F-22 Raptor on life support?

[Sgt Joch]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15828.html

The Bush administration is keeping the program on life support at least until the charging of the guard on Jan. 20, with $50 million toward the purchase of new jets while pointing out the increasing costs of the program.

Apparently even the Pentagon has soured on the new jets:

John Young, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, told reporters Thursday that debate about the plane hasn’t been fully informed, noting it isn’t meeting all the Pentagon’s requirements and was performing at a rate he called “troubling.”

“The airplane is proving very expensive to operate,” Young said, adding that it’s complicated to maintain.

Also, many of the current planes may need upgrades that could cost $8 billion more.

of course, I always wondered about the logic of building a brand new air superiority fighter when the current fleet of F-15s, F-16s and F-18s can easily handle any potential threat aircraft which is already deployed or on the drawing board.

[Sergei]

How long do you think before unmanned drones replace traditional fighters? By removing the unnecessary piece of lard, armored cockpit (I don't know if they still do that) and all the extra stuff needed you reduce weight and size, which means longer range, more ordnance, and you don't need to worry about the political cost of sending your aircraft on suicide missions. I'd say in 20 years all the big players have at least some operational, and in 50 years the Skynet has wiped us off the earth's face.

[Wildman]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15828.html

Apparently even the Pentagon has soured on the new jets:

of course, I always wondered about the logic of building a brand new air superiority fighter when the current fleet of F-15s, F-16s and F-18s can easily handle any potential threat aircraft which is already deployed or on the drawing board.

Well of an Air Force Maintainer that has worked/managed B-52/F-15C/F-15E/F-16C/CJ and even Singaporian F-16s let me tell you that not only do we need the F-22 we need a whole hell of a lot more that just 188.

The reasons are multitude, but let me throw out some off the top of my head that I've seen personally.

1. I just watched the Indian Air Force bring new SU-30s with forward canards and the helmet mounted sites with Aim-9X equivilent to prep against the 390th Wild Boars (F-15C). Lets just say that we won, but it wasn't because of the OVERWHELMING superiority of the F-15C. We all have to face theat there are aircraft out there that match many of our fighter capabilities. Where they fall short is the global reach we have, with Tankers and Cargo aircraft.

2. There are 177 or so F-15C/120 or so F-15E/ several hundred F-16 all scheduled to be replaced with 188 F-22s and how ever many JSF aircraft we can squeeze out of Congress. Now even if the aircraft are three times as effective (and they are...we sent the 390th to Tyndall to help DFCT against the Raptor and go tore to shreads) they still obey the laws of physics and can only be in one place at a time, that fact alone should be the driving arguement to get more.

3. The age of the current fleet. The F-15C Air Supiority Fighter is OLD, most are 80-81 year group and many are about to get retired. One just fell apart in the sky and when we looked at others, many had similar cracks. The F-15E Fleet goes from 85 to 90 to 2001 year jets. The A-10s are at over 8000 flight hours and only were designed for 4000, the F-16 are so overloaded they are no longer the nimble fighter they were, but are a VERY effective bomb truck now, but many of the Block 40 CCIP aircraft are 20 years old.

4. Of course the F-22 is complex, its a complex airplane...or is an uncomplex airplane that has been out of production so long you can't get parts any better...or an old airframe that is down for several weeks while a depot team arrives to replace the wing because the cracks on the Wing pins are unrepairable?

5. If "good enough" is the mantra of the US Armed Forces, then Why did the M1 get upgunned, or go through an electronics upgrade...or why the Stryker, or anyother major military program happen at all?

6. Gates and the Air Force don't get along, not one little bit. Of course we could have been like the US Army that didn't buy War Reserve ammo for over 10 years and have a $20B war reserve shortfall and buy 5.56 and 7.62 ammo from the Isrealies.

7. Gates had better get used to new and more expensive programs, cause sure as shootin' the Army and Marines are developing new programs now. They have to be to recover the HUGE loss of material they are experiencing due to the heavy use they are seeing in combat. I'll bet money the Army isn't going to sit here and say the M1 is the pinnacle of all tank development and just ask for more, they will have a new design on the books.

8. If the F-22 had been allowed to progress as intended 8 years ago the average cost of the aircraft would be 1/3 of what it is now and we STILL would have spent less than we will by the time we purchased 188.

