The F/A-22 Raptor Must Fly

The American Spectator ^ | July 8, 2004 | Michael Fumento

[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.

[David1]

Stop with your fantasy. No one is building a space fighter because the technology for space-fighter does not exist. you keep up on saying something about China or NK. New Flash for you: they are not building space fighters. This is only happening in your head. Space bomber in the future, perhaps. But not air superiority fighter. Those are 2 different missions.

[RFEngineer]

I believe the F-12 and SR-71 were distinct airframes. F-12 was smaller, but did have the same basic shape as the SR71. They used to have them stacked up practically like cordwood at Plant 42.......

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

What specifically do we field in our existing arsenal that can shoot down something at 62.5 miles altitude before it drops its payload?

Whooaah! We've gone from air superiority to strike aircraft all of a sudden! If you're going to use that rocket-fighter versus other planes (i.e. for air superiority, eh?) then it has to come down to where they are (remember, you yourself dogged the hyper-long-ranged missiles like the Phoenix earlier in this thread, so based on your own argument, your space-plane can't attack other aircraft from that high up). So once your rocket plane gets down to 15,000 ft and is required by the Rules of Engagement to visually identify the target before launch, argue for me how it will perform better than the F22...

[rebel_yell2]

As any introductory finance student can tell you, the $26 billion already spent is a "sunk cost" and is no longer relevant to the investment decision. What is the cost per aircraft excluding what has already been sunk?

[Southack]

You have a bizarre way of looking at the world.

Here's the scenario: currently, American civilian pilots are flying higher and faster and where even where the F-22 can't go (i.e. Space). This civilian technology is going to be copied by foreign militaries. This civilian technology provides some traditional advantages that air forces have long since fought for (e.g. speed, altitude).

This technology, if applied by a clever foreign adversary in concert with more traditional fighters, could cause the current U.S. arsenal some severe grief in our most sensitive hotspots (e.g. Taiwan, South Korea, Israel).

For instance, such sub-orbital foreign fighters could technically be shooting down at our highest jets. How would they respond? Would they retreat from the field and give a window opening to lower altitude enemy fighters? would they stand and simply take whatever the sub-orbital fighters dished out?

Because with our *current* arsenal, our fighters wouldn't have the option to shoot or pursue such sub-orbital fighters, especially if such enemy craft were being launched in overlapping waves from inside "safe" enemy borders (which is extremely likely in the cases of Taiwan, South Korea, and Israel due to the close proximity of enemies to those allies).

[Southack]

"Stop with your fantasy. No one is building a space fighter because the technology for space-fighter does not exist."

The U.S. X-20A DynaSoar space fighter was Neil Armstrong's first Space Program assignment back in the early 1960's (officially it was never launched, of course).

Even current civilian aircraft such as Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne have made it into Space.

Thus, to call space planes a fantasty is to ignore what's already been done.

Or perhaps you simply want to argue that modern weapons can't somehow be added to existing aircraft?!

[Southack]

"Other than attacking bombers, the Me-262 was completely ineffective in any role versus Allied CAP or CAS... just like your rocket-planes would be..."

The ME-262 ran into the same problem as did the German Tiger II tank; it's hyper-expensive price made it too difficult to build enough of them to win against our overwhelming numbers.

...a problem which I'd prefer to avoid with our current over-budget F-22.

[RFEngineer]

"Sub-orbital and orbital fighters can fly right over the F-22 with impunity already today."

Ok, assuming these mythical orbital/suborbital fighters even existed, sub-orbital/orbital offers little, if any tactical advantage. Speed and altitude are only valuable if you can do something with them. You can't maneuver in suborbital/orbital flight, save reaction motors....more cost, weight, less payload....which will be plenty small for an aircraft with this flight profile, even if it did exist.

F-22 is real - albeit expensive as hell - and has some useful capabilities, it isn't magic, but it ain't bad either.

[Southack]

"Ok, assuming these mythical orbital/suborbital fighters even existed, sub-orbital/orbital offers little, if any tactical advantage."

Nonsense. ...And both of your above claims are already dealt with in posts #145 and #146.

[XBob]

123 - "Giving up numbers for quality is not always a recipe for success. It certainly didn't carry the field for the NAZIs against our overwhelming WW2 numbers."

That is the point I was also backing up. The most advanced fighter of WWII was the ME-163, faster by far than anything else built. Unfortunately, (for them), it was in too small a number, too late, to really impact too badly against our vast fleets of bombers.

Unfortunately, I think the F-22 is such an aircraft, advanced (but old design-technology), far far too expensive and limited in quantities to do much real good in the real world situation.

We need the same plane, for $25 million a copy, and large numbers of them, as it is the end of a whole era of piloted aircraft. The drones will and space weapons will be the next generation.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

There's so much hypothetical in your post that it isn't even tangential to reality. BTW, you still haven't answered my Rules of Engagement question (asked several times now). All your argument so far has urged is that we develop a means of downing high-alt fighters, not that we need them ourselves. Our mission requirements are different, as are our normal ROE. So, what do you do when you have the (normal) eyeball ROE? Which platform is better suited to that air superiority role? And how long can your rocket-fighter loiter? Compared to the F22, it is a lousy choice (even if it was anything other than a pipe-dream at this point) because it doesn't fit OUR tactical and strategic needs...

