The F-22 is a boondogle.False.
It was and remains an effective state of the art stealth fighter....which can guarantee us air superiority for the next two or three decades...which has been strung out and underfunded so that every single plane is forced to be charged about twice what it would have been if it had simply been ordered for 5 or 6 hundred planes instead of the unending "research" and Clinton-dictated "redesign" into also being an attack plane (ground bombing) and then Bush's onesy-twosy orders...along with his father and Cheney having killed the Navy version.
Economies of scale are absolutely vital in considering the deployment of weapons systems. And from the get-go, the enemies of our future aviation superiority have stymied us from deploying sufficient forces. ...And not just the F-22.
Besides, you can’t fight terrorists with the F-22 - It was designed to shoot down the best and brightest Soviet fighters around. Well, they ain’t around and soon neither will be the F-22.
Wrong again.
You can't fight terrorists unless you have air superiority.
AND The Soviet union's last fighters are still being produced by Putin/Medvedev...and you can bet that these will make into theaters that will undermine our air superiority. Same as with the French and Swedish fighters
Mig-29
Su-35
Maybe the Air Force should be next on the chopping block. It would be poetic justice.
Justice? According to Red China maybe, which wants to be hegemon of the world....
Chinese Su-27
"You can't fight terrorists unless you have air superiority"
We have a winner for silliest assertation on this thread
Of course you can
Most contacts in Iraq and Afghanistan are initiated, prosecuted and completed without resorting to the use of airpower
Airpower is a tool, it gives an advantage
The airpower tools that us groundpounders appreciate the most are AC-130s and A-10s
None of which are in any danger from the Taliban air force
Argue the merits of the F-22 all you want.
But to say we couldn't prosecute CT ops without "air superiority" is just silly. Right now there's no enemy air force to fight against. Is 187 enough? Depends upon what everyone else does in terms of building force structure and where we think we'll be fighting
Normal attrition rate will have that down to about 160 in a decade through operational accidents.
Figure in operational readiness rates and we'd probably have 80-100 available to deploy to combat at any given time.
Enough to fight Iran - without a doubt.
North Korea, certainly
China? Maybe not, but then China doesn't have to go to war with us, they just need to call in their debt.
180 or so O/H may not be as much as the AF wanted but this program probably wouldn't have survived even under McCain.
As an Army guy I'm not busted up about the loss of the FCS. What concerns me more is the money saved on all these systems won't be reinvested in things we need or recapitalization of the worn out equipment. It will go towards Obama's great society.