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F-22 Raptor Cancelled
BayaWeaver writes "Slate reports that the F-22 Raptor has been cancelled by the Senate. At an estimated price tag of $339 million per aircraft, even the powerful military-industrial-congressional complex couldn't keep this Cold War program alive in these hard times. They look very cool though and have appeared in movies like Hulk and Transformers. But not to worry too much about the future of the military-industrial-congressional complex: the F-35 Lightning II begins production next year!
As a side note, in 2007 a squadron of Raptors became deaf, dumb and blind when they flew over the International Date Line."
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
Conversely, if you are the head of the Department of Defense and don't need or want a pointless weapons program, you have to lobby Congress like hell not not fund it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You don't build them to use them, you build them so you don't have to use them. You also force anyone who thinks they need to counter them to spend resources on developing and deploying the countermeasures.
``No American soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.''
Only because the U.S. doctrine has been to have total air superiourity and the Air Force (and Navy) have been able to achieve it through superiour technology (and training) --- if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict, a lot of soldiers are going to die, and that statement will cease to be true.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
As a bonus, we will have an unstoppable Air Force. Oh wait, we already did before the F-22.
We have an unstoppable Air Force because we haven't fought a country with the industrial base and wherewithal to build a real air force since World War II. Should we ever find ourselves in a conflict with another Great Power we may well come to regret this decision.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Only because the U.S. doctrine has been to have total air superiourity and the Air Force (and Navy) have been able to achieve it through superiour technology (and training) --- if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict, a lot of soldiers are going to die, and that statement will cease to be true.
William
Yeah - or you could just stop invading countries. That's a good way of keeping your soldiers from dying.
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
they have problems communicating with other planes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903020_4.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009071001019
and don't seem to like the rain:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/019076.php
among other things like jammed canopies.
And it's funny too. People who don't like unions, bloated government and stimulus packages seem to think the government owes them a job when it comes to flawed weapons systems and unneeded military bases.
But it's nice to see A10s and B52s still in service. Made dack when the US actually knew how to build something.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The F-35 was not designed as a replacement, but as a compliment to the F-22.
The F-22 has one mission, dominate the airspace and kill other fighters. As the video probably shows, the F-35 is designed as a multi-role/configuration fighter. And yes, it is bad ass. It is very cheap (inexpensive) and is a good asset.
But watch out, as I said earlier, the Russians are still build fighters and they are pretty good at it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
We can give them 4 billion dollars and have aircraft to show for it, or give them 4 billion in bailout money to save the jobs this will impact and have NOTHING to show for it. :-)
If it was any other plane I'd agree with you but these things barely get into the air before breaking down.
A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off. If we were just cool with people we easily get by with 10% of the defense budget we have now. Besides, I am sure that if we spent less on military and more on social programs we can save more civilians than we would lose soldiers. This whole nationalist, jingoist, fascist thing that the neo-Cons call Patriotism makes me throw up a little.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Since the interest alone on the "Economic Stimulus" package is costing the U.S. around $100 million per DAY, I can see how saving 17 days worth of interest will definitely have a major impact.
Considering that they fly far above the clouds, the rainstorm shouldn't pose much of a problem.
Sounds like somebody skipped Calculus 101 on the day they discussed the Mean Value Theorem.
These programs have become unsustainable. There's no reason for the F-22 to cost what it does. We're talking about runaway projects with padding to line the pockets of the military-industrial complex. This isn't about protecting the nation, this is about extracting wealth from the treasury. Defense contractors are doing more to harm the safety and security of this country than the long-haired hippies ever did.
The F-15 is still a world-beater. Why not just upgrade the avionics and fire up the assembly lines again? Retire the old airframes, field new ones.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
China?
China's enough of a threat on their own, but we have an economic Mutually Assured Destruction thing going on since we make up like half their economy and they buy half our debt.
I'd be much more concerned about Iran.
