original estimate. But much of that is because prime contractor Lockheed Martin added a ground attack role. Most of the rest is because those congressional critics cut back the order, knowing that with fixed development costs the smaller the order the higher the per-unit price. Sound like a sneaky game? It is.
Originally the Air Force requested 762 Raptors to support two squadrons for its ten Expeditionary Wings, and then was forced to cut that in half. But it only made its first official purchase last month of a grand total of 22 planes. That's almost enough to stock the nation's aeronautical museums. Worse, it has only authorized only enough money for 218 planes total, and may slice that further.
Mind you, these same congressmen recently passed pork-laden highway spending bills of around $300 billion, but apparently Cleveland needs that transportation museum more than our troops need protection from enemy aircraft.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona told NBC's Meet the Press that we should consider completely canceling the F/A-22 program to free up money for more troops in Iraq. But McCain assumes defense spending is a zero-sum game. It's not.
In 1960, with no U.S. involvement in a hot war, the percentage of GDP spent on defense was 9.3. This year, with wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and anti-terrorist military activities around the world, we're spending a miserly 3.5 percent. Merely splitting the difference between 1960 and now would allow the Army to expand from 10 divisions to 12 and supply the Air Force with more F/A-22s than it would know what to do with. And yet last summer Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia offered an amendment to seize $1.1 billion from the Defense Budget and use it for AIDS/HIV spending.
Other armchair air experts say we can skip the F/A-22 (other than the 22 already procured) while awaiting the cheaper F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35 is a fine plane and will be great for exporting to our allies, but it's far inferior to the F-22, especially in the stealth category. (Its advantage is a much lower price.) F-35 development is also three years behind that of the Raptor. If you needed a top-of-the-line new car immediately, would you hold off three years on buying that BMW until Honda Civics become available?
It's also true that F/A-22s were unneeded in invading Iraq -- though one of our F-117s was shot down over Serbia. The value of the F-22 in the current guerrilla war? Zero. But you know that expression about generals "planning to fight the last war"? Here it's the F/A-22 critics like O'Hanlon who remind us that during Desert Storm "The Air Force's premier fighter, the F-15C, flew 6,000 missions without a single loss." Yes, and that was 13 years ago. Any war against North Korea or China would make heavy use of the Raptor.
A WASHINGTON POST ANALYSIS piece that ripped the F/A-22 was reprinted on websites of such groups as Environmentalists Against War and Million Worker March. The Post claimed the plane's "role is now more ambiguous because no country is developing an aircraft with anything near its capabilities."
But isn't that exactly what we want: Quick and complete air domination? If price is the primary consideration, why not scrap both the F-22 and the F-35 and start rebuilding the P-51s of World War II, which cost only $54,000 in 1943 dollars? Like the F-15, they were marvelous planes in their time.
Why not? Because our potential enemies will be flying the best jets and antiaircraft missiles they can make or buy, allowing them to intimidate us in peacetime and defeat us in war. We must beat their capabilities, or we will surely die trying.
That russian plane is an X-29 clone. We've had that tech for awhile now (ignore if you alrady knew this).
Well, that's not quite true. The SR-71 was designed to run on continuous afterburner... which isn't quite the same as running supersonic on no afterburner.
What makes the SR-71 modestly efficient is the transition, at high speeds, from a turbojet configuration to a near-ramjet configuration (i.e., turbine bypass). The actual airflow patterns about the inlet spike and out the exhaust nozzle provide (via pressure differentials) the vast majority of the thrust. The actual momentum transfer to the working fluid from the engine itself reduces to a fraction well below 50%. The J-58 engine is an amazing piece of hardware.
It's fine to disagree with me, that's what chat forums are for. But just so that I know where you stand, please tell me precisely how many current F-15 and F-16 pilots you are prepared to retire for each new F-22 that we field.
Please give me a specific number, because after all, due to its exorbitant costs, we have to retire those pilots in large numbers to pay for each F-22.
How many fewer American fighter pilots do you want, specifically?
Back at 'ya.
