Posted on 01/01/2009 4:14:24 AM PST by pobeda1945
Sometime during his first couple of months in office, President-elect Barack Obama will have to confront one of his first big decisions about U.S. defense policy and budgets.
And it’s a thorny one.
Specifically, Obama and his as-yet-unnamed circle of top defense advisers will have to determine whether to continue spending roughly $4 billion a year to buy F-22 Raptor fighter jets built by Lockheed Martin.
They might decide, as the Bush administration has, that the F-22 is superfluous and that the money is needed for other priorities. On the other hand, the Air Force, according to defense analysts and consultants, wants to buy at least 60 more of the $180 million jets.
Jim McAleese, a consultant with close ties to the Air Force, told a Reuters conference in Washington last week that the service was putting "all its political capital" into buying more F-22s beyond the 183 on order.
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
Answer my notions and illuminate the errors.
Everything else I state and question anyone and everything, as I please.
I assume that would be the primary function. This plane would enter service at the top of the food chain. Quite likely, it would remain there for some time. If produced in "sufficient numbers", it would have an even greater use - a deterrent.
“No sense in giving a monkey a loaded gun.”
You nailed it! LMAO.
Methinks, that for the kind of war we are fighting - urban guerrilla - what we need is a smaller, heavily armed aircraft. Something like the AD Skyraider or the A4D Skyhawk would do the job - after upgrading.
“So, I think that what we need to do is to keep the F-22 line open, but at the same time, we need to come up with what I guess we could call and Advanced Austere Air Superiority Fighter. Figure, a flyaway cost of fifty million or less.”
The humorous part of your post is that this is exactly how the F-22 got started - it was the “Advanced Tactical Fighter” and was supposed to have an incremental unit cost slightly more than an F-15 back in the 80’s.
Never underestimate the government’s (and the military’s) ability to spend vast amounts of money in the name of “austerity”. Conservatives need to realize that every dollar spent by the military is not sacred. The additional F-22’s may well be a sacred cow worth sacrificing in favor of other systems, or no systems.
The F-15 is still a great fighter, but no where near what we need to ensure air supremacy in today's environment, let alone in the next decade. The F-16’s are old and being actively retired due to obsolecence. The F-18 is going through upgrades and the line remains open for the Navy, but the Navy is using it as a bridge to the JSF.
That poster that said these fighters can answer the mail for another decade may be right, barely, but what then? Do we then START to build a new fighter? Consider, the F-22 was first considered back in the 80’s and it has taken at least 20yrs of development and manufacture to have it on the line, in limited numbers. If we cancel now we guarantee that we will lose air supremacy for any scenario where the other side flies the most advanced Chinese or Russian fighters and we fly 30-yr old (and more) F-15’s, F-16’s, and F-18’s.
The Chinese and Russians haven't shuttered their R&D and aircraft manufacturing efforts. The latest Chinese and Russian fighters are a formidable adversary.
The Obey Amendment prohibits export, so the jet was never designed with FMS security deletions. This means that if the jet was ever allowed to be exported, the cost of making the jet exportable, the cost is estimated at anywhere between $500M to $1B. That is a cost lug that most all, if not all, countries cannot carry.
Not much use for the F-22 in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, but does that mean we will NEVER have the need, say, for places like Taiwan or Korea, or perhaps even in South America? Or anywhere those advanced Chinese and Russian fighters are flown.
The JSF is the fighter for the future, though I am not too pleased with its limited range and payload (”local reach, local power”).
The F-22 is much more that a fighter, it is a true 5th generation platform, capable of performing all sorts of functions and missions, lethal and non-lethal, and most of these capabilities are not reported as they remain highly classified.
While the F-22 is the most capable fighter in the classic fighter role, it is an ever greater force multiplier when the additional capabilities are factored.
The key question we must ask: Do we want to be as good as we can be, or do we want to be only as good as the enemy we fight today?
Well stated.
