Posted on 07/06/2009 1:41:39 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Congress is busying itself trying to overturn Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s decision to stop producing the F-22 fighter. But President Barack Obama has threatened to veto a spending bill for the entire Defense Department if it contains a single F-22 over the 187 now authorized.
Gates has said that, without a doubt, Obama should veto a bill that includes additional F-22s. The fact that there are doubts demonstrates the mess our defenses are in.
The House committee wants to make a down payment on 12 more F-22s in 2011; the Senate committee wants seven more in 2010.
The House passed its version of the bill on June 25 by a vote of 389-22. So Obama and Gates have a long way to go to show that they have the 145 or so votes they would need to sustain a veto.
Gates and Obama’s case against the F-22 is reasonable but needs to be more comprehensive.
Gates has argued that not a single F-22 has flown in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But there simply are no enemy air forces there.
Also, the F-22 is outrageously expensive. The 187 now authorized are costing the nation more than $65 billion, almost $350 million for each one.
More important, but so far unaddressed, is whether the F-22 is even a good fighter. Actually, it is a gigantic disappointment.
Its boosters advertise the F-22 as a technological wonder — which it isn’t.
Its “stealth” characteristic is greatly exaggerated. And, while the F-22 is less detectable by some radar at certain angles, it is easily detectable to many types of radar in the world, including early Russian and Chinese models. Just ask the pilots of the two stealthy F-117 bombers that were put out of action by Serbs in the 1999 Kosovo air war using antiquated radar systems.
Worse, the F-22 depends on its radar and long-range, radar-guided missiles. Such “beyond visual range” radar-based air warfare has failed time and time again in war.
There are two problems. First, even the low probability of intercept radar in the F-22 is vulnerable to detection by enemies, especially with the proliferation of spread-spectrum technology in cell phones and laptops. The radar not only signals the F-22’s presence to enemies but also acts as a beacon for their radar-homing missiles. While both the Russians and the Chinese specialize in such missiles, our Air Force, in its exercises, insists that such capabilities do not exist.
Second, its aerodynamic performance, short-range missiles and guns are nothing special, which I observed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada when an F-16 “shot down” an F-22 in exercises.
A vote in Congress for more F-22s is a vote to decay our pilots’ skills, shrink our Air Force at increasing cost and reward Congress’s lust for pork. Congress’s new defense bill should, indeed, be vetoed if a single F-22 is added. Pro-defense members of Congress will support that move.
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Winslow T. Wheeler is the director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information. He is the author of the new anthology “America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress.”
The F-22 is needed. Gates should listen to his AF General:
In June 2009, Gen. John D.W. Corley stated in a letter to Senator Saxby Chambliss that, “To my knowledge, there are no studies that demonstrate 187 F-22s are adequate to support our national military strategy,” “(a limit of 187 F-22s) puts execution of our current national military strategy at high risk in the near- to mid-term”, and added, “(research) shows a moderate risk can be obtained with an F-22 fleet of approximately 250 aircraft” while opining that 381 Raptors would be the “ideal inventory”
Obama is getting closer and closer to moving back to Kenya compliments of America.
One tipoff:
Its “stealth” characteristic is greatly exaggerated. And, while the F-22 is less detectable by some radar at certain angles, it is easily detectable to many types of radar in the world, including early Russian and Chinese models. Just ask the pilots of the two stealthy F-117 bombers that were put out of action by Serbs in the 1999 Kosovo air war using antiquated radar systems.
So an F-22 is nothing special because two F-117s got shot down? Is the author aware that the F-22 and F-117 are, you know, different?
What did Gates do this time flip a coin or throw a dart ?
I think you have it backwards:
America is getting closer and closer to moving back to Kenya compliments of Obama.
There, fixed.
Idiocy.
The F-22 is barely in service after decades of development. Of course we aren’t using it to bomb mud huts. We’re using it as leverage agasint the Chinese. What happens when we need a Gen 5 fighter and we don’t have them, but 25+ year-old F-15Cs?
And the things cost $350million a copy BECAUSE we’re only buying 187 of them. If we were buying even half of the 700+ that were originally requested, they’d cost $150million (or less) a copy. We’re paying the R&D costs with each model, as the manufacturing price is comparatively negligible.
Tards.
Our Air Farce and Navy aircraft pipeline is badly depleted. If we overspent on it now, wouldn’t that be better than wasting the money buying airports in Hicksville USA or Woodstock Museum’s?
Lockheed is a Marietta (Cobb County, Paulding County, west and north Atlanta.) All these voted heavy republican, but very few Atlanta and DeKalb County voters ( who vote liberal extremists and socialist democratic in those areas) work up here.
Do they (we!) need the F-22? Yes, let the USAF determine the number in a NON-political way. We found out under McNamara how political answers kill soldiers and airmen.
Looks like Obama wants US dead. Not US victories.
