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 ...
At present and likely well into the future, UAVs and such do not and will not eliminate the need for airplanes with pilots inside. You are right that the F-22 enjoys much greater situational awareness and capability thanks to linking communications, sensors and systems, but should those links be compromised or be jammed, the F-22 is hardly a paperweight like a remotely controlled pilotless machine more likely would be.
With regard to relying upon UAVs and the systems they rely upon to control and direct them, I offer common sense wisdom from Montgomery "Scotty" Scott.
"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
F-22 is not dependent on communications for operation.
Everything you say is true. And perhaps I should have been much more specific. But in my mind I was associating the expense of one F-22 Wing Versus the number, and quantity is definitely its’s own form of quality, of new A-10’s that could be purchased.
And quite frankly since I am mostly involved in supporting the space program my knowledge of Air combat and Air superiority fighters is limited to my reading.
And as another poster pointed out for each additional f-22 purchased the total expense per copy goes down as the R&D is shared among all copies.
That's a stretch. I guess it depends on how you define "dependent". If an enemy could completely cut all communications would F-22 fall out of the sky? No. At least not until it ran out of fuel. Could it get back to base? Sure. Command gonna send $180 million aircraft back up without a com link? Duh?
I think it was some F-35s which had to fly back blind after they had a computer glitch crossing the international date line, but I could be wrong about that.
I doubt you would send a plane UP without comms, unless of course you were in the middle of world war 3 and the comms had been knocked out and you wanted to stop enemy planes from invading our airspace.
Then you would feel bad about having so few planes in the arsenal that were able to defend the country.
But if you sent a plane out to hit an enemy base, and when you approached the base the enemy jammed communication, I’d rather have pilots in planes to finish the mission, rather than hope the now-disabled UAVs happened to crash and explode where we needed them to.
I didn’t mean to get too far off on this tangent. Yes, all aircraft systems are dependent on comms and UAVs and RPVs are more dependent that F-22. I’m not trying to run down F-22. As an engineering achievement it is awesome and then some. My point is that in addition to the expense, it is the ultimate expression of a concept (manned fighter) that has no where else to go. As it stands now, no pilot can physically take F-22 to the edge of its capability. So what is the next generation, an plane that is even more advanced than the one that is too advanced now? How far can we go in the meat space?
Very well said.
"I think that it might be better to consider the F/A-22 to be an interim type. We’ve got two problems. First off they’re expensive. A hundred eighty million is what a destroyer or a frigate costs, and paying that much for what by the nature of it’s employment is a fungible asset is insane."
From where do you get your cost numbers? For the US Navy DDG-51 "Arleigh A Burke" info the unitary costs of the 62 ship class of DDG-51s is $1.1 billion, a bit higher than than $180 million per copy you suggest.
Originally posted by Mi5ke561: (post # 14)
"Think about it. When I was a kid, McDonnell-Douglas produced around 2700 F-4 Phantom II variants at around four and a half million per copy,..."
When I was a kid, my late Father was flying F-4Bs off Vietnam and then F-4Js in the Med. I was therefore a "Phantom Phan" and remember that the production numbers were a bit higher. Total McDonnell-Douglas production of US and FMS versions were around 5,000+ Phantom IIs. Of these, 2,874 were USAF and 1,264 were Navy/Marine Corps versions.
Originally posted by Mi5ke561: (post # 53)
"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."
The US Navy (and Congress) are again learning a lesson about procurement. The three Seawolf class subs (Seawolf, Connecticut, Jimmy Carter before 'sneaky pete' mods) were about $2.4 billion each, and the newer Virginia (no West) class subs are running around $2.5 billion each, with some hope of getting costs down to $2.1 billion a copy. So much for saving money. Time will tell...
dvwjr
Kind of sounds like my wife explaining how those new shoes, though terribly expensive in the abstract, were a bargain given their designer name and the fact that the second pair was 25% off. Off course, I know better to mention the fact that her closet is full of perfectly good shoes already.
I used to go jogging along a runway in VA where F-22’s would take off and land. They are cool, but in an era where a two front large scale conventional wars seem a lot less likely, do we really need the most expensive plane we can buy, even if it is a “bargain”.
‘They are cool, but in an era where a two front large scale conventional wars seem a lot less likely, do we really need the most expensive plane we can buy, even if it is a “bargain”.’
Well..first of all there are a lot of sunk costs with the F-22. So, if you want a different, completely new fighter that fits some other set of requirements, you’re looking at many billions any way you slice it, and you’ve thrown away most of the development effort for the best fighter in history.
The cheapest way to go would probably be something like an upgraded F-15 design, with improved wing and F-22 engines. (Or, as some wag of an admiral suggested, buy SU-xx airframes and equip them with engines and electronics over here. lol) However, such a plane would lose every time against F-22s - which would you really rather have? We may have to go against top-tier Russian or Chinese equipment at any time. What if they have a secret game-changer like practical beam weapons?