Bottom line, its evolve or die. The airframes the Air Force is using are OLD and TIRED, but its easy to ignore because we are not filling body bags with Airmen, but if you want to see what fighting without Air Superiority is like, just fire up a good scenario and play RED and realize there is NOTHING you can do to hide or counter the effect of losing Air Superiority. I've not heard a soldier yet tell me that we've TOO many airplanes.

[flamingknives]

For comparison, the UK is going to get between 100 and 200 Typhoons (original buy was 292, but many are being sold abroad, namely to Saudi Arabia and possibly Oman).

The Typhoon fulfills a similar role to the F22 - primarily air superiority, although the Typhoon has a stronger air-to-ground influence - and the UK population is 1/5th the size of the US, with a proportionally smaller defence budget. One wonders how the US plans to get by for the next however many years with such a small number of aircraft.

[Stalins Organ]

Isn't the F35 going to replace a lot of F-16 and A-10 squadrons, with a planned purchase of 2400? (natch' not nearly that many WILL be bought tho...)

[Other Means]

Surely when you have a technological advantage you push with it and make sure you can't be caught?

Just because we're fighting small wars now doesn't mean that will always be the case.

[Sgt Joch]

The F-22 is the most advanced air superiority fighter in the world. The question is whether the cost justifies the result.

The F-22 was designed as a pure air superiority aircraft. Although an air to ground role was grafted on, it is primarily a fighter. In that role, it is wasted in the current Iraq/Afghanistan conflict or any other conflict in the ME and would only realize its full potential in a war against China or Russia.

The F-22 program cost $62 billion to produce 184 unit. The current per unit cost is $137.5 million.

Contrast that with the navy's approach. To replace the aging fleet of F-14s and F-18s, they used the proven design of the F-18 hornet. They adressed all the known weaknesses by adding more range, more payload, advanced electronics, limted stealth capability and came up with the F/A-18 E/F/G Superhornet.

This is a brand new aircraft which carries out many roles: fighter, bomber, tanker, EW, FAC, etc. As a fighter, it is not as potent as the F-22, but it can beat any enemy fighter which currently exists and it outclasses the F-22 in any other role.

In addition, it is a bargain with a per unit cost of $55.2 million apiece. In other words, you can get 3 SuperHornet for about the same price as 1 Raptor. The US Navy has already taken delivery of 350. Plus, since it was based on an existing design, it had relatively few teehing issues, unlike the F-22.

So again, the whole question with the F-22 is whether the cost justifies the results and whether the USAF could have achieved the same result at a lower price by, for example, updating the design of the F-15 and/or F-16.

[Sgt Joch]

you may also enjoy this:

Super Hornet shoots down Raptor ....

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread202946/pg1

[dieseltaylor]

Good stuff SJ

Seems an unanswerable case. It does however ignore pork barrel politics. In any event unmanned fighters must surely be in the air within the next decade and if given a limited brief such as kill enemy flying objects the AI + human interface would be very simple.

Grafting CAS etc would be going too far in a decade but would be a further decade or so. However for air superiority unmanned must be the way to go.

[Michael Emrys]

Grafting CAS etc would be going too far in a decade...

I don't know. Would that include laser marking from the ground? Seems like with that in hand, even pilotless aircraft would do reasonably well at putting the bombs on the target. But if the Army has terminally guidable artillery in large enough calibers, CAS might not even be necessary.

Michael

[Sgt Joch]

Here is another example of what you can do with a limited budget: the F-16I Sufa.

Israel ordered about 100 of these, brand new F-16s, but thoroughly modernized with the latest electronics and armaments. Unit cost: about $ 70 million each.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/israel/f-16i.htm

http://www.defense-update.com/products/f/f-16I-details.htm

[Wildman]

I have such a hard time on where to start countering this mindset.

Lets start with the gun film. We have no idea on the parameters of the fight, for all we know that was a 4 V 1 fight where the F-22 wasn't allowed to use BVR to attrict the Hornets...so if you place a great plane in its weakest arena and it is shot down that invalidates the entire plane...so because a M-1 was destroyed by an RPG-7 in OIF then obviously we need to not build any more of those outdated tanks.

Second, there are other methods of increasing certain flight profiles and areas of existing aircraft. The F-16 you showed is no longer the 9G nimble, cheap fighter that it was originally designed to be and is at the end of its ability to be upgraded.