With these idiots in charge it doesn’t matter how many of anything we have because they’re busy capitualting to the enemy without a shot ever fired.
An excellent point ... if Gates can guaran-da**-tee we will never have to fight a war outside of Iraq or Afghanistan.
I've heard of many of these exercises which are set up specifically to keep the pilots on both sides trained. Firing a stack of missiles at beyond visual range and clearing the sky of enemy aircraft might be useful for real combat, but Nellis is trying to teach pilots what to do in the tough situations by outnumbering them and starting the scenario with the OpFor pilots having a higher position and behind or sunward of the F-22. Also, the Nellis commander hates it when all the OpFor pilots are "shot down" and back at the officers' club at 0930.
Failed time and time again?
Name one.
Center for Defense Information{CDI}
1500 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20005
CDI’s former military officers were frequently quoted by the Soviet propaganda organs to legitimize their attacks on NATO and U.S. defense forces as trigger-happy dangers to peace.
Although CDI states it “supports a strong defense but opposes excessive expenditures or forces,” it has opposed every major new U.S. weapons system developed during the past two decades - from the B-1 bomber and Trident submarine to cruise missiles, neutron warheads, and stealth bomber - as upsetting the U.S.-Soviet strategic balance while at the same time minimizing the Soviet military buildup.
In 1979, in cooperation with the Members of Congress for Peace Through Law Education Fund, CDI financed a 27-minute film, “War Without Winners”, to promote the then unilateral disarmament lobby’s claim that “there is no defense against nuclear war,” on which basis they also oppose civil defense programs, anti-ballistic missile defenses and development of satellite-based beam weapons. The film was produced by Howard Wilens, chairman of the board of the Factory Equipment Corporation, CDI advisor, and a leader of Businessmen Move for New National Priorities(BEM); and its director was Haskell Wexler, the revolutionary film director who in 1975 produced a propaganda film for the terrorist Weather Underground Organization consisting of interviews with five fugitive leaders including Kathy Boudin.
The CDI film project director was its senior staff member Arthur L. Kanegis, CDI’s media director. Late in March 1982, Kanegis, of the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies, was interviewed for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” news show dismissing evidence of Soviet use of nerve gas and biological toxins in Afghanistan and Cambodia.
CDI’s newsletter, Defense Monitor, would publish carefully selected data that consistently presented the USSR as a weak opponent. For example, Vol. XI, Number 1, 1982 asserts “there is no evidence to support the notion of growing Soviet ‘geopolitical momentum’” and points to setbacks in Egypt, Somalia, Guinea, Bangladesh and India without noting gains in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Grenada, Syria, Iraq, Libya, etc. And it ignored the implications of the then unprecedented joint visit to India of Soviet Defense Minister Dimitri Ustinov(who had never before traveled outside the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries) and Admiral Gorsakov, the chief of the Soviet fleet.
According to the Zill report(February 22, 1982), CDI’s plans included “hosting, along with the Washington Interreligious Staff Council, a two-day conference for 100 religious leaders” to be presented with CDI’s view of the military balance by 1990; Soviet military capacity and limitation; and the future of arms control. The speakers included “a representative of Eugene Rostow, Senator Warner and Representatives Les Aspin and Ron Dellums.
Indications that CDI, In its consistent pattern of attacking the U.S. military while offering excuses for the arms buildup in foreign countries, may be serving as a”center for defense DISinformation” include not only Gene LaRoque’s claims of U.S. violations with nuclear weapons off-loading agreements with Japan and his stay at the Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada in Moscow, but his overt collaboration with the World Peace Council. In this light, the Zill report stated:
“On June 15 and 16, 1982, during the UN Special Session on Disarmament, CDI will host a conference of retired military officers from NATO and Warsaw Pact countries to discuss how a nuclear war would be fought/avoided, a first-time ever event. Hyman Rickover will be approached about participating.”
So, when CNN trots out their “experts” on defense be reminded those selected from the ranks of the CDI may not share the fondness for our national sovereignty that is so precious to most Americans.
About the Center for Defense Information:
Then the leftists use the same complaints they have used for EVERY weapon system to try to stop acquisition and disarm our country.
Gene R. La Rocque
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Gene R. La Rocque
Former Advisor, Albert Einstein Institution
Advisor/Director, World Security Institute
Advisory Council, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Former President, Center for Defense Information [1]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gene_R._La_Rocque
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
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This article is part of the Nuclear spin analysis project of SpinWatch (UK) and the Center for Media and Democracy.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation “initiates and supports worldwide efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, to strengthen international law and institutions, and to inspire and empower a new generation of peace leaders. Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan international education and advocacy organization. It has consultative status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council and is recognized by the UN as a Peace Messenger Organization.” [1]
The Air Force needs the F-22. I’ve flown against the F-22 and it is eye-watering. This guy is full of it.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Hansen.pdf
Uncovering the
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