Wish I read your post before I said about the same thing in my earlier post.
He'll make sure the assembly line becomes a UAW shop, then go ahead with the program. ;)
*BUMP*
You nailed it!
Divide up three hundred eighty airplanes among all the places that we’ve got to have them, and then figure out how many you can lose when the fighting starts.
Also keep in mind that the Air Force has always insisted on either a compliant environment or keeping their planes above sixteen thousand feet to avoid ground fire and missiles.
We need a different plane that we can afford more of.
We need a small replacement for the A-10, using a 30mm chain gun capable of taking DU ammunition. We need an austere air superiority fighter that can be procured in quantity. And we need them in numbers such as we can afford to hazard them and can replace combat losses, which we can’t do now.
The F/A-22 is an awesome airplane, but it’s an awesome airplane that we can’t afford to buy in quantities sufficient that we can hazard them. And if you can’t hazard them, it’s the same thing as not having them.
The problem with the macro line is that we have to sell it to COngress and they’re not buying, especially when the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue isn’t convinced that we need them.
We need a new plane. We need it with a considerably shorter design cycle than the twenty five years that it took to get this one. And I think that we can do that. Remember Boeing’s Bird of Prey demonstrator? Why can’t we do that on an open RFP for an austere fifth generation air superiority fighter? We need the airplane. China’s rise and increasing hostility as well as their SCO partners Russia and Iran, make that essential.
The Air Force is in the same boat the Navy was with when it came to the Seawolf boats that they wanted. Technically awe inspiring, but too expensive to acquire, so they bought West Virginias instead. My guess is that all three of the Seawolfs will wind up being Special Ops conversions like the Jimmy Carter was before it even sailed. And the Air Force needs to learn the same lesson and start pushing for the F/A-22’s ultimate replacement.
I’ve got to respectfully disagree with you over the question of UAVs replacing rather than supplementing manned aircraft. We haven’t gotten computers to the point to where they can exercise human judgement. And for long range remote control, we’re already at the limits to bandwidth on that one. We can do what we’re doing now, but we couldn’t run a general war from Indian Springs.
Unless and until we develop real emergent AI, (Artifical Intelligence) and can trust it with a weapon, there’s still gonna be a place for planes with a cockpit and a really aggressive 150 pound stick and rudder guy.
I remember the Advanced Tactical Fighter and how it was supposed to be the last fighter the Air Force would ever need. And the 25 years later, look at what we’ve got.
I think that I’d like to see us float an open RFP and let anybody at all take a stab at it and then have a flyoff to pick the one we produce on a fixed price contract rather than the cost plus contract that netted us an airplane that costs a hundred eighty million each.
Rahm to Obammy: “What do you want to do about the F-22?”
Obammy: “Is that the new Blackberry? Get me one.”
The Air Force has. . . .in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Anti A-10 attitude by the Air Force? I can answer that with authority. As a former A-10 Hog Driver, flew then back in the 80’s when the Soviets were the threat, the A-10 was not considered viable to survive the Soviet IADS. Post Soviet era residue anti A-10 bias remained but for an additional reason.
While the Soviet IADS systems were still out there, budget cuts were hard and deep, and the A-10 is a single mission aircraft )CAS_./ When faced with budget cuts what do you want? A single mission aircraft or a multi-mission aircraft? The thinking was multi-mission aircraft bring the most to the fight because those aircraft could swing to whatever mission was required.
It is only after Gulf War I and into the current WOT that it was discovered the A-10 is a heck of a killing machine. No surprise to those of use that flew the Hog. So, we fly the A-10 now and upgrades are continuing to allow the jet to drop PGS munitions and perform other missions.
The A-10 bias you refer is practically non-existent today, as the Air Force has learned to appreciate the jet.
>>IMO the age of manned fighters is over.<<
I’ll believe that when they can field an unmanned, 20kt, 1-G, 2-dimensional tank that can operate autonomously in a fluid battlefield.
Thank you.
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