The F-22 requires 30 hours of maintenance time for every 1 hour of flight during peace time. No AF in the world would be able to effectively maintain such a fickle aircraft during war time.
Wrong. That is a fallacy perpetuated by the people that wanted to kill the program. They had one short time period where that rate happened.
The overall level is now less than 10 hours to one flight hour and improving.
http://hatch.senate.gov/public/_files/F22AssertionsAndFacts.pdf
According to Orrin Hatch’s fact sheet, in 2008 it had 18 hours of maintenance per flight hour, and in 2009 it had 10.5 hours per maintenance per flight hour.
The REQUIREMENT at 100,000 flight hours is to meet 12 maintenance hours/flight hour.
That was Hatch’s response to the claim that it took 30 hours of maintenance — so I’m guessing the 30-hour number was wrong.
On the other hand, the F-22 cost $19,000 per flight hour, so 12 hours of maintenance time is a low part of the total cost of flying the plane. The F-18 cost $17,000 per flight hour according to the same fact sheet.