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Some USAF Pilots Refuse To Fly F-22 Raptor
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that some of the nation's top aviators are refusing to fly the radar-evading F-22 Raptor, a fighter jet with ongoing problems with the oxygen systems that have plagued the fleet for four years. 'We are generally aware of a small number of pilots who have expressed reservations about flying the F-22, and each of those cases will be handled individually through established processes,' says Maj. Brandon Lingle, an Air Force spokesman. Concern about the safety of the F-22 has grown in recent months as reports about problems with its oxygen systems have offered no clear explanations why there have been 11 incidents in which F-22 pilots reported hypoxia-like symptoms. 'Obviously it's a very sensitive thing because we are trying to ensure that the community fully understands all that we're doing to try to get to a solution,' says Gen. Mike Hostage, commander of Air Combat Command. Meanwhile Sen. John McCain says that the jets, which the Air Force call the future of American air dominance, are a waste of their $79 billion price tag and serve no role in today's combat environment. 'There is no purpose, no mission in Afghanistan or Iraq, unless you believe that al Qaeda is going to have a fleet of aircraft,' says McCain, a former combat pilot himself. '[The F-22] has not flown a single combat mission... I don't think the F-22 will ever be seen in the combat it was designed to counter, because that threat is no longer in existence.'"
Although many believe that when you sign up for the military, you're agreeing to die for your country, I would like to remind them that this is not exactly Plan A; The goal is to make the other bastard die for theirs. And a defective plane that causes a pilot to pass out while engaged in combat rather defeats that purpose. These pilots are quite right to refuse to fly it -- it's not flight-worthy if it can't even hold up under non-combat conditions.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
"red one this is red leader... oh geez i feel a bit woozy..."
"gopeh... luke... i... am your father"
There is a point for the F22, and that is to suppress all other power's desire to make stuff that will encounter it. That's why the US have nuclear weapons, not to use them but to deter others from using such weapons agains them. So.. it very well might be well spent money.. but we never know, since we won't see the stuff that the F22 is designed to encounter..and that's the point.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
There is no purpose, no mission in Afghanistan or Iraq, unless you believe that al Qaeda is going to have a fleet of aircraft
But there are companies with lucrative military contracts in Iraq, so it has a purpose for someone.
...but for those who say the threat "isn't there", I guess this is just a figment of the imagination then? And they certainly didn't have any "help"...
Oh, I know, China isn't a "threat". The fact that it's on track to exceed US military spending by 2025 must be for "peaceful regional defense". This isn't really happening.
What about the F-35? Oh, yeah — that, too.
What I don't get is this: They could make equal money building out a fleet of say, 1000 F16 / F18 Superwhaterver BlockZ aircraft. Scary enough and potent enough to deal with any adversary in the next several decades. Cheap enough for generic use.
Something else is going on, maybe military penis size or something.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
To use the F-22 correctly we'd have to go to war with Russia or China. If that happens then there are a lot of other issues that are more important than the F-22.
If we fight another proxy war (like Vietnam was or when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan) then we'll probably be using drones.
Follow the money. Who's making the profit on the F-22?
Does Gen. Mike Hostage have a Major Asshole serving under him by any chance?
The F22 was made for air superiority. The "A" designator was added later due to the fact that the need for air superiority has diminished. I think it is wrong to say that there is no need for an air superiority fighter. We may still contend with China and we may still contend with Russia. The F22 may see action yet in the middle east or the DPRK.
If you want to eliminate an expensive weapons system who's need has diminished, look under water. That's where the real money is. There are all kinds of aircraft for the F22 to kill. There aren't many naval vessels for subs to target.
Al Qaeda is not the only mission objective of the US military.
Apparently the F-35 is turning out to be rather crappy as well. Ooops.
Sen. John McCain says that the jets, which the Air Force call the future of American air dominance, are a waste of their $79 billion price tag and serve no role in today's combat environment.