Air Superiority is a much different flight regime that needed for CAS and other issues. Yes the Army does already have GPS and Laser guided munitions...and against a more modern counterfire threat they wouldn't be able to bring consistent and persistent coverage, and certainly nothing beyond the 20miles from FEBA range (ATACMS and MLRS excepted but those munitions are limited).

As for the cost, the F-18 still has short legs and can't reach northern Afghanistan from the boat in the South. Its a Jack-of-all-trades aircraft and gets thrashed consistently against more specialized aircraft.

Bottom line is, IF the production had gone through as designed your cost would be in the sub $100M per range, we would have three times as many.

Your right, in an Afghan or OIF scenario they are not needed...but neither are a lot of equipment. Are MLRS? or tanks? or long range Artillery? You go to war with what you have and right now other countries have reached equipment parity with a large percent of our aircraft and only our higher degree of training in addition to the global reach provided by other non-fighter aircraft that continue to provide the edge in our Air superiority.

We aren't buying new versions of old aircraft because there are aircraft which are generations better that our pilots deserve to be flying...When you do go to war (which being prepared for helps prevent) you want the best equipment and right now the purely politcal fighting between non-Air Force experts and the Air Power experts is draging EVERY Air Force program down.

Quite frankly we need the people in charge to actually listen to the people who have been trained in Air Power instead of playing political oneupmanship.

[dieseltaylor]

Having the latest and brightest toy is great particularly if you are the industry that makes them and you make great profits. Hell you might even talk up the product and the necessity of it given the two enemy countries are getting more powerful economically.

If you live in the world of finite budgets, and you think a planted dirty bomb is the greater danger, where would you put your resource? In terms of conventional war it has always been my belief that nuclear weapons would be deployed at some stage - and certainly if one side had lost the air war - or was convinced it would lose.

How far away do you think unmanned air superiority fighters are? I think for the US to go for manned now is daft as they will be obsolete within a decade. More sense to go hell for leather for the unmanned now.

[Sergei]

right now other countries have reached equipment parity with a large percent of our aircraft and only our higher degree of training in addition to the global reach provided by other non-fighter aircraft that continue to provide the edge in our Air superiority.

But come on, who is going to pose a threat? China? Their pilots have funny eyes which prevent them from having a three-dimensional vision needed for fighting in the air. And I think this article clearly shows why there is no need for worry.

[Bigduke6]

Quite frankly we need the people in charge to actually listen to the people who have been trained in Air Power instead of playing political oneupmanship.

No, that is a dangerous and wrong-headed approach. It is like asking a monkey to guard a banana, an average teenager to advocate sexual abstinence, or a tiger to perform cost-effectiveness accounting in a butcher shop.

The people trained in US Air Power doctrine schooled though they are possess several weaknesses that make them less than perfect when it comes to making decisions in the national budgetary process. Among those weaknesses I would list:

- The training those people received might be obsolete

- The training those people received by definition does not consider options outside existing doctrine

- The training those people received to a great extent does not consider material opportunity cost when it comes to mapping out strategy

- The training those people received considers Air Superiority as an end in itself, rather than a condition that might or might not be worth trying to achieve in a war

- The training those people received assumes competing Air Superiority doctrines are inferior

As a cautionary tale, consider all the people with Naval Power training during the 1920s and 1930s who, by dint of their expertise and knowledge of Mahan, convinced legislatures all over the world to purchase and operate hundreds of dreadnaught and super-dreadnaught battleships, at huge cost and, as WW2 proved, very marginal operational use.

Indeed, it is possible to argue Japanese advocates of the big gun battleship - practically to a man products of first class Naval Power training - lost WW2 for Japan by convincing the politicians to fund lots of battleships to fight a big surface action against the US, when in retrospect a much better strategy would have been only to build aircraft carriers.

History shows, there are repercussions, often extremely unpleasant and far-reaching ones, when the civilians trust the military experts and the military experts get it wrong. For instance, as a result of US naval victory vs. Japan (which largely resulted from US ability to build aircraft carriers far faster than the Japanese), two Japanese cities were atom-bombed. So it is safe to say the Japanese military experts trained in Naval Power were, by and large, not acting in Japan's best interest.

Another example that comes easily to mind would be pre-1806 Prussia, which faithfully preserved all the military traditions of Frederick the Great down to uniforms, pace of march, and volley fire commands; only to have the Prussian army cut to bits by Napoleon's French Army, Berlin occupied, Prussia forced into an alliance with France, minor German principalities raised to an equal status with Prussia, and - worst of all - the size of the Prussian army limited to that of a glorified police force, as a term of the Prussian surrender.