Actually, this isn't a partisan issue at all. It has less to do with Democrats and Republicans than it has to do with Congress trying to defend jobs in their home states by keeping a program that the Pentagon doesn't want. The vote did not break down along party lines. Chambliss (R-GA) and Dodd (D-CT) were vocal supporters of the F-22, whereas McCain (R-AZ) and Gates (a Bush appointee kept on by Obama) were against. You might want to read up.
The Lightning is seriously cool but it simple cannot replace the Raptor - and it was never meant to, except, it appears, in the minds of Democrats.
This democrat wants to know if there's any reason to care about replacing them. You mentioned it's half the size and has a third of the weapons payload. Is it just the phallic symbolism that you are upset about?
If it was any other plane I'd agree with you but these things barely get into the air before breaking down.
The F-14 did the same thing when it was first deployed until the Navy worked the bugs out of it. Once they did it was arguably the best carrier-borne air superiority aircraft of all time.
As with any complex system it's going to take time to fully integrate it and work the kinks out of the program. I don't pretend to know exactly how many F-22s we need but I do know that once you terminate production it's not a simple matter to start it back up again. That's why I said that we could find ourselves regretting this decision if we find ourselves in a conflict with an actual Great Power.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yeah, it's not like that liberal left lunatic John McCain guy knows anything about war fighting and fighter aircraft.
Here's a clue for you: Levin-McCain Amendment.
People like you are never wrong.
Why? The plane is already designed with 140 already built. Should the need arise, we could obviously ramp production back up much, much faster than (e.g.) China could design, test, and build a large number of competing aircraft. (The bid process for the F22 began in 1986 for cripe's sake!) Instead, what's happening is these potential rivals are plowing their resources into economic growth and that is where we need to stay competitive.
I guess all those pilots shot down in the Korean and Vietnam war were just imagining the Russian air force they were fighting against.
I'm blowing my mod points to respond, but I had to: The way things are going, the F-22 will never get the bugs worked out because it's NEVER been used in combat. According to the NYT article:
So great, we've already spent billions of dollars on a plane that is not helping us win the wars we are currently fighting. Fat lot of good it will do us to have incredible advantage to fight against China or someone else in the future if we lose our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The time to stop worrying about the future is when it started impinging on your ability to cope with the present. The F-22 is designed for a war that hasn't happened, but for the price of ONE F-22 ($97 million), we can buy nearly NINE A-10 Warthogs ($11.7 million each), which actually do help us win our current wars. The F-22 should have been canceled, and more so, 187 should never have been bought in the first place.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Better than a Hot War.
France isn't known for checking with us before they sell military hardware, either.
Actually the worst offender in this arena isn't France or Russia -- it's our "major ally" Israel. At least when the French and Russians sell hardware to our adversaries they are selling stuff that they designed with their own resources. The Israeli's are all to happy to sell stuff that we designed.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes, our mighty air, land, and sea defenses are the only things keeping back the Canadian horde. Should we falter, even for a second, they will over run us with their strange brews and Tim Hortons.
And I shudder to think what would happen should we blink in our 'Mexican standoff' with our southern neighbors. We could become known for our odd national cusine of Tex-Mex and coffee and doughnuts.
Woe indeed. Woe indeed.
Really? Do they take off and land from 25,000 feet, too?
Each one of these planes requires 44 hours of maintenance for every hour in the air, as someone has already mentioned. They are obsolete, and they have gone over budget by a factor of 3 or more.
The F-22 is now, and has always been, a boondoggle granted to military contractors by lawmakers who get large contributions from those contractors. As far as I know, no F-22 has ever flown a combat mission. They cost hundreds of millions of dollars and have never been used.
Meanwhile, we fight over whether a working family should have the god-given right to go bankrupt if one of their members gets sick.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No. The prrogram diverts resources from the productive sector to the military sector. The people working on the f22 program are people not working on production that actually increases our wealth.
Google for "broken window fallacy".
