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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."
Reading the title and summary would make you think that the entire program has been cancelled and the planes aren't going to be used by the US military. This is not the case. The Senate reduced the number of aircraft being produced such that no additional planes will be made. The F22 is already in service and will remain in service for quite some time.
They've already got 187 of them. All they did was cancel an order for an additional 12 that were budgetted last year. The summary would lead you to believe they're moth-balling all of them or something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule.
With the way the gov't is throwing money I'm surprised anything under a billion registers on their radar. They've probably got rounding errors (intentional or not) that could pay for a whole squadron of these.
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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.
How bad-ass? This badass. The link is to a YouTube video where the guy who had the initial design ideas talks about getting the plane together, and the video features some awesome footage of the F-35's capabilities.
RIP F-22, you were cool and did a great job. The F-35 is a worthy replacement.
``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.
The F-22 is a cool plane, but there are only so many the US really needs. Reason is that they are not carrier based planes, which is how a great many missions are done these days. It also is more or less strictly air superiority, not multi-role. Ok well there is value in that, while there may not be any current threats to the US, doesn't mean there won't be. You don't have good defense, in the real world or on your computer, by staying complacent. However that doesn't mean that there is the need or reason to roll out tons of the things.
The F-35 is more suited to a larger scale production because it is multi-role, and carrier capable. Thus with it likely to come out soon (next year if they remain on target) it doesn't make sense to produce a ton of F-22As. The F-35 also has the advantage of having a good deal of support from other nations, which helps pay for R&D and will also bring unit costs down in the form of increased orders.
So it makes sense to keep the F-22 around for when top-notch air defense is needed, it doesn't make sense to keep building them if an all around more useful plane is going to be coming out. Use what is complete, and use the research from the project on other projects (like the F-35).
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-22 is already in service! They just cancelled the next order of planes.
I agree with this decision. The F-35 is still a better fighter than just about anything else out there, and is also an excellent multi-role attack craft. Not to mention much cheaper per unit than an F-22.
The value of the F-22 lies in that it is probably the best fighter in the world for many years. Any adversary who intends to fight a conventional war against the US (cricket... cricket... but hey, we do expect our military to be prepared, so I'm not complaining) has to act as if the most badass fighter in the world will be contesting air superiority. That is a healthy kick towards solving things with diplomacy.
They're built here in Marietta. Bad news in a tough economy.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
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. :-)
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
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Fighters are needed less and less now a days, if we want air superiority we can just put up dozens of cheap drones with Air-to-Air missiles with remote pilots. I am pretty sure they would not cost $100+ millions each either.
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.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for unaccountable entities whose primary responsibility is profit.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
If you look at when they actually are producing F35 vs F22 at nearly identical production rates, F22 is only a little bit more expensive. The main reason why F35 is projected to be significantly cheaper is they are planning on producing more of them at faster rates.
F-35 Flyaway Unit Cost
FY2011: $124.580 million (24 per year)
F-22 Flyaway Unit Cost
FY2007: $136.826 million (20 per year)
A bird in the hand is better than 2 in the bush. I'd bet F35 ends up costing just as much as F22.
Give me more F22s and fewer F35s.
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.
The push for producing less F-22's comes from the DoD not the congress critters. In fact it had a hard time getting through because the opposition to reducing the production run was bipartisan. The opposition primarily came from representatives that have a vested interest in the continuation of the F-22 production, as in parts are made or assembled by their constituents.
Wow - it's not paranoia if everyone really is out to get you, right? Get at least your facts straight. Republicans and Democracts voted for the bill, and Republicans and Democrats voted against it. Not to mention that Gates, a Republican, Air Force and Joint Chief of Staffs didn't want to continue the purchase program. I don't know how you lump those people into the group of Obama's lunatic lefties.
How's the weather on your little planet?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict
Which conflict would that be? It's not the ones we are in now, which we're going into astronomical debt over. I don't know who has an air force that would rival us, but I'd guess China and North Korea. Either way, we can't afford it even with these cuts. In fact, I think/hope we can't afford to fight ANY more unilateral wars against ANYONE.
Any war/conflict in which 187 raptors is insufficient is a war our economy is also insufficient for.
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
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?
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.
First "My Name is Earl," now this. They cancel everything I like.
My vote as a former USAF intel analyst is that this is a good move. We have plenty of them already and we can put that money to use in myriad other ways, for defense and other purposes. The 22 is bad ass and worth every penny, but i'd rather see more spent on HumInt or humanitarian stuff.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
So one F22 (properly maintained and competently piloted) is equal to how many old F16s?
Many. In war games, single F-22s often take out entire squadrons of F-16s before they're even seen on radar.
http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123041831
Not a typewriter
Better than a Hot War.