The F-35 is intended to be a less expensive plane with less capability, and will be bought 5-1 over the F-22. That’s very much in line with the successful F-15 / F-16 pairing.
Re: Maintenance Manhours.
The Tomcat wasn’t the worst for ratio of maintenance hours to flight hours. For example, during Vietnam, the F-105D Thunderchief required an average of 105 Manhours per hour in the air.
That brings me to two points. First off, you need a large maintenance float for high performance airplanes that use lots of electronics. Secondly, the numbers of F/A-22s we’re
acquiring doesn’t seem to take that into account.
BTW, I’m aware of Cheney’s part in getting rid of the Tomcat. It’s a boneheaded move. For a guy who had the priviledge of being briefed by Colonel Boyd at least thirteen times, he seems to have made the wrong conclusions from what he was taught.
Re: Performance & Bandwidth.
It depends on what kind of battlefield you’re anticipating.
For example, I really don’t like airplanes that depend on a computer for stability. Why? Because sooner or later, and I’m betting sooner, our enemies will field a missile that’s sorta like the old Genie atomic rocket except that it’ll have a magnetostrictive compression type EMP warhead in it.
Shoot the thing from BVR on inertial guidance and when it gets near the targets it’s either detonated by the launch plane or an AWACS or by timer. At that point, the electronics fry, and the pilot discovers what fun it is to try and bail out against all of those G forces. Worse still, we lose an irreplacable airplane. Not good.
That makes me pretty sure that we don’t dare put all of our eggs in one basket. Build a mix of manned aircraft, UAVs and autonomous combat systems. We could borrow a trick from the Iranians too, and send the UAVs ahead like they did their Phantoms, and use our super plane, whatever it ultimately winds up being, initially for battle management of the wave that goes in first.
I’d like to see more research into getting more commo for less bandwidth and I suspect that there are some smart guys on both sides who are burning the midnight oil on it.
RE: Costs
The Arleigh Burke class destroyer really isn’t a destroyer. It’s more of a thin hulled guided missile cruiser. It’s a great ship and we need more of them, but a destroyer or frigate mission wise, it’s not. Destroyers are expendible escorts. There’s no way that an Arleigh Burke is expendible. And when you look at what it can do, there’s no way that you’d call it a destroyer, although it’s probably a good dodge for getting Congress to fund it. Compare it to other ships that are procured as destroyers and frigates, and you find that it’s not a low cost expendible escort or patrol vessel. For example, most destroyers are around three hundred and some odd feet long. Your average Arleigh Burke is about five twenty or so.
You’re right about the production numbers for all marks of the Phantom. I stand corrected there, Sir.
As far as comparative costs between the West Virginia and the Seawolf class, don’t forget to figure in inflation, and maybe programmed cost overruns if they got away with it. You know the drill, get the program authorised for one price and then kick in overruns when we are committed and can’t afford to cancel because of aging problems in what it’s intended to replace.
“For example, I really don’t like airplanes that depend on a computer for stability. Why? Because sooner or later, and I’m betting sooner, our enemies will field a missile that’s sorta like the old Genie atomic rocket except that it’ll have a magnetostrictive compression type EMP warhead in it.”
You need to look into modern military EMP requirements. Those fly by wire systems use fiber optics for a reason. There is also a concept called “Faraday cage”.
“As it stands now, no pilot can physically take F-22 to the edge of its capability.”
What you meant to say is that “no pilot can physically take the F-22 to the limit of its inherent G-force capability”. Many pilots could take the F-22 to the limit of how high, fast and far it could fly, for instance.
The question of G-force being important is an interesting one though. The directed energy weapons could well make turn-based air combat obsolete. ;-)
Lookheed workers who actually build the plane are union.
They generally make less than auto workers up north, but
a little more than auto workers in the south. They are
skilled workers and you really have to have the required
training to be able to do the work required and also have
a security clearance.
Re: Faraday Cage.
I’m familiar with both. I also know what happened during some of the tests at the Trestle facility and also what an ungrounded Faraday cage can and can not do.
And it’s not just EMP. Aside from what the purpose built EMP weapons can do, I also recall that when the AGM-86B reached IOC, that when the B-52’s ECM was on, that the AGM-86 ALCM’s onboard computers would shut down. If you wanted to launch cruise missiles, you had to turn the jammers off first.
We’ve got a mode that the F/A-18 can use with it’s radar now, that will kill missile electronics the same way.
I think I'd have the Army run them too. The Marines have there support, I can't see why the Army shouldn't have theirs. After all they are off the shelf building their own intercept and surveillance craft.
As for you, nonsubstantious( not 'un', but 'non' ) assertion.
The Redeye guys said their tactic was to dump missiles, say along a wood line, such that if they fired one off, they would just run/drive away as they knew the area would be smoked.
We would go to White Sands too and set up European Green camouflage nets in the brown/white desert. I didn't have too much faith in them and thought they were kind of a wish thing for us. As for the Air Forces budget, they could of turned CAS over to the Army, and let it fund it. But, that's never going to happen politically.
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