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Oh, come on. The only country with an air force REMOTELY competitive with the US is Russia, and if the US and Russia ever get in a war, a lot of good a few stealth fighters will be. There is a REASON the superpowers haven't fought a real war since WWII. Did you miss the whole Cold War thing?
In terms of AF size, China comes in a distant second (about 1/3 the size of the US, and made up largely of ancient MiG21s)
Plus, the US has *12* nuclear powered supercarriers that can take about 90 aircraft each anywhere in the world. Take just 4 of those carriers and it outnumbers the entire air force of all but about 10 countries worldwide.
Congress made the right decision. We have spent trillions of dollars on mega-defense projects and equipment has largely been totally unnecessary apart from a show of force to the rest of the world. The fact is, US really doesn't need to keep building $140M fighter planes in today's political landscape (the USAF already has over 180 of them!) Which is good, because we can't AFFORD to anyway...
As with any complex system it's going to take time to fully integrate it and work the kinks out of the program. I don't pretend to know exactly how many F-22s we need but I do know that once you terminate production it's not a simple matter to start it back up again. That's why I said that we could find ourselves regretting this decision if we find ourselves in a conflict with an actual Great Power.
FTFA:
No U.S. soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.
Production of F-35s actually starts next year and ... the FY 2010 budget contains money to build 30 of them. In other words, Levin said, "There is no gap."
As someone more knowledgeable than me on another forum eloquently put it:
The F-22 was more of a research project put into production because of it's gee-whiz capabilities, the F-35 offers a platform to refine those capabilities in a much more capable product for the threats that we face.
The whole needing F-22s if we ever get into a conventional war with a Great Power thing is a canard. Great Powers have nuclear weapons, so conventional wars aren't possible; we send in F-22s and 8 hours later half the planet is glass.
Conventional fighting these days is done against guys hiding in caves in third-world countries, and the F-22 does precisely nothing to help in those scenarios.
Obviously a socialist.
Don't you know it's one of America's founding principles that we have to burn middle eastern oil and have insurance companies profit from not treating sick people?
It's how we became the greatest nation on god's green earth. Well, that and keeping 3 million of our population in prison.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The nice thing about R&D is that it doesn't disappear just because you don't build any more F-22s.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nonsense. Israel has sold US technology ... to India, in order to keep Pakistan in check. How in the world does that make them "the worst offender"?
So, now the F-22 is nothing more than a jobs program? A regular GOP stimulus package, huh?
How about we take the money and have those same people build high speed rail? The jobs will last longer and Americans will actually benefit. Plus, high-speed trains have a use beyond killing people (though, to be fair, the F-22 is probably the least efficient way to kill someone ever devised).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Thank god.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It would be, but the F35 is in most ways a cheaper inferior aircraft. But it fits the bill for many uses. I think you are making the mistake of thinking the higher the F# the better the plane.
The current generation of missiles can hit a target at 100+ km away, I think... So what's the point?
Rules of Engagement are the point. A missile that can hit a target at 100+ km is useless if the people calling the shots (i.e., civilians in command of the armed forces) require the warfighter to visually identify a probable target as friend or foe before pulling a trigger. That's why U.S. military air arms re-discovered dogfighting in the early 70s: American warplanes in the air battle of Viet Nam weren't permitted to engage North Vietnamese aircraft at missile range, and wound up in close-range gunfights... often, in aircraft with no guns. Even after retrofitting guns, American pilots had to deal with their lack of training in close-in air combat maneuver, and in consequence did a fair bit of "win or die" on-the-job training.
Here's a pretty good history of that particular scenario.
Red Flag and TOPGUN came out of the dogfighting Renaissance of the post-Vietnam period in the U.S. air combat arms, as the survivors of the school of lethal knocks came back to teach their successors how to dogfight before those kids had to learn it the hard way.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
You'll be eating those words when China unveils their brand new designed-in-secret anti-ICBM system.