Perhaps. But the 10th Amendment suggests that health care and education should be a state responsibility (if at all). People make a big deal of the Canadian health care system, but there's an important point: the Canadian health care system is not run by the Canadian federal government. Each province runs its own health care system. For example, the Alberta health care system operated very much like a private insurer until this year, whereas in Nova Scotia it is more like a traditional universal health care system. The Canadian federal government mandates certain minimum standards, but it has the constitutional authority to do that. The actual operation of the health care system is a provincial matter, as the Canadian constitution dictates it should be.
The pricetag on all this fancy military hardware goes up to beyond reasonable returns. We're losing the war to Al-Queda where their costs are nearly nothing (I suppose sending a fundamentalist nutjob to suicide bomber school is rather cheap) and the 2 Billion dollar bomber (The B-2 Spirit) crashes in 2008 in Guam on the way to fight him. As a taxpayer I think we need to say enough is enough and I think Congress is seeing the light. As far as I'm concerned, "slightly less capable, and far less expensive" is the exact tact we need to take as a country in the midst of a crippling recession.
Until Al-Queda grows an Air Force what's wrong with our fleet of 80's movie aircraft (the F-15, F-16, etc) The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. North Korea? What are they flying these days? MIG 29S's (their few but modern units - which match to the F-15) and MIG 21's (a Vietnam era unit)
I dunno, but didn't the Nazis lose with the current "Overengineering, exepensive and too few versus" principle the US is using today to the "Just barely good enough, cheap and lots of them" principle we had in WWII? The Tiger vs the Sherman?
We lost our way.
Thank you, Congress, for sacrificing the nation's safety so you can buy up the problems of those who make bad decisions. Not going to sacrifice power for their bad decisions, t.
Actually, the people who were OPPOSED to continued F-22 production include the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Air Force, and other top brass. The only people who are FOR the continued production are members of Congress whose districts include the defense contractors who build the plane, and those contractors themselves.
IOW, the MILITARY does not want any more of these planes.
During war time, there should be no profit driven motivation for developing the military, period.
War industry employees should all work for subsistence wages, and really should be volunteers if not draftees. Industrial business should not even be allowed to take profits for the duration of war. If they must be paid, they should be paid in interest bearing war bonds that are redeemable upon victory. Take away the profit-driven parts of the equation, from raw materials down to workers being paid more than subsistence wages, and I'm sure the cost of these airplanes will be considerably lower per unit.
The stakes should be "winning the war so that the nation can continue to exist", not something that's even measurable in monetary value.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Please provide proof. How are we holding them back? Who is we? Why have India and China succeeded the more they embrace evil capitalist ideals?
Why? The F35 is more useful in any fight we are likely to get into during the lifetime of these airplanes.
The F22 can do what the F35 can just as the F15 can do what the F16 can.
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.
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.
Easy there. I didn't realize you were a professional asshole. I take it all back - I don't want to tangle with someone who is so far out of my league.
What is your definition of being "just cool with people"? Do you really believe that the world will stop hating America if America stops meddling in other nations' affairs? What are your thoughts on interfering when a state-sponsored genocide is in progress? There is no happy medium. Large portions of the world are going to hate the United States of America no matter its foreign policy. You can't make everyone happy, and you certainly can't do it when they have already come to depend on you for one thing or another. It would not surprise me to see America the target of more hatred and violent attacks after returning to isolationism than in its most internationally-meddling times.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"As another comparison, the cost per hour in 2008 was $19K, compared to the F15 which was $17k. History shows that this typically goes down as the plane matures and is ironed out"
I don't know where you get your info, but the Washington Post claims they've acquired Pentagon info stating that exactly the opposite is true with the Raptor; maintenance costs are going up over time, not down. They also say this report shows costs of $44K per hour for the F-22, not $19.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"It is very cheap (inexpensive) and is a good asset."
Whatever else the F-35 is, it is not cheap. Far from it.
For comparison, Boeing is offering the Navy a fixed price quote for new Super Hornets at just over $50 million apiece if a minimum of 230 are purchased. Brand new F-16's are currently around $40 million apiece. The brand new Silent Eagle stealth redesign of the F-15 costs $100 million apiece. That's a top of the line air superiority fighter.
So how much does an optimistic estimate of F-35's run per aircraft?
If you're a taxpayer, read 'em and weep:
Year Aircraft Average unit cost/aircraft
FY2008: 6 $184.2 million
FY2009: 8 $200.2 million
FY2010: 18 $172.3 million
FY2011: 19 $146.4 million
FY2012: 40 $124.4 million
FY2013: 42 $115.1 million
Life is hard, and the world is cruel