Plus I would suggest

It doesn’t fit into Zer∅’s plan of “just another country”, devoid of exceptionalism and the responsibilities that go with it.

Let’s simply look at what actually happens to expensive platforms in the field, in combat.

Turns out that frequently, the generals and admirals make the decision that they do not want to risk their highly expensive toys in a target rich environment.

If the assets are not risked in the first place, then they cannot win the battle.

That means a win for the enemy while still in the ‘diplomatic standoff’ stage of a conflict because the generals/admirals report to the CinC that they don’t feel confident going in.

If battles could be won or last depending on the capabilities published in last years’ Janes then expensive platforms might be a good deal.

But with expensive platofrms like these, we lose the jump in the early stages of a conflict because we can’t just deploy a squadron - we must deploy an entire wing or the high maintenance requirements cannot be met in the field. PLus the current emphasis on force protection means these platforms can’t take the risks they were intended to mitigate.

Everybody seems to forget that preparing for war means preparing to fight.

Collins, Snowe, Lugar, Murkowski, and Voinovich joined the 58 Dems to enable cloture on adding this completely unrelated amendment to the bill. Lovely.

If the R&D is done already, and the anti’s are slamming the F-22 on the basis of PUAC, they are maroons. A good 25-30% of that PUAC is fixed and already spent. That’s like walking away from buying a house and forfeiting your down payment money and getting nothing in return. Dumb!

I think there’s a knee jerk reaction among conservatives that EVERY military expenditure is valid, no matter what the cost. I happen to think we waste a lot of money on military hardware, especially in a post-Cold War world.

What hostile country are we going to have dogfights with that we need such an expensive aircraft? These types of programs were developed when we still thought we were going to be competing with Soviet Migs. Our current aircraft technology is many generations ahead of any Mig fighter plane.

There are all sorts of military projects and equipment that actual military leadership in the field have said we don’t want or need, but because of high paid lobbyists, they get shoved down the military’s throat, at the taxpayer’s incredible expense. Members of Congress like Murtha just want the high paying projects in their district, and the political fundraising from these military contractors that go along with it. It has nothing to do with National Security.

I supported Reagan’s build up of the military, and I know it was instrumental in winning the Cold War, but I think that buildup was under the assumption that at some point we would scale back once the threat of Soviet expansion was over. I think President Eisenhower’s (a former 5 star general) warning about the Military Industrial Complex during his farewell speech is something we should never forget.

Gave it a little thought since my last comment. The F-22 costs $332 million per copy. The Predator costs $8 million per copy.

The Air Force says they will probably incline toward unmanned fighters in the future anyway.

Take the cost of 3 of these F-22s and devote them toward developing a version of the Predator intended for an air superiority role.

Pucker factor for opposing pilots and generals: instead of facing one plane, you are now facing 40. You might shoot one down, but the enemy (us) has not lost a pilot (and thus no SAR effort to distract the enemy). No captive pilot to put on TV. 39 more are still gunning for you and your forces right now.

Aircraft carriers now carry 350 planes instead of just 90; that more than triples the value of one carrier deployment. What was once bunk space for the pilots is now munitions storage for more air-air missiles (you will need them).

As noted elsewhere, the F-22 has to be programmed to limit its performance to keep the pilot awake and aware thru high-G turns and maneuvers that can and do produce pilot black-outs. Instead, let the machine produce all the performance it is capable of — without a human pilot on-board.

If you want to make opposing generals wet their knickers (and ours say ’so what?’), this is the way to do it.

that I have read on this board, all I can say is that some of you F-22=bad people have some very poor misconceptions of warfare and the future of it. The F-22 is an air superiority weapon, and the cost is sunk as pointed out by Repair_Man_Jack.

You all against the F-22 Raptor are selling the american military down the road, and you may live, or die to regret it.

Alright People,

I dare say I’m the ONLY one on this board/website to have ever been associated with the Raptor in any way, shape, or form.

I will say this here and now, you will NEVER take a fighter pilot completely out of the cockpit. There are too many variables that one must consider in the heat of combat that computers, satellite relays, and a boat load of sensors can not compensate for.