Besides which, your entire argument is flawed. Even in the current environment it's entirely possible to have limited non-nuclear engagements which do not lead to nuclear war. I've heard your argument used before to try and justify the elimination of nearly all military forces. The idea goes something like:
"Why bother having soldiers when we have Nukes? Who would attack us?"
The problem is that, when the only tool you have is a hammer, you'd better hope every problem is a nail. What happens if a foreign nation decides to seize all your commercial aircraft - do you nuke them? What if they encroach on your coastal waters and scare away your commercial sea-going traffic? What if they just decide to occupy, say, Alaska? Is that a good enough reason to launch? The whole idea behind having a versatile military is that you can deal with each scenario in a reasonable manner, and resolve it with as little force as possible. Having overwhelming force is nice, but it does you no good unless you're crazy enough to use it at the smallest provocation.
Actually, it's an apples and oranges comparison.
The F-22 is a no-compromises air superiority fighter. Engineers will immediately understand this means plenty of compromises in other roles you want fighter aircraft to perform. It's built to do one thing: destroy aircraft. It's useless against ground targets, and adapting it to his role would be silly given that we'll be building the cheaper, more versatile and hopefully more reliable F-35.
If the F-22 is ever called on to do what it was built for, it will be worth every penny of its $300+ million dollar price tag -- up to a point. I've heard it called a "first day of the war fighter". It's job is to clear the skies of all hostile aircraft, after which the F-35 follows up and performs a wide variety of war fighting tasks. If this scenario works the way it is supposed to, then at some point adding more F-22s is pointless. Imagine enemy fighters are plaque and the F-22 is a toothbrush. Brushing your teeth for ten minutes is very good for you; brushing for twenty minutes isn't any better for and costs twice as much.
The F-22 is a one trick pony, but it's a pretty damn good trick if you ever need it done. But we simply don't need that many of them if it works. If it doesn't work, then it's a big waste of money to build more.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The military nearly always gears up to fight the last war, not the next one. I'm waiting for an air to air combat drone that can kill Predators, etc. Once those are in the air there will be no manned fighters; their performance is utterly abysmal by comparison.
>> "You'll be eating those words when China unveils their brand new designed-in-secret anti-ICBM system."
China doesn't have to engage us in war. If they ever get pissed at the U.S., all they have to do is stop investing in our economy and call in all our notes.
We won't be able to buy ammo or fuel to attack or defend against anything, then. Instant capitulation.
Now, that's a scenario that we should be fear.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Yes, the F-22 is primarily an air superiority craft, and the F-35 is intended to fill a more all-purpose role. The F-15, however, is no match for either of the newer craft:
The JSF program was designed to replace the U.S. military's F-16, A-10, F/A-18 (excluding F/A-18E/F) and AV-8B tactical fighter aircraft. To keep development, production, and operating costs down, a common design was planned in three variants that share 80% of their parts:
* F-35A, conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant.
* F-35B, short-takeoff and vertical-landing (STOVL) variant.
* F-35C, carrier-based CATOBAR (CV) variant.
The F-35 is intended to be the world's premier strike aircraft through 2040, with close- and long-range air-to-air capability second only to that of the F-22 Raptor.[5] The F-35 is required to be four times more effective than existing fighters in air-to-air combat, eight times more effective in air-to-ground battle combat, and three times more effective in reconnaissance and suppression of air defenses â" all while having better range and requiring less logistics support.
Admittedly, Wikipedia is not the best resource, but it is the most easily accessible at the moment and the information is consistent with my knowledge of the craft.
Anyway, the F-22 vs. F-35 argument is one between people that want the absolute best craft they can get for the role they need to fill and more money/practicality-oriented people. Both sides have merit, but money is winning out in this case, I suspect largely because of the investment in the F-35 as an 'everything' craft.
Finally, of course you need multiple support levels for any combat-type situation. I'm not sure why you brought that up.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
Your 44 hour statistic is years old, from when the aircraft first entered service. They've improved significantly. It's called a learning curve or debugging process...
Obsolete? How do you figure?