If the Libyans had acquired Eurofighters, rafales or if the syrians had any decent russian aircraft he'd be singing a different tune. Yes NATO has air assets that can handle SU27's and Mig 29's, but you end up in a shooting war with eretria, or sudan or syria and they manage to down even one US aircraft people will be wondering wtf there wasn't something better available.
The problem with *all* military spending is that you're trying to guess future needs and have something that can cope with an unknown problem. It's not like the US was stupid enough to only buy f22's (at the astronomical price that would have entailed). The US Air force has something like 2400 'fighters' of which about 200 are F22's. That's not counting the Navy. For what they do that seems like a fairly reasonable allotment of 'might need for air superiority role' for the next 20 years or so. One can argue specifics on stealth, performance or total numbers, but it doesn't seem like the F22 purchase was wildly out of place by US standards. As with any piece of equipment it's possible there is something wrong with a system (in this case the oxygen system), but that could be a maintenance issue, a replacement part issue a design issue, or any number of other things. Whenever you buy any piece of equipment (including a car) you take the chance that something on it will be defective.
Its obvious they cannot find the source of this issue, so its not a fault with the aircraft. Its most likely this:
For the article:
"Low frequency radio waves cannot be shielded against, at least not in the form factor of an aircraft. The technology can quite comfortably reproduce the symptoms of a wide range of illnesses, from mental illnesses to heart attacks. Most disturbingly for pilots, is the ability to electrically induce a fake form of vertigo and motor function discombobulation similar to the effects of rapid decompression."
http://deepthought.newsvine.com/_news/2011/02/14/6052952-the-end-of-the-airforce
If those damned aliens have an internet connection, how do you think they will react? More so when we cancel that shit. All hell will break loose man!
Now we know why Luke started hearing voices in his head all of a sudden.
What I don't get is this: They could make equal money building out a fleet of say, 1000 F16 / F18 Superwhaterver BlockZ aircraft. Scary enough and potent enough to deal with any adversary in the next several decades. Cheap enough for generic use.
But this is the F22. It's 4 louder than the F18!
Something else is going on, maybe military penis size or something.
A little known fact: the famed pacifist Gandhi had the biggest cock in all of India. He'd swim in the Ganges, and people would think that an anaconda was following him. Which was kind of weird, since anacondas live in South America. Then Gandhi and Martin Luther King would stand on opposite sides of the river and have a swordfight.
The F22 is a remarkable aircraft. It has some problems but they all did. It takes decades to work out all the bugs.
Is the F22 meaningless because it's foe doesn't exist. Not really. It's silly to think we don't need air superiority fighters simply because of the war on terror. Don't try to fight the last war. That's over. We need tools for the NEXT war which might well include more technologically savvy enemies.
That said, I think the real problem the F22 is that it isn't a drone. Generally, the future of all combat aircraft especially frontline aircraft should be towards autonomous flight. Not only are they more expendable, they're cheaper. And pesky issues like no oxygen go away since there's no pilot. Think of them like reusable AA missiles. You deploy a few if you think there is a chance of air attack and they intercept anything that wants to play. Or if you want to send it on a mission... same thing...
I'm not saying we can replace humans in all seats YET. But a control plane... possibly one of the refueling planes hundreds of miles from the target might have a small control crew that can pilot such a craft remotely.
I don't know... the F22 is amazing. Truly amazing aircraft. But it requires a pilot and that might be a problem.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If Slashdot employed real journalists then it would've had the scoop months ago. Instead Slashdot is just another referral farm.
You are aware that Slashdot is not, has never been, and has never said or implied that it is a primary news source?
