The F-22 was the air dominance fighter to crush everything in the sky. It was over engineered and over built and suffered from massive price tags which hindered how many the Airforce bought. It’s a similar story to the Seawolf class attack sub. As a result only so many were ever built.
“The F-22 was the air dominance fighter to crush everything in the sky. It was over engineered and over built and suffered from massive price tags which hindered how many the Airforce bought. It’s a similar story to the Seawolf class attack sub. As a result only so many were ever built.”
It wasn’t so much the absolute cost of the F-22, it was that the brass wanted the money for the F-35 program. Recently the AF has been complaining about how few F-22s we have.
The problem is that many systems in the F-22 are now outdated. Its computers run as slow as 25 MHz. The airframe is, of course, outstanding.
What the military really needs to figure out is how to allow upgrade technology smoothly over time. That would be a huge game-changer.
The thinking now is that we’re going to have to wait for the sixth gen air supremacy fighter, operational around 2030. Personally I think a much more cost effective approach would be to evolve the F-22 design, including a two seater with quite a bit larger internal bays - and of course upgrading all the electronics. A two seater would allow the weapons guy to control air-to-air drones in the area.
I think you hit on part of it. Both the Seawolf and F-22 were developed as ‘counters’ to a presumed threat coming from other nations (mostly Russia and China). However when those threats failed to materialize, the high costs of production and maintenance meant the programs were stopped in favor of newer systems (Virginia-class and F-35).