And oh noes, it's only been in service a couple years and never flew a combat mission! It's obviously useless and should be canceled immediately! Nevermind that the aircraft it's replacing (and contemporaries of it) didn't see combat for years after they entered service...
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Russia, who is on friendly terms with China. Both of which are on friendly terms with North Korea. Russia has also been caught endlessly providing technology to Iran too. While cold war level tension do not currently exist between the US and Russia, no bones about it, Russia has not been standing still with their own military advances.
The F22 is the only technology which created a significant gap between the US and its possible enemies. Foolish, dumb, and ignorant are the only words you can use to describe this change in policy.
It is reliable, safe, cheap to maintain, and an insane ass kicker. If only all military aircraft were like that...
A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off.
So you think that America would be better off for that? You may be right, it's hard to say. I wonder though at the 'pissing everyone off' part being better for everyone else.
America has certainly done a lot of damage around the world, but they've also done a lot of good. I'd say, on the whole, it has been more good than bad. At the end, some nation, somewhere, is going to have the strongest military. For all my problems with America, I can't pick a different nation I'd rather see as the strongest. Unfortunately the real world doesn't require that a perfect, or even good option exist, merely a choice of options from which you take what you can get and try to improve upon it. In my book America is a better starting point than any other nation.
I also am sure many would argue about the world being better off if America just minded it's own business. For all that people argue the good America has done in removing or fighting worse governments/dictators, the other side declares it would be better if America did not do so, that things would be better if those wars were not fought. For proof one can easily point to Africa and the fact America has no interest there because there is no profit in it. This would seem to prove that America is acting selfishly. I would point out that just because it is selfish, doesn't mean that it isn't also in the better interest of the civilians of the affected region. Disagree? Look no further than the original example. Which region is better off, the American manipulated Middle-East or the Africa it ignores?
For every Saddam that America is damned for warring against, there is an African genocide like Rwanda it is not being damned for ignoring. I used to be alongside the peaceniks in damning America for going into Iraq because they failed to go into a place like Darfur where people needed the help even more. I've now realized that if I really think they should be damned for not going into Darfur, it was contradictory to damn them for removing a genocidal dictator like Saddam.
What situation can you see the US Air Force in where it has a serious contender to air superiority versus even the F-15, which has a spotless air-to-air kill ratio against what most countries currently on the US's shitlist are flying? Much less along with the 187 flying F-22's? I mean, a hypothetical war with China might need it, but they're still flying original-model Su-27 derivatives while they design their own indigenous fighter, the Shenyang J-XX. With good enough pilots, they can seriously ruin an F-15's day, but with the F-22's already built, there should be more than enough firepower to take out something like that. I mean, there could be trouble if Russia decided to fully rebuild its air force with its recuperating economy and try a show of force against the USA, but what are the odds of that happening? Hell, China's not very likely either. The only foreseeable conflicts in the near future might be Iran and/or North Korea, and they're both still flying older-generation aircraft that the F-15 has shot down in the past. In terms of equipment, the playing field is already level, unless you're thinking that the USA's going to square off against Eurofighters or something.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Again, how the hell does this get "insightful?" You can't just flip a switch and have airplanes start rolling off the line... some parts can have lead times of a couple years. Plus, you need to retrain all the workers, because if they sit around doing nothing, they forget what to do. If we ever get to a point where we really need the airframes, it'll be too late--wars develop real fast.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
And how many people would have education or health care if a third world military dictatorship handed us our butts on a silver platter because we dismantled our military so we could focus exclusively on social problems?
Unless you are talking about Mexico invading, no third world dictatorship could get to Miami (or Los Angeles, if coming from the west) with a force strong enough to hold city hall from the gangs, let alone take and hold the capital.
However, if we don't have the ability to defend ourselves against foreign threats, then we won't have the resources to take care of our people, either.