It's a, you know, discussion blog based on user submissions? Hell, I don't think there is any evidence that Slashdot even employs any editors.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The military also learned that dead people lose wars. Wars will all be won, so long as the public is behind them. But dead people undermine public support. So a more expensive aircraft with a 1% better survival rate isn't worth the money, but will get built and deployed because it will help the "war effort" They should just rename the defense department back to the original and more fitting name. Everything it does is to start and win wars, not to prevent them and save people. Only the "loss" of Vietnam (a political loss, not a military one, the military could have held the south indefinately, like Korea, if only the public hadn't stopped supporting it, and the dead people helped undermine it, though more die in car crashes than the Vietnam war and nobody cares, so people are insane and fickle).
So the expensive equipment is better for the War effort, even if 1000 F16s and A-10s would kill more enemies in a shorter period of time for less money, because A-10s get shot down because they go low and slow. And it's not successes that win wars anymore, but lack of losses.
Learn to love Alaska
When the near trillion dollar price tag for the F-35 comes due. Already nearly 5 years behind schedule, with hundreds of billions in cost overruns and no end in sight. 7 project ending design flaws uncovered in the last Quick Look Review. And the model being built for the Marines, they don't even want it. The Naval version is melting carrier decks and the Air Force version doesn't fly well. Plus most of the Tier 1 nations that are supposed to buy it in return for building components for it, are starting to bail out and contracting with rapid upgrades of the soon to be discontinued F-16 or purchasing the Eurofighter or Dassault Rafale.
And the really sad thing is that their early competition, the Boeing F-32 was widely acknowledged to be a better cheaper more efficient and elegant AND more advanced plane but it was not selected because, and I quote, the Air Force didn't think it looked aggressive enough, compounded with weak VTOL characteristics that now, it's clear, aren't going to work out for the F-35 either because it's SO efficient that it melts runways, which is why the Marines don't want it.
The point in having an aircraft like the F-22 is that countries like North Korea or Syria or Iran know that they have absolutely no chance against it. Pick a fight and your air force is gone. Period.
During the decades before the Vietnam war, everyone was also convinced that conventional air combat was a thing of the past. We even designed our air forces and training regimens around the contemporaneous concept of high-tech air warfare. In Vietnam, however, it turned out that actual combat ended up being more of the same from previous wars. But, our pilots and planes weren't equipped to fight this way, so our pilots found themselves getting their butts handed to them. The Navy, which was less invested in the high-tech warfare concept, was the first to clue in and start training their pilots appropriately and going old school by putting "antiquated" anti-aircraft cannons back into or under their jets.
The point is that the military has been burned at least once badly by the idea that our high-tech trinkets will fundamentally change warfare. While the military will continue to adopt new technology, until there's a shooting war that *proves* the F-22 is an obsolete concept, they won't abandon traditional tactics.
BTW, the F-22 still serves a vital role. You can't use our last two counter-insurgencies to imply that air superiority aircraft aren't needed anymore.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I suspect it's largely psychological/political - they want to keep funding the R&D to develop the next-gen aircraft technologies so that we maintain our superiority. But once you've spent tons and tons of money developing the tech and building the first plane you're then in the position where this one plane cost hundreds of billions to create, whereas the the next will only cost tens. If you build a fleet you may spend twice as much, but at least you have a whole fleet of planes to show for it and the amortized cost per plane looks less ridiculous. It "feels" like less of a waste, even if the planes will never be used and you could have gotten most the real benefit by just building the first plane.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's a problem on the F-22 because rather than take along an oxygen tank, the F-22 tries to siphon oxygen away from the turbine via OBOGS.
So when OBOGS stops working, the pilot can't breathe. Brillant! Nothing like replacing a simple, effective system with something way more complicated and fragile for basically no reason!
McCain might be right, but his statement sounds frighteningly a lot like when they believed in wars after WW2 that dogfighting aircraft were no longer needed, and then had to make an about-face when the MiG fighters had no American competition in Korea. For a short time in Korea, we had WW2 propeller driven Mustangs fighting against MiG jets. There were even some pilots from WW2 flying, and supposedly helped advise the design of modern jet fighters and dogfighting techniques to counter the MiG.
