The vast majority of these programs were not redundant and had no duplicate in the defense budget, nor even anything that could act as a substitute, let alone as a replacement.

The F-22 was the best example of this. This stealthy air superiority fighter, whose real unit cost was $150 mn (and not the $450 mn often reported by the media, which includes R&D costs), is the ONLY fighterplane that can defeat the newest Chinese and Russian designs and stay stealthy with a large ordnance in an environment monitored by radars and SAMs. It has an RCS of a metal marble. The F-35 is NOT a substitute for, let alone a replacement for, the F-22. It doesn’t have the range, payload, supercruise ability, stealthiness degree, and other characteristics of the F-22. It is much less stealthy while being as expensive as an F-22 (the Marine variant costs $150 mn per copy), the Navy’s and Air Force’s variants are only slightly less expensive. There is nothing that the F-35 can do that cannot be done in truly dangerous environments by F-22s, or in benign environments by legacy aircraft.

In 2009, Gates, who is totally ignorant about defense issues, killed the F-22 program and bet the entire future of America’s combat aviation on a single, troubled program – the F-35. Since then, the F-35 has continued to experience massive cost overruns and huge delays, and Gates has also killed the Alternative Engine Program that would’ve reduced costs and maintained competition. The program that should’ve gotten the axe was the F-35, not the F-22. Killing the F-35 would’ve saved a lot of money to buy not just hundreds of F-22s, but also thousands of other badly needed weapons (Super Hornets, CSARHs, bombers, tankers, ships, etc.).

Now it looks like the F-35 program will be protected again, at the expense of other, much more important, weapon programs.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/idINIndia-60260120111102

Thanks for proving you are totally ignorant about defense issues. You just proved my point: Gates was one of the worst, if not the single worst, defense secretaries that America has ever had.

“>Super Hornets, CSARHs, bombers, tankers, ships, etc

I didn?t need any those when I was Iraq.”

So there were no Super Hornets, CSAR helos, or Air Force bombers operating in Iraq when you were there, and in Afghanistan? And there were no US Navy ships operating in the Persian Gulf, supporting the troops on the ground?

Wait – there were! And there still are!

Not only that, they were CRUCIAL to fighting these wars – not just providing CAS to the trops on the ground, but also in the initial phases of the war, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, where B-52s, B-2s, and B-1s ALL participated in large numbers. In fact, we wouldn’t have been able to fight in Afghanistan if the USAF’s bombers had not bombed the hell out of Afghanistan first in 2001.

Ironically, these conventional weapons proved themselves to be very useful, and indeed crucial, for irregular wars – which they were not originally designed to fight.

Moreover, your belief that weapons should be judged solvely through the prism of Iraq and that the US will never fight any conventional war – only wars like the Iraqi and Afghan wars – while popular during the last decade (and still popular in the Beltway to this day) is wrong. Most of America’s potential adversaries are nation states, and they are the most likely threats. The US military needs to be equipped, trained, sized, and prepared for a WIDE spectrum of threats, ranging from AQ and Hezbollah to Russia and China. Foregoing preparations for conventional wars, like Gates did, is foolish.

“Just what are we going to use the F-22 for?”

Fighting China and its J-20 fighterplanes – which we WILL have to do one day. It’s no longer a question of if, it’s a question of when.