We don't need to spend that much to defend ourselves against foreign threats. We need to spend lots to defend any arbitrary square inch anywhere on the globe from the combined might of the rest of the planet. And that's about where we are. If there was a particular place we wanted to hold, no matter where, every other country working together wouldn't be able to push us off it until local supplies ran out (they'd be able to blockade us after a while, but we'd win in a war of the US vs the rest of the world). That's not an issue of defense. That's an issue of taking on the rest of the world and winning. We could do it, and it's expensive. If we closed every overseas base, cut the navy bt 90% and integrated them with the coast guard, eliminated the marines, improved the guard and reduced the army and airforce by 50% or more, we'd still be able to defend the US from an attack by any country on the planet that didn't land and establish a large base in Canada or Mexico first (and then, we'd have enough warning to match forces). We could cut "defense" by 60% or more and still win a war with everyone on the planet ganging up against us. We spend not for defense, but for offense. And your arguements don't apply to that.
Learn to love Alaska
Wow it sounds like your government is actually working. The Congressmen are concerned about their areas first (not the whole nation) and the military is concerned about the whole country (not a touch of prestige). I think this may be remembered as the best example of the American Government working. My heart goes out to all those who will loose their jobs over the F-22 plant shutdowns. But it is better than the drive to deeper recession caused by avoiding steps like this.
Are you putting us on, or are you really that dense?
The F22 program spends millions of man-hours and billions of dollars on activities that contribute no net improvement to the wealth of the country. People building F22s are people NOT building anything that we can buy to improve our standard of living. They may as well be breaking windows and repairing them, or digging holes and filling them back in again. War production is not wealth.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Careful. Keep saying stuff like that, and you'll be branded an anti-Semite. After all, if you don't mindlessly support everything Israel does, you must hate Jews. Just like if you didn't support everything the Bush did, you must hate Caucasians.
Hitler said he just wanted peace too! You some kind of Nazi?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Careful. Keep saying stuff like that, and you'll be branded an anti-Semite. After all, if you don't mindlessly support everything Israel does, you must hate Jews. Just like if you didn't support everything the Bush did, you must hate Caucasians.
It's kinda scary how accurate that is. I'm Jewish, but I don't agree with everything the Israeli government has done, just like I don't agree with everything the United States government does (it was more frequent with Bush, but I have no problems calling out Democrats when they do something I don't agree with, or just say something stupid, which is almost as frequent as with Bush). Of course, I'm a peace-loving hippie, so there are fairly large groups in the Israeli government that are too militaristic for my taste. It does discourage me to hear people say "we must always support everything Israel does." As far as I'm concerned, the ability to honestly criticize the government when they screw up is an important part of any healthy, free state.
The Germans made the same calculations with tanks during the second world war. It turns out that quantity has a quality all of its own.
China doesn't have to engage us in war. If they ever get pissed at the U.S., all they have to do is stop investing in our economy and call in all our notes.
We won't be able to buy ammo or fuel to attack or defend against anything, then. Instant capitulation.
Now, that's a scenario that we should be fear.
You got it backwards, dude.
When you owe the bank fifity thousand dollars and you can't pay it back, you have a problem.
When you owe the bank fifty million dollars and you can't pay it back, the BANK has a problem.
If in the extremely unlikely event China and the US ever get into it and the Chinese want to cash in the chips, it China that's in trouble, not the US.
As the debate is whether the US should be buying planes, I hardly think the equipment of the Iranian Air Force is a relevant consideration.
You still don't get it? If we can't, neither can potential adversaries. Can it be stated any more simply? So what we need is a head start - which we already have, with 100+ F22's already in service.
That's right, a grand total of 5 kills for the 712 F14's we bought. (By the way, one of those kills was a stinking helicopter). You can try to make something out of its re-purposing as a strike aircraft, but with the F18 and F35 already superior to the F22 in that role, it's no argument for churning out a few hundred extra F22's.
We need to make certain that we remain ahead of CHina.
We won't do it by wasting vast amounts of money trying to maintain a global empire. China doesn't have the costs of keeping troops bases in 130 countries around the world.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."