My guess would be, they decided to build it from scratch based on what sounded like a great and revolutionary idea.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The Drone is the future. It's a waste to keep putting people in a piece of equipment that pushes the limits of Human control while in the cockpit. The drone allows designers to create a plane that our BODIES could never hold up to but our brains could (maybe). It's all SciFi thinking we will be able to fly advanced aircraft from now on.Cockpit Jockey's will be engineered out. It's all being geared towards automation if it hasn't already happened. Eventually all Operations will be Automated. Strategic Planners know this and are beefing up Cyber Command. Same with the NAS. Air Traffic separation will be Automated as well. No need for a Controller except for REAL Emergencies. Bring on NextGen!
I think it says something when even fighter pilots think something's too dangerous.
also, that's a good rule for guys in general: don't do stupid stuff out of a sense of machismo.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Is the R&D type military spending does have civilian benefits. The most major and obvious one in recent history would be GPS. It was built because the military wanted to be able to precisely locate all their men and material anywhere. Now? It is the principal navigation method for virtually commercial and civilian all craft, falling back to less accurate measures only should it fail.
GPS is the biggest and most evident, but not the only one.
While that doesn't mean we should just blindly throw money at anything, I think money spent on military R&D is better than money spent on wars, or having a massive military. I'd rather have a smaller military with the highest of the high tech equipment than a massive one with whatever can be scraped together.
And of course, as with any R&D, you can to be ok with the idea that the results may suck, they may not work, they may have problems, or there just flat out may not be any. If you want guarantees, you have to stick with what you have. If you try new things, there may be problems, failures, as you push the envelope.
200 or so is the end. The last Raptor just flew to my back yard during this past week: "Last F-22 Raptor fighter jet arrives in Alaska" (http://www.newsminer.com/view/full_story/18475362/article-Last-F-22-Raptor-fighter-jet-arrives-in-Alaska).
The F-35 is another matter that seems more relevant: production for those is still delayed. Keep in mind these are sold to other countries, not just used in the US.
Let's get this number in context with some other of democracies fundanmental goals shall we?
$175 billion a year to end global extreme poverty (Jeffery Sachs)
$500 billion a year US Military budget is a low estimate.
Hmmm ...
Yeah, not only that. But if keeping the F-22, why not have some engineers study the life support system designs on the F-15, F-16, and F-18? You know, the ones that actually don't asphyxiate their pilots under routine usage.
Then have these engineers spend some time with the support crews of the aircraft they studied, such that they know what the maintenance issues are and why certain things are done certain ways. See why the bleed air system was set up this way, why those valves are those materials, why there might be a spiral of corrosion resistant metal in a non-collapsing hose instead of a composite, why filters and other things are designed the way they are. Get hands dirty a bit working on them under the tutelage of plane captains and aircraft mechanics.
Then you send these guys to go work on fixing the life support system that's all fuckered up in the F-22. After six months of fixing things and knowing the ins and outs, whatever is wrong should be a lot more obvious. Designing a replacement to fit in the same space should be within the skills of a competent group of engineers. Certainly this would be cheaper than scrapping an otherwise capable aircraft.
So the real question is why this hasn't been done the first time the F-22 was grounded for this problem. It appears it should be a solvable technical problem, but it's likely political bullshit is getting in the way of having what should be done done.
Nothing like replacing a system that has to have a maintenance action every time it lands and can run out literally because the pilot got excited. OBOGS, by the way, has an excellent record on the T-6.
From the above feeds I distilled this:
An Air Force Dept. Spokesperson stated "each of those cases will be handled individually through established processes"
This means psychological warfare by the Dept. of Air Force DoD against Air Force Pilots.
And we have Sen. John McCain saying that the F-22 "has not flown a single combat mission... I don't think the F-22 will ever be seen in the combat it was designed to counter, because that threat is no longer in existence". The threat was the Soviet Air Force pre-1991. The Soviet Union does not exist!
No threat = No mission. No mission = Kill the F-22 program