Yet even as the Prussian formations were coming apart on the battlefield, there were Prussian military experts arguing the Land War Doctrine they had studied and lived all their lives was correct, it was - essentially - just that the French weren't playing fair.

When it comes to the F-22, I think it is worth remembering that the point to air superiority is not just to keep the other side's airplanes out of the air, but more importantly to drop bombs on the opposition effectively. It is clear the F-22 can do little new along those lines. These days there are all sorts of ways to bring about a boom on the other side of the line without having air superiority: Cheaper Stealth aircraft, UAVes carrying munitions, helicopters, surface-to-surface missiles, cruise missiles, etc.

So, since it can contribute little on the offensive side of the air war equation, we are left with the other key question: "What can it do, to keep the other side from bombing us?"

Here I must confess some misgivings. I know an F-22 costs about 140 million bucks, and I know 4 x UAV with Hellfire missiles cost about 6 million bucks, and I know a single Hellfire missile will under most circumstances destroy any vehicle in the US inventory, and the troops inside it. So I have to ask, could a single F-22 shoot down or otherwise disable 90 - 100 UAVes carrying 180 - 200 Hellfire missiles?

Certainly, I would hope the F-22 would destroy two top-end Israeli F-16es if it came to a fight, but I am not sure. After all, the Israelis are not stupid, their intelligence is excellent, and Israeli pilots are pretty much the same quality as US pilots. If there is a way to shoot down the F-22, you have to believe the Israelis would find it. Is the F-22 so superior to a pair of F-16es, that the exchange would always go the US way? Most of the time? Is it beyond the realm of possibility, that the Israelis could figure out a way to put themselves on the advantageous side of the exchange rate?

You can ask the same general question but substituting Russians; ok, the F-22 is a great plane, but the Russians can put up two or three of their best fighters against it, and the Russians are the people that came up with the AK-47, the Sturmovik, titanium submarines, and the T-34. And they also don't suck at intelligence. Is the F-22 such a fantastic airplane, that its very existance guarantees air superiority against the Russians.

Sure, the best most advanced technology is great, and it can give you a combat advantage. But look at German WW2 tank strategy: quality not quantity. So by the end of the war the Germans had fantastic tanks, Panther and Tiger, they could cut up anything that came against them, better optics, better doctrine, the works. But it was Stalin and T-34 tanks that overran Berlin.

I can't say the F-22 is a waste of money, but it seems clear to me that the trend in the airwar field is towards guided munitions, more accurate munitions, more UAVes, better communications, and a wider variety of weapons manufacturers - all this driven by the falling cost of electronics and worldwide (as opposed to Cold War bloc) arms manufacturing. I can't say when the F-22 will go the way of the dreadnaught battleship, but the writing is on the wall: that day is coming. If some one figures out a smart missle that can see past Stealth technology, and be produced in quantity, that day is coming fast.

So under the circumstances and the political realities, actually I think the Pentagon is pretty much on the right track. It is impossible politically to cancel the F-22, and heck, maybe the other tech routes won't make the aircraft too obsolete too soon. Might as well make a few of them.

But making a whole lot more F-22es, hundreds more, in this day and age? With the worst financial crisis since the Depression in progress? That would be an irresponsible move, and thank heavens the Pentagon don't seem to be listening to the Air Power people on that one.

[dieseltaylor]

BD6 - you ought to apply to the "Economist" for a job : )

[Sgt Joch]

Yes good post BD.

I have nothing against the F-22 as an airplane. It is a generation ahead of every other fighter.

It is more the "cold war" mentality of pouring so much money into such a specialised weapon system, instead of figuring out what the mission is and building weapons to carry it out.

A good example is the WW2 Sherman. The US knew in 1943 that it was outclassed by the new german tanks, but it fit into their global strategy since it had to be able to be shipped around the world and land on enemy beaches, so they kept building it.

[Sergei]

It is more the "cold war" mentality of pouring so much money into such a specialised weapon system, instead of figuring out what the mission is and building weapons to carry it out.

I feel forced to quote some bits from this writing from 1934:

Is Aerial Warfare Doomed?

By Lieut. John Edwin Hogg, U.S.N.R.

Originally published in the November 1934 issue of Modern Mechanix and Inventions

....