;-)
The next time somebody makes this stupid statement, I am going to lose it. This is not true, it is not possible, so just knock it off. It is NOT the last manned fighter we will build under any circumstances. Don't write this crap because you want to seem smart, learn your subject, so you can stop posting bullshit.
There is no question that the F-22 is the best fighter ever deployed, but being the best buggy whip in an age of automobiles is pretty worthless.
And even the F-22 is vulnerable to HARM variant air to air and surface to air missiles, as well as to optical-processing missiles (i.e. camera+computer image processing). It's stealthy to active radar, not to either passive radar detection or visual (even by computer imaging) detection.
Moreover, the F-22 is so expensive that we can't buy enough of them to even provide CAP over F-22 airfields. By its own structural limitations (e.g. cost), it has to depend upon our older fighters for its own protection.
Why pay for that sort of nonsense?!
With "some foreign aircraft we've been able to test, our best pilots flying their airplanes beat our pilots flying our airplanes every time,"
This statement was just silly. I suspect it's the best pile-it vs the AC in most cases.
You'd think Duke would know better.
Stay safe Southack !
You should be slapped for making that statement when you know it isn't true. I had a policy of not responding to you because you are an idiot, but I think I need to point out to people that you really don't know what you are talking about, and you jump on these threads spouting the same tired crap about sub-orbital fighters that don't exist, and WONT exist in your lifetime. Why don't you give it a rest?
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?!
Speed and altitude equate to distance...the number one defense against being hit. As long as you have distance between you and the attacking missile, it has missed.
And that's what you want enemy missiles to do, miss.
Moreover, sub-orbital space planes are *already* flying (e.g. Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne). It is already possible for a kamikaze to pull another 9/11 in a sub-orbital aircraft...an aircraft that can fly over our current air defenses, by the way.
That's hardly a myth, as you claim above.
PD, do you think a Pheonix could hit Spaceone? Southack seems to think they can't hit a barn.
On the contrary, the point is that our currently deployed technology can *NOT* guarantee air supremacy because it *can't* reach up to the altitudes of existing civilian aircraft.
Civilians!
Civilians are flying higher and faster than our military can currently fly or shoot, in vehicles that are vastly cheaper than the cheapest military fighter aircraft. Nor does the F-22 change that fact.
It doesn't take a genius to understand where that civilian technology is going to wind up being deployed.
Right now our Air Force is in the same place as our Navy back when the Wright brothers could do something that the military couldn't: fly over dreadnaughts.
1991 Northrop-Lockheed Flyoff for new fighter - Lockheed wins
Subsequent to studies, an RFP was issued in July 1986, and two contractor teams, Northrop/McDonnell-Douglas and Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynamics were selected in October 1986 for the initial 50 month demonstration/validation phase flyoff. The rollout of the prototypes was initially scheduled for mid 1989, but ongoing slippages delayed this.
The F-22 passed milestone II in 1991. At that time, the Air Force planned to acquire 648 F-22 operational aircraft at a cost of $86.6 billion. After the Bottom Up Review, completed by DOD in September 1993, the planned quantity of F-22s was reduced to 442 at an estimated cost of $71.6 billion. ">
NOTEBOB - the flyoff was completed 13 years ago. The designs were completed nearly 20 years ago.
Stealth is good. Speed is good. Altitude is good. Range is good.
High costs, however, can be deal-killers. Likewise, having a pilot in the cockpit limits the number of G's that can be pulled. Moreover, not being able to go into Space means that we're behind civilians in the technology race...a bad place to be in general when you are depending upon technology to win the fight.
I take another angle. How many pilots are you willing to see shot down in order to continue to keep the F-15 as your premier air superiority fighter? That is how I see it. I want USAF to win 100-0. Not 51-49. Btw, the cost will be around 120 something million for each plane. It may become less as more planes are built and R&D and development costs are paid for. For the awesome things that plane will do against other fighters and ground anti-aircraft missiles, I think it is worth every penny. The capabilities that plane will possesses will save pilots lives as opposed to pilots who fly the F-15. Again, why I would say it is worth every penny.
So What!
It is still in service, saving Army and Marine personnel.
Semper Fi!
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