blamed pro-Israel US Jews for the lack of a Middle East peace agreement.

I’ve seen it happen to many flag and general officers, all services.

Another Useful Idiot for the pile.

if Congress got rid of the PORK that has no constitutional support there would be plenty of money for things that are, such as National Defense !

Gates is using the right reasons – ie: It’s just not worth the cost to build more air superiority fighters when we already have air superiority and will have it for the forseeable future anyway.

Obama is using the wrong reasons – ie: Do whatever you can to divert money from national defense to more “important” things like entitlements.

The F-22 is incredible and can do things that were only science fiction just a few years ago. However, producing them now is equivalent to buying a bazooka when you are already equipped with machine gun and your enemy is only using brass knuckles.

some comments above, I don’t see the budget deficit as relevant.

I do wish Gates had prevailed upon Obama to seek more limited goals in Afghanistan…

more later

costs for the F22 and please compare that to the realized LCC? How much is the LCCE outside of the numbers as is the actual LCC for O&S or actual PMC and O&M costs let alone never reaching AAO for FRP or FOC? I figured I would knock the middle person out by not searching for the information and rather would have you cite rough figures for me. I am not trying to be confrontational but I just do not have the time to go through the costs so I know the true imbalance in force multiplication to cost.

The problem with the metric of per-unit cost is that it varies inversely with the size of the production run. So once you start cutting back on a program, its per-unit cost goes up, making it an inviting target for more cutbacks, which boosts the per-unit cost even more, and so on and on until it gets canceled outright.

But regardless, this isn’t so much about the F22 specifically as it is about EHC. And the general is an utter fool if he was truly surprised by what has occurred.

I spent 21 years in the Air Force working on F-15 and F-16 aircraft.

Your arguments sound really nice to an audience who has no practical experience working on a fighter aircraft. The fact that you haven’t is also evident.

I can go into details about what maintenance problems the Air Force is having with our fighter fleet that is over 30 years old.

However, the unclassified answer is that we need a new fighter fleet badly and not just from a budgetary standpoint. Metal fatigue is only the beginning. Those wonderful upgrades you refer too are being done because the Air Force is doing what is called “doing its best to do what it needs to do with old airplanes” because they are not getting new ones.

The entire cut back of F-22′s is dependent on the delivery of the new F-35 aircraft. However, some Googling on your part will show that is is in serious trouble and is not going to be delivered on time.

The part of Gates/Obama military plan you are not mentioning is the retirement of 250 of the Air Forces main line fighters in the next few years, two years before the F-35 is ready for delivery, if it is still delivered on time. That is 5 entire Air Wings!

So, not only do you have to argue for the stopping of production of the F-22, but to be honest in your argument, you need to frame it with the retirement of 250 existing fighter aircraft, and the F-35 not even being ready for production.

So, lets be a little more honest about what is really going on. It is not about a “too expensive aircraft”. It is about gutting the Air Force to save money to make up for 1.8 trillion in debt. The military budget is too juicy for pacifist liberals to find money for social programs.

.. but hey, that is just me talking.

rickz77

And don’t ask where the studies are that looked at a modernization of the F 15 fleet with some of the avionics goodies in the F22.

Also don’t forget to ask how to pay for replacement of the KC 135R’s which are 40+ years old, or where’s the replacement for the real AF Senior citizen, 50+ year old B52H’s.

For sure the F22 is a great airplane, but how does it fit into fighting the next war? Secretary Gates seems to have answered that question.

The North Vietnamese had Migs. I assume they shot down a few aircraft. I recognize that SAMs got most of our planes over there, but you’d have to assume that the Migs took out at least one airplane at some point between 1959 and 1975.

Also, Souter wouldn’t have retired if McCain had won, so the election hasn’t affected the balance on the SCOTUS yet either.

Still, there are a couple of things that certainly would be better now if McCain had won (ie: no kissing the buts of nations who despise us), so elections still do have consequences.

It’s really an insult to suggest that after 4 years, that Obama and McCain would leave the nation in the same shape. Conservatives would have been able to push back against McCain. On amnesty. Or the shuttering of the F-22. Or anything else. When a conservative challenges Obama, his reply is “I won.”

The people (conservatives, libertarians, whoever) who who said that ‘we’re screwed no matter who wins’ in the 2008 election need to plan their rationale/explanation to the rest of us. Because after the 4 or a total of 8 years of Obama and what he has done to this nation becomes a reality, this whole ‘unless they don’t’ attitude will get really old.

That’s a picture of the YF-22.

Just nit pickin’.

The AF Times was a bit more open about this SEAD/DEAD re-marketing .

For 10 years, the Air Force has argued that the F-22’s incredible dogfighting capabilities will ensure the U.S. remains dominant for decades. And for 10 years, critics who say the fighter is an overpriced Cold War relic have steadily whittled down the service’s Raptor budget.

It’s time for a new argument.

The F/A 22 whoops not supposed to call it that anymore, is a fine airplane, but it is not a F/A18G, or an F16 Wild Weasel or a lot of other very capable aircraft well suited to real SEAD missions, now and in the foreseeable future. The F22 is a pure bred Air Combat machine that turns and burns like nobody’s business and even if you can find it, it’s darn hard to take on even in a non fair fight. But that’s the problem. It’s an airplane that is looking for a mission and “could be” a SEAD mission vehicle is a pretty weak card to play, as was calling it the F/A 22 a few years back to put the smell of air to mud on it.

Wing Zero, with respect, unless you’re a whole heck of a lot smarter than Secretary Gates and a whole host of Pentagon types, you’re fighting a loosing battle over a weapon system that while not obsolete, was designed to counter a threat that nobody is predicting will come up anytime soon. The F15 and F16 fleet while old, are still a pretty darn good air superiority sharp end of the stick, and the JSF is not exactly going to be a slouch ether, in both the Air Combat mission and the air to mud missions.

Sorry arguing a SEAD role for the F22 is just more fighter pilot marketing of the F22.