German Raids Cost Millions

The German Zeppelins of the World War period carried about ten times the load of bombs that any airplane can lift today. The Gotha bombing planes carried two tons, which is about the same load that a good bomber can get off the ground nowadays. Unopposed as these raids were except by airplanes and crude anti-aircraft guns, the whole series of air raids over London and Paris during the entire four years of the war destroyed less than $5,000,000 worth of property. They killed fewer than 700 enemy civilians, which is about the number killed in London traffic accidents every year.

London and Paris were far from "blown off the map" when the war ended and Germany had paid dearly for a series of aerial offensives of very questionable value. She lost 486 trained air men in the Zeppelins and airplanes that were brought down by the enemy. The air raids had cost her tens of millions of dollars; all for the privilege of killing some 700 non-combatant civilians, and smashing up $5,000,000 worth of enemy property. From a military viewpoint these air raids accomplished less than nothing.

Editorial champions of aerial military supremacy are forever writing about the terrors of bomb-dropping from altitudes above the range of modern anti-aircraft guns. They close their eyes to the fact that no aerial bombing can be effective unless the aviators can clearly see the target they are trying to hit it is a well-established fact that any bomb-dropping from an altitude of more than about 4000 feet is notoriously inaccurate. The lower a bomber can fly the greater becomes its bombing accuracy, but there will be no low-altitude bomb-dropping in any future war. The modern anti-aircraft machine gun discourages that. These guns, throwing a veritable hailstorm of 50-caliber bullets, are effective tip to 7,500 feet, and will pierce a quarter of an inch of boiler plate at that height.

A large bombing plane may carry two tons of bombs. It would take about 5000 of the largest modern bombing planes to carry the potential load of destruction represented by the shells in the magazines of a battleship, and the battleship has a cruising radius of 15,000 miles anywhere on the seas compared with the bomber's 2-ton load and 500-mile cruising radius. Moreover, a battle fleet or a battery of field artillery can STAY AND FIGHT as long as it remains afloat or as long as transportation lines can be kept open. The bombing plane must quit as soon as its two ton load of bombs is dropped.

All the military bombing planes in the world today would have to wait for favorable weather, and would then be capable of only a comparatively short overseas flight with half the load of shells a battleship can carry 15,000 miles regardless of weather. It would take roughly 75,000 bombers to carry a load of bombs equivalent to the weight of shells in the magazines of the 15 battleships of the U. S. Navy, and the cruising radius of those bombers would be only about 500 miles away from a base of operations.

...

Air Attack on New York Impossible

Submarines have been built to carry as many as two very small, folding-wing scout planes. Our Navy has one such submarine. By complete alteration of design, building a larger submarine than any ever built, and leaving out all conventional submarine fighting equipment, it would be possible to build a submarine airplane carrier capable of housing two large bombers. Having noted that 14,000 bombers would be needed to gas an area the size of New York, the enemy seeking to attack America's, largest city with an underseas air fleet would have to have 7000 submarine carriers. Such a fleet could be built for about $70,000,000,000, and a crew of 700,000 highly-trained men and officers would be needed to operate it .It costs about $500 an hour to operate a single, large, modern submarine. Hence, it would cost about $714,000,000 per day to operate this diving aerial armada. No nation on the face of the earth today could finance such an operation. As an act of war such an attack would have about the military significance of a honeybee attacking an elephant!

I'm not arguing that spending in F-22 is good or bad, but one should be careful of making far-fetched conclusions about the shape of future wars, because most of us haven't experienced them yet.

[Sgt Joch]

We aren't buying new versions of old aircraft because there are aircraft which are generations better that our pilots deserve to be flying...When you do go to war (which being prepared for helps prevent) you want the best equipment and right now the purely politcal fighting between non-Air Force experts and the Air Power experts is draging EVERY Air Force program down.

Quite frankly we need the people in charge to actually listen to the people who have been trained in Air Power instead of playing political oneupmanship.

all very valid points, but the USAF is competing against every other political priority from the Future Combat Systems to the financial meltdown to health care reform...etc, etc.

The F-22 program, like the FCS program is one of the more likely to be trimmed, although I also dont think it will be killed outright.

Second, there are other methods of increasing certain flight profiles and areas of existing aircraft. The F-16 you showed is no longer the 9G nimble, cheap fighter that it was originally designed to be and is at the end of its ability to be upgraded.

no doubt the F-16s design has been stretched to the limit (and it is not a challenger for the F-22), although I did see this interesting quote:

According to Israeli pilots who have already flown them in simulation, it is a "totally different world." They assumed that although the operational systems would be different, ate least the general feeling would be similar to that of their previous flights. However, they were shocked to find the plane a lot stronger and more powerful.

