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F-22 Raptor Cancelled

Posted by timothy on from the waiter-there's-a-fly-in-my-fighter dept.

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."

4 of 829 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Poor Title by timeOday · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The F14 is a good cautionary tale for the F22. They were expensive, high-strung, kick-butt air superiority fighters. And they saw more action in Top Gun than they ever saw in real life. The total number of engagements by the entire fleet of F14's you could count on one hand.

    I do believe in designing and building these things to stay sharp, but not thousands of copies in peacetime. (And yes, this is "peacetime" so far as the F22 is concerned - they have flown 0 sorties over Iraq and Afghanistan, and why would they?)

  2. Re:Poor Title by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not necessarily a superior craft from a combat standpoint.

    My understanding is that the F-22 is much superior as an air-superiority fighter, but the F-35 has more air to ground capabilities. The difficulty with the F-22 is that the F-15 is still the most dominant air superiority fighter in the world, and because of the cost involved in making anythign remotely better, is likely to stay that way for a good long time. The "Super Power" enemies, such as they are, relied on a greater number of less capable aircraft because they couldn't afford the price of the nicer aircraft. So in some ways, the cost of the F-22 making fewer units practical plays into the hypothetical "Super Powers" hand.

    The other factor to maintaining air superiority is the AWACS platforms which can direct the air war over very large distances. I think the West, and the US in particular has a huge advantage in that as well. Plus, as far as protecting our airspace goes, mounting air to air missiles on UAVs is just as easy as air to ground. So we would likely use those to counter any numerical superiority that our hypothetical "Super Power" posses as well.

    Finally, FWIW, I subscribe to the two level theory of war. The first level is the infantry, the second level is everything else: it exists to support the infantry since only the infantry can take and hold ground. Artillery, sea power, aviation, even tanks can deny the enemy ground, but only the infantry can hold it. So more A-10s putting more ordance where the infantry needs it seems a better deal than F-22's holding air superiority over a non-existant enemy air force. IMHO.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  3. Re:Poor Title by anarkhos · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have news for you: China is funding our wars.

    They don't need to fight us. What, are they going to fund our war against China, too?

    --
    >80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
    >life
  4. Re:How many soldiers die if 187 F-22s aren't enoug by MaWeiTao · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even if everyone in the US unanimously decided that we were no longer going to meddle in international affairs other nations will inevitably drag us back into them due to the simple fact that we're an economic superpower. It's unavoidable.

    And the US government already spends plenty on social programs. The problem, like with this F-22 program, is that the money isn't being spent wisely. The US in general already spends more on education per student than most countries, and many areas, including the city where I live spends close to double what any other country spends. And yet education is by and large crap compared to other countries. The reason isn't because we're not spending enough money, it's because we're not managing anything properly and have this idiotic notion that more money will fix anything.

    And back to my original point, there are a lot of nations out there that could potentially become a threat in the future. I realize some people hold the believe that love will fix anything, but there are many more who disagree and may try to take advantage. China might currently be behind the US, but they sure are working hard to catch up, working on their own advanced fighter. Russia may not currently be a threat to the US, but they are working hard on their own competitors to the F22 and will certainly be selling the aircraft to China.

    That said, it made sense to cut back the F-22 program although it really is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the government is spending.