[RFEngineer]

"Nonsense. ...And both of your above claims are already dealt with in posts #145 and #146."

What's a suborbital/orbital pilot gonna do to a aircraft flying a hundred miles below, throw a sandwich at it? He won't have anything else. More likely, he'll just enjoy the scenery.....

Just because we have X-15's, X-20's Space Shuttles, etc, doesn't make them air superiority fighters.

We do not have ANY suborbital or orbital fighters. We just don't have 'em. We may have vehicles capable of said flight, but not fighters. So while the F-22 is a vulnerable program for a lot of reasons, suborbital fighters ain't one of 'em.

[David1]

If numbers were more important, Iraq would have kicked are ass in both Gulf Wars. Or during the Cold War, the Soviets would have certainly kicked are ass since they definitely went for the numerical over quality. The US will eventually built enough F/A-22 when its true capabilities are shown in the real world. I believe therefore 500 will be built or more. There are about 500 or less F-15 in service now.

[Light Speed]

I read somewhere that forward swept wings delaminate / come apart VERY fast when hit and are almost always a kill if it's the leading edge that takes the hit.

Janes intel had some comment on the forward swept wing ...the wing needs to be clean....pylons for muni's and fuel destabilize the lift needed..negating its advantage for low speed attack.

some more data on SU-47 concerning its wing;

The aircraft makes use of forward-swept wings allowing superb maneuverability and operation at angles of attack up to 45° or more. The advantages of forward sweep have long been known as such wings offer lower wave drag, reduced bending moments, and delayed stall when compared to more traditional wing shapes. Unfortunately, forward sweep also induces significant wing twist that would shear most wings off the aircraft. To solve this problem, the Su-47 makes use of composite materials carefully tailored to resist twisting while still allowing the wing to bend for improved aerodynamic behavior. To reduce development costs, the S-37 borrowed the forward fuselage, vertical tails, and landing gear of the Su-27 family.

Though similar in overall concept to the American X-29 research aircraft of the 1980s, the Su-47 is about twice the size and far closer to an actual combat aircraft than the US design.
Su-47 has shown far superior manuvering in the air to any aircraft known to this date. Like the X-29 though, the Su-47 was primarily a technology demonstrator, one intended to lay the foundation for the next Russian fighter.

Their has been a design competiton..Mikoyan and Sukhoi.
some info on the net concerning Mikoyan I 2000 which appears a near F-22 Mimic...
Sukhoi S-54/55 also for 5th Generation.
info is spotty..some comment by Russian Aviation of a commitment to something ..and production by 2010.

SU 47 Berkut and Flanker for size comparison

have been googling chat forums on F-22.

F-22 is zenith.....but bad guys will probably have radar and missiles to challenge it by the time it becomes squadron numeric operational.

even then..it may not be known if the perpsective is true....unless F-22 is fired upon.

[Southack]

"If numbers were more important, Iraq would have kicked are ass in both Gulf Wars."

That's faulty logic. Numbers are important, but that doesn't make them omnipotent.

There is and always will be a balance between numbers versus quality.

Err too much on either side and you run the risk of getting burned.

[Southack]

"What's a suborbital/orbital pilot gonna do to a aircraft flying a hundred miles below, throw a sandwich at it? He won't have anything else. More likely, he'll just enjoy the scenery....."

Sub-orbital aircraft have the option of dropping down into attack range. The F-22, on the other hand, does *not* have the option of rising up into range to attack sub-orbital fighters (e.g. swarms launched in overlapping waves 15 minutes apart from safely inside the Chinese border immediately prior to initiating their conventional fighter and bomber attacks on Taiwan).

[David1]

Yup, I was just was addressing what I thought was someone stating that numbers was more important. Anyway, if only 100 something F/A-22 are built, you may be right because that will be too few. However, if something like 500 are built, that will definitely be a lot better and able to meet USAF stated requirements. Remember, 500 will come to about replacing almost each F-15.

[Southack]

"Compared to the F22, it is a lousy choice (even if it was anything other than a pipe-dream at this point) because it doesn't fit OUR tactical and strategic needs..."

Have you never considered that it may not be *us* who initiates such an attack?!

[Southack]

"We do not have ANY suborbital or orbital fighters. We just don't have 'em. We may have vehicles capable of said flight, but not fighters. So while the F-22 is a vulnerable program for a lot of reasons, suborbital fighters ain't one of 'em."

The point is that we are now vulnerable to existing civilian technology being adapted by our enemies. The F-22 can't touch such technology, hardly making it look attractive for our future needs.

[David1]

When you actually prove to me this space-fighter can get into space, get back into atmosphere, maneuver like a fighter, get back into orbit, then you may have a point. But it cannot do that. It is all just fantasy nonsense in your head. Also, show me proof China is developing something like this. Or this this more made-up crap from your head?