"Going over to fly a Sufa jet, after flying the existing F-16, is like starting to drive an American luxury car after you're used to an old, dilapidated Subaru," said Maj. H., an IAF pilot, quoted in Yediot Aharonot.

http://www.f-16.net/news_article1002.html

I also noticed that the F-16I has a very long combat radius of 2100 km which brings into range some interesting targets...

but that is for another thread...

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

Good stuff SJ

In any event unmanned fighters must surely be in the air within the next decade and if given a limited brief such as kill enemy flying objects the AI + human interface would be very simple.

I hear the Iranians are building air drones with a secret AI pathfinding algorithm codenamed "CMSF". Their unpredictable flight paths will shock the their imperialist foes into such awe that they can be picked off by hand grenade throwing bicycle brigades.

[SSgt Viljuri]

BD6 - you ought to apply to the "Economist" for a job : )

"Indeed", the paper does have an intelligence unit, good call!

[Wildman]

No, that is a dangerous and wrong-headed approach. It is like asking a monkey to guard a banana, an average teenager to advocate sexual abstinence, or a tiger to perform cost-effectiveness accounting in a butcher shop.

As a cautionary tale, consider all the people with Naval Power training during the 1920s and 1930s who, by dint of their expertise and knowledge of Mahan, convinced legislatures all over the world to purchase and operate hundreds of dreadnaught and super-dreadnaught battleships, at huge cost and, as WW2 proved, very marginal operational use.

History shows, there are repercussions, often extremely unpleasant and far-reaching ones, when the civilians trust the military experts and the military experts get it wrong. For instance, as a result of US naval victory vs. Japan (which largely resulted from US ability to build aircraft carriers far faster than the Japanese), two Japanese cities were atom-bombed. So it is safe to say the Japanese military experts trained in Naval Power were, by and large, not acting in Japan's best interest.

When it comes to the F-22, I think it is worth remembering that the point to air superiority is not just to keep the other side's airplanes out of the air, but more importantly to drop bombs on the opposition effectively. It is clear the F-22 can do little new along those lines. These days there are all sorts of ways to bring about a boom on the other side of the line without having air superiority: Cheaper Stealth aircraft, UAVes carrying munitions, helicopters, surface-to-surface missiles, cruise missiles, etc.

So, since it can contribute little on the offensive side of the air war equation, we are left with the other key question: "What can it do, to keep the other side from bombing us?"

Here I must confess some misgivings. I know an F-22 costs about 140 million bucks, and I know 4 x UAV with Hellfire missiles cost about 6 million bucks, and I know a single Hellfire missile will under most circumstances destroy any vehicle in the US inventory, and the troops inside it. So I have to ask, could a single F-22 shoot down or otherwise disable 90 - 100 UAVes carrying 180 - 200 Hellfire missiles?

Sure, the best most advanced technology is great, and it can give you a combat advantage. But look at German WW2 tank strategy: quality not quantity. So by the end of the war the Germans had fantastic tanks, Panther and Tiger, they could cut up anything that came against them, better optics, better doctrine, the works. But it was Stalin and T-34 tanks that overran Berlin.

I can't say the F-22 is a waste of money, but it seems clear to me that the trend in the airwar field is towards guided munitions, more accurate munitions, more UAVes, better communications, and a wider variety of weapons manufacturers - all this driven by the falling cost of electronics and worldwide (as opposed to Cold War bloc) arms manufacturing. I can't say when the F-22 will go the way of the dreadnaught battleship, but the writing is on the wall: that day is coming. If some one figures out a smart missle that can see past Stealth technology, and be produced in quantity, that day is coming fast.

So under the circumstances and the political realities, actually I think the Pentagon is pretty much on the right track. It is impossible politically to cancel the F-22, and heck, maybe the other tech routes won't make the aircraft too obsolete too soon. Might as well make a few of them.