Besides, to ESTABLISH air superiority, one must eliminate 2 threats:
1. Enemy Air Craft
2. Enemy ground based weapon systems. (mostly Surfaces to Air Missles - SAMS)

No UAV now, or in 30 years, will be capable of the kind performance it will take to take down an SA-10, SA-20, or the future upgrades and follow ons to those systems.

Second, enemy air craft capabilities are not always public. Neither are ours. Unless you are the President, an engineer that designed the plane, or someone currently stationed at Langley, Alaska, Tyndal in Florida, or Nevada, I’m SURE you are not fully aware of what this plane can do.

Air to Air combat is not what you see on Iron Eagle, Top Gun, or Transformers. If a four ship of flankers each carrying 6 radar guided missiles is a formidable group.

A G-limiter is not only found on the Raptor. Many late model aircraft have this feature.

Again, we’re talking UNCLASSIFIED here. Were I to let loose all the details, most of you would surely understand why the Raptor is needed.

However, there is an issue here of necessity.

I mean really, air to air, how many countries are there that have a SIGNIFICANT inventory of fourth generation fighter aircraft that are so advanced as to REQUIRE the use of F-22’s to combat them?

There are only a couple of countries that even have prototypes comparable to the F-22.

The simple fact is that there isn’t a single MASS-PRODUCTION adversary fighter out there that the F-15 doesn’t already provide us air superiority over.

I think the move to more of the F-35’s is a good one. Most of our enemies now and for the forseeable future are using IED’s and roadside bombs, not advanced fighter aircraft.

The roughly 200 F-22’s already finished/slated will be more than plenty for us.

PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH

If you’re against the Raptor, especially at this late stage when we have already made the major investment, then you might as well be against SDI too.

Reagan was right. “And that’s the way it is”. RIP Walter Cronkite.

“The roughly 200 F-22’s already finished/slated will be more than plenty for us.”

There are plenty of reasons for this and we’ll get to some of them in a moment but the one thing I’m surprised at is:

No one has yet mentioned our VAST superiority in pilots, and training. All other things being equal we could give China… or Russia a hundred Raptors, and a year later… assuming that they could keep them all flying that long, our guys would clean their clocks. What… 3x, 4x training time in plane per month plus sim time? Plus OPFOR training. In any type of fair fight our guys will win. Our guys having the Raptor makes it an even more of an unfair fight.

As to why we will never need more than 200 of them… this is simple: we will never have a theater large enough to need them. In essence we don’t have an Army large enough to need control of an airspace larger than a country say the size of Iraq… or Taiwan. 100 along with ground attack planes along with Taiwanese forces and I think you have it covered. That also leaves out the fact the for us at least Taiwan would be mostly a Naval war.

The other option against China is in support of India. This too would likely see the F-22 in a support role clearing a smaller area of the overall battle space to cover an attack, a counter attack or a withdraw under fire. Indian aircraft would be covering most of the battle space.

Additionally, we could expect a very conservative kill ratio of 5 to 1. Could China commit 500 front line fighters to either one of those battle spaces? If not they loose. AND all this is before any loses from air to ground attacks and SAMs. One of the reasons we are still flying heavy bombers is to take out their planes on the ground or and worse their air fields and aircraft support. Can’t fly the next sortie if you can’t land and get fuel and new arms.

That leaves Russia and I’ll just add that guys… the Reds aren’t a com’n through the Fudda any time soon. Enough said.

Want more than 200 F-22s? Get back with me when the Army adds four NEW heavy Divisions. Then we’ll talk.

This program is an example of why the Bush White House ran up a huge deficit. There is no need for it, but it was kept going as a jobs program and to please well connected defense contractors.

The US military faces a crisis. The new generation of weapons costs 3-5 times as much as the weapons bought in the Reagan era. One for one replacement of the existing force structure is unaffordable. When the old systems wear out there will be huge declines in numbers and probably in combat capability. It is true that the news systems are more capable but in many scenarios the added capability will not be relevant.

The strength of the USAF lies in a combination of good aircraft, good missiles, AWACS (airborne radar), good electronic warfare and very well trained pilots. The Su-30 MKI is a good airplane, but a third world country is not going to achieve parity with the USAF just by buying it.

The only countries that can really compete with USAF would be Britain, France, Germany, Israel and Japan. The last two depend on US equipment and could be crippled by cutting off spare parts. The Europeans could field about 500 Eurofighter and Rafales against 200 USAF F-22s. It would be an interesting war, but the USAF would probably still win.

The bottom line is that there is no realistic scenario for which more than 200 F-22s is needed.

Some would like to claim that Russia and China are working on their own “5th generation” aircraft which would be more capable than the Su-30. This has been discussed for years. A prototype of the Mig 1.42 was shown some years ago but the Russians seem to have decided that it was unaffordable and the project is going nowhere.

Others would like to claim that the F-22 is needed to counter the latest Russian surface to air missiles. They tend not to mention that the Russians are working on a radar which supposedly can detect stealth planes. Nor do they talk about other cheaper ways to deal with the latest Russian hardware. Nor do the mention that the Russian missiles are quite costly and that not too many have been sold abroad.

therefore, the next generation fighter aircraft will have to outperform all that today’s technology has to offer.

More specifically, right now the human physiology is the problem not the brain. We need to find a way to force the human body to maintain consciousness during extreme g-forces. I do not believe the drone is the next level of combat.

For now, the F-22 is the bang for the buck and is a force multiplier, too many people on this thread have given you great arguments for the continuation of the F-22 Raptor. The next generation fighter that will kick the F-22 out to the sky will require R&D and the entire DoD acquisition process which will take decades to complete, so do not stop full original AAO for the purposes of saving a buck for Zeros domestic programs. Let us not kid ourselves that is exactly why they are cutting these big programs.

They cut the military to the bone, Reagan had to build it up again. Then under Clinton they repeated the mistake, and GWB had to almost literally start over from scratch. Now Obo the Clown and his two-ring congressional circus is making us weak again. they are cutting the planned expansion of the missile defense program and telling us less than two hundred of the most deadly fighter the world has ever seen are sufficient.

The F-22 was planned and designed to be a compliment to the F-35 JSF, each making the other more effective, but only in the numbers originally planned for. Cutting back on the Raptor will actually make the F-35 less effective.

Meanwhile, the F-15 is beginning to get long in the tooth. Fighter airframes, unlike those of heavy bombers, are subject to additional stress by supersonic flight. We wont be able to fly the 15 much beyond 2025. If the F-22 is abandoned now, then we will have to start all over from scratch after that point. And whatever air superiority fighter lies beyond the Raptor is dead certain to be much more costly then than the 22 is now.

Not keeping the line open is shortsightedness and sheer stupidity. And as Ron White says, “You can’t fix stupid.”

- JP

A civilian contractor buddy of mine says the new buzz and dollars to follow is All Drones All The Time. So keep those kids on their video games.

In a matchup, the F-22 will kick the F-35’s ass 100 out of 100 times.

So, I say let’s scrap the F-22 and build more F-35’s. Definitely. No contest.

It’s the democrat way.

Here’s my two cents. I worked on F-15s in the 70’s (avionics) when they were a new platform. Pilots used to go afterburner right after take-off and ascend straight up — just to show off. Man, that was awesome! We’d all stand on the flight line just to watch!

The down side was that they fell below a 40% combat ready rate, sometimes hitting 20% (lots of 12 hr. shifts to improve this) But it got sorted out, and today, the F15 holds the record (see Jane’s) as the most successful air superiority fighter. F-15’s now maintain a pretty good combat ready rate…but that took almost 20 years to achieve.

The F-22 is beyond amazing. In one exercise, a single Raptor defeated multiple F15s. The problem, as most of you former zoomies must know is that combat worthiness depends on combat readiness. The Raptor will likely need a decade to mature.

So, a force of just under 200 aircraft will help keep costs down as further development eventually yields a C, D, or E model that is mature, cheaper and more reliable. In the mean time, and under the short term threats we currently face, let the Eagle keep flying and buy the time needed for the Raptor to completely replace the F15 as our first line air-superiority fighter. It makes good financial sense and opens the door for great future F-22 contracts.

I have associates that work on the Raptor program. so news of any cuts affects them. But they are all great engineers and will be deployed on other programs, some already have been.

For the reasons I touched on. I think the downsized F-22 program makes sense and ultimately will give America, a mature ultimate fighter, at a reasonable cost.