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 ...
Let’s ask Obama’s Chinese sponsors what they would like us to do with the F22. (I’m assuming that the Chinese sponsored Obama as they did Clinton.)
Perhaps the F22s can serve as the leading edge but not the "occupation force".
bump
Yes, great insight!
And how do you control them? How well does your cell phone work? How did you like that Chinese anti-satellite missile demo? You are telling me that UAVs are going to perform as advertised in an environment saturated with all sorts of jamming? Sure they will. The only reason they work so well now is b/c we completely control the air.
There is your answer: A bailout for the military aviation industry! Sure beats whatever Zero’s make work stimulus package will be.
The Tomcat was taken out of service to start the new era of the Super Hornet. The F-18 is a nice multifunction aircraft, but it doesn’t have the legs that the A-6 and F-14 had. We seem to be going backwards in aircraft development.
Moreover, who receives the money spent on those F-22s? Americans! All those engineers, chemists, technicians, programmers, assemblers, inspectors, etc. as well as the people who produce and haul the materials used to build it. Americans all working to keep us safe for decades into the future.
An F-22 is way more than simply an airplane and the cost of not having them is far greater than the cost of building them. People have always complained about how much a fighter costs...until it's needed. And they all are needed sooner or later.
There is another critical factor, the elephant in the living room, so to speak, which has been unmentioned here, but another poster thankfully got it:
As Dilbert56 said in post 63, "In all of our recent military conflicts we've enjoyed air supremacy. America takes that for granted now."
Without air superiority the A-10's would be swept from the sky against any first-world opponent. So would most current and proposed future "slightly less capable but more economical" aircraft. If we sent a squadron of A-10's against an opponent with a top-level Russian or Chinese defense system and their current top-line aircraft without first establishing our own air superiority, few would return.
The F-22 is designed to maintain air superiority. In war, as in gunfights, there is no second place winner. The "cost" is irrelevant, because the crucial factor is not "cost" - it is "price", and the price is freedom and survival. And that price is worth any cost we have to pay.
The converse is also true - if an emboldened aggressor is able to attack and defeat you, whatever you did spend, no matter how economically, will have been spent FOR nothing...
Yes, but I'm not advocating running entire wars remotely. What I am saying is that we have hit two major walls with F-22 and by extension, manned fighters in general . Financial and performance. They are linked. F-22's performance has to be limited to account for the physical limitations of the pilot. So, we build a hyper expensive plane and then compromise performance to account for a pilot in the cockpit which is one of the things that made it expensive in the first place. You don't need AI entirely to run the plane. That could be done remotely with pilots either in a command center or at at a node somewhere. Your comment about bandwidth is right on the money. A much more robust system is needed. So, why not shift the resources into the com system? You'll get more aircraft, cheaper and that can can go faster, perform better and tie into far more assets? As an added bonus, the com system has lots and lots of commercial civilian utility.
How much farther can we really go with pilots?
A sky filled with leather clad flyboys? Pilots are no longer independent actors. But you knew that. F-22 depends on the same com network as UAVs and RPVs. Cut that and F-22 is a $180 million manned paperweight.
I'm not advocating getting rid of the pilot. I just don't see why he needs to be in the plane given how his presence limits performance, number of aircraft and boosts cost. Could we do it all today? No. More robust com systems needed? Yes.
The only problem with F-15’s is that the wings are starting to fall off. F-15 was a great plane, but the frames are old and the stress is starting to show.
F-22’s are definitely wiz bang, but you’re wrong about the R&D cost being rolled into the unit cost of the jets. The R&D is its own appropriation.
While it is true the brave men and women on the frontlines would probably name their kids after the A-10 if they could, the fact remains that the only reason why aircraft like the A-10 and Apache and Spooky fly at all is because the US has always managed to exert total and solid air-supremacy (let alone superiority) in the field of battle. This means that the enemy cannot field their aircraft (due to the aircraft being either destroyed on the ground, shot down in the air, or pilots refusing to take off due to the obvious and lethal disadvantage they face). Furthermore, any SAM systems have either been suppressed, or destroyed, or (again) the operators are not willing to turn on their radars lest some HARM or Sideaarm or Shrike missile come sniffing down the radar emissions.
However, so far we have faced enemies that have been willing to play in an orthodox manner, and also field a generation of weaponry that is far behind ours. Thing is, we shall not always face such foes, and even if we do, the foes may have learnt a trick or two up their sleeves.
For instance, look at how the USAF/NATO had reported many tanks destroyed in the Kosovo conflict, when it turned out that those guys had duped us by simply using the same camouflage tactics that the British had been using in WW2. We were basically bombing mockups looking like tanks, or blowing up roads and bridges that were not. Also, microwave ovens would be turned on and fool some of the systems.
Also, look at the First Gulf War (when Saddam's military machine had not been destroyed to the level to whcih it was by the time the second GW came about). Even though the full might of the US (using weapons geared for a Cold War conflict against the Soviets, just that the USSR had gone Dodo) as well as the combined might of a vast assortment of allies (ranging from the Brits all the way down) ...a much higher grouping than during the 2nd Gulf war ....even though all of that faced Saddam's forces, a number of planes still ended up getting shot down! Ranging from tornados to F-18s (one was actually shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25 Foxbat) to even A-10s (SAM system). The Iraqi SAMs were not the most advanced, and they were not part of an integrated air defense system (IADS), and they were facing groups of hunter-killers (e.g. Wild Weasels) as well as electronic suppression ....but planes still came down.
Now imagine 10 years from now, we are facing an enemy that has more intelligence than camel-dung sniffing Sultanate wannabes, and not only do they have true IADS networks and the latest SAMs, but have also taken a leaf from the Balkan conflicts and are utilizing what they have in an INTELLIGENT manner (always assuming that the enemy will act in an orthodox - read: stupid - way is asking for a hurting).
And in that scenario we have F-15s and F-18s (as great as they are), and A-10s and Apaches for ground support (as great as they are) ....well, what will happen is that there is a chance that things may not go down as expected, and even if we will immediately adapt and end up winning, the enemy will have gotten a major boost in the propaganda war (particularly with the MSM there to help them). Why do you think the Chinese, were they ever to get into a shooting war with the US over Taiwan (will not happen, since China needs us, but more importantly because the US would not risk war over Taiwan), have plans to sink a major US ship. They just need one successful attack (and I don't mean on an aircraft carrier ...an AEGIS Cruiser/Destroyer would easily suffice), and then leave the American population to do the rest once the media shows dead American sailors.
Yes, the Raptor is expensive, but there is nothing out there currently that even comes close to it (not even the F-35 JSF, and not anything that the Russians and Chinese are working on), and more importantly it even covers potential threats that have not come up yet. The F-15 is amazing, and even though there are aircraft that can fly faster, are much more nimble, and have longer ranged weapons; the fact remains that in the hands of a USAF pilot (and with the full sensory capabilities afforded by AWACS etc) there is nothing out there that is better than an American F-15 if you consider the entire picture.
However, that is no longer good enough because there are things that are becoming near-peers, and some that are better if you look simply at single-specific issues. In war the fight is supposed to be an unfair beating, and that is what the Raptor provides.
Finally, go back to the first Gulf War, and imagine if Saddam had a true IADS network with the current generation of SAMs. If his old system with a poor network managed to have some teeth, just how would he have fared if he could have had what is starting to filter out today? F-15s would be dead, and A-10s would not dare tread inside a true IADS network ....however the F-22 can easily get in and out, using a mix of its stealth (compressing the detection envelop) and super-cruise (enabling it to avoid engagement by high kinematics at high altitude, as well as a longer range impartation on weapons). The F-15 (in USAF hands, and with the full spectrum of USAF assets) is currently the best air-superiority fighter in the world in sufficient numbers, but the thing about the Raptor is that it is a game changer ...we would be talking of air-supremacy rather than air-superiority.
Anyways, someday we will have to fight someone who is not an arm-pit sniffing camel jockey, and someone who realizes that heads are for thinking and not chopping off at the local bazaar, and when we do that is when things like the Raptor will finally make sense to those who would otherwise cancel them.
“F-22’s are definitely wiz bang, but you’re wrong about the R&D cost being rolled into the unit cost of the jets. The R&D is its own appropriation.”
You’re right to an extent:
From Wikipedia:
“In April 2006, the cost of the F-22 was assessed by the Government Accountability Office to be $361 million per aircraft. This cost reflects the F-22 total program cost, divided by the number of fighters the Air Force is programmed to buy; and which has so far invested $28 billion in the Raptor’s research, development and testing. That money, referred to as a “sunk cost”, is already spent and is separate from money used for future decision-making, including procuring a copy of the jet. The Unit Procurement Cost was estimated at $177.6 million in 2006 based on a production run of 181 airframes.[12] This unit cost will decrease if total production is higher. This cost includes $3.233 billion already spent on research and development by 2006.[13]
By the time all 183 fighters have been purchased, $34 billion will have been spent on actual procurement, resulting in a total program cost of $62 billion or about $339 million per aircraft. The incremental cost for one additional F-22 is around $138 million;[4] decreasing with larger volumes. If the Air Force were to buy 100 more F-22s today, the cost of each one would be less and would continue to drop with additional aircraft purchases.[11]
F-22 Raptors over Utah in their first official deployment, October 2005”
So, the incremental cost is $138 million (not $180), and by the way a new F-15E costs over $100 million now. So, the F-22 looks pretty inexpensive, given its capabilities.
I agree. It sees like it would be cheaper to have a single big bus like B-52 or even an unmanned plane on orbit - say 40,000 feet up with a bunch of cheap GPS guided bombs. They could be on target over a 50 to 100 mile radius probably 15 minutes after the call goes in.
That is a classic ad hominum fallacy, you just did there.
Whatever. I asked the poster in question what they based their assertions on, and their experience. They essentially said to shove it, so they got a proportional response.
End of story.
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