I tried to parse just the portions of the arguement that I felt needed addresses. First of all you point out to the battlewagon arguement that the Navy was not capable of formenting the next doctrine or technology that would eventually be needed for the NEXT war. Since it was the Navy, maybe not the battleship officers, but the NAVY that continued to develop the airplane into the role and power it is today, I would say that the military mind/doctrine/experts are exactly the people to tell you what you need to know and build for future defenses. Unless you think the Senator from New York is suddenly the most knowledgeable person around to discuss the uses and needs of Air Power. I'll say right now that the Air Force as as a whole is not monolithic in its desire to have the F-22, but it is in its desire to provide the best in not only the Air Superiority realm, but in all realms of air and space. Air Superiority is but one piece of the Air/Space battlefield. Others include electronic warfare against communications, kinetic with dropping bombs, strategic lift, Tactical lift, ISR assets...all of which are enabled by complete Air Superiority.

Unmanned aircraft are no where near ready for high-speed combat. Not to say that eventually the interface between man and machine will allow unmanned fighters/aircraft that day is no where in the near/medium future. First the communication channels that information and control depend on are able to be comprimesed. We just haven't encountered an enemy determined to meet us on the electronic warfare front. All it would take is a satalite shoot down or comm channel interference and then suddenly the UAV is a mindless, uncontrolled drone. Second, puting a strictly money comparision is a giant strawman, the UAV issue is easily countered if you have Air Superiority, which includes air and ground counters. If we continue to have Air Superiority then the fastest way to take care of 4,6, or 20 UAVs is to destroy the center from where they are controlled, which could be done by one F-22. By this arguement, why have Tanks since that tank could easily be destroyed by a cheap ATGM? That arguement has been around for the last 50 years and tanks still exist and are still viable.

Third. The ENTIRE US air,sea, and ground doctrine is predicated on complete Air Superiority, period. The first steps in any OPLAN is to gain Air Superiority, though the destruction of the enemy Air Forces and the Integrated Air Defences. Right now, we could do that against a like equipped enemy, barely, but in the future that will not be the case. I don't believe the Army has any plans or TTPs to operate under a significant air threat.

Its obvious your a proponent of More is Better as every positive example you provided is a mass produced weapon that fits into an attritive method of warfare and if that is your yardstick then you are correct in your assumption of the F-22 value, and since F-16C Block 50s are still relatively cheap we should just start cranking all those aircraft without making any others, ignoring the conditions the F-16 needs to be successful.

There are combined arms in the Air as well as the Ground and the F-22 meets those needs for the forseeable future against all forseeable threats. Now we can argure what the forseeable future may hold, but not moving technology and capability forward is not an option in my book.

[dieseltaylor]

Unmanned aircraft are no where near ready for high-speed combat. Not to say that eventually the interface between man and machine will allow unmanned fighters/aircraft that day is no where in the near/medium future. First the communication channels that information and control depend on are able to be comprimesed. We just haven't encountered an enemy determined to meet us on the electronic warfare front. All it would take is a satalite shoot down or comm channel interference and then suddenly the UAV is a mindless, uncontrolled drone.

But is not the modern manned fighter highly reliant on those same communication channels? Granted thee are avionics on board but the UAV would still have these so provided its expert programming is sufficient to get it to be reasonably effective AND able to land I do not see a huge difference in levels of degraded performance.

Losing the room devoted to crew and the need to accomodate human fraility at G's plus intepretatives displays means the that the fighter should be streets ahead in flying ability. A decade should be sufficient to get a package together. At its very simplest it would be a launch and return missile platform. I do not believe that humans will be needed to interface with the fighter once it is launched - though I am sure that many would argue it is highly necessary - for preserving jobs possibly, or giving the semblance of control.

There will be a need for the the primitive fighter for escorting hi-jacked passenger liners and other things were dogfighting ability is irrelevant.

[Lars]

Hmm….

Why not just build the F-22, and if you someday get a computer good enough to run it without a pilot…Hey, there's a suddenly empty seat right there! What a neat space to stuff the Big Black Box!

Yes, the Drones are coming, but I think they will look suspiciously like manned fighters when they get here, as the design requirements are pretty much the same. Wings, check. Engine, check. Stealth, check. Landing Gear, check…etc.

[Stalins Organ]

Yes they will have all the same requirements for flight - as do RC model aircraft!

But not needing all the instrumentation and systems for a pilot will make the combat UAV a lot smaller than the F22 - being lighter the wings need to generate less lift, the undecarriage needs to absorb less force at impact (you would call it landing ), etc. - so your unmanned-F-22 UAV will use more gas, and/or have a shorter range and/or carry less payload, have a larger turning radius, climb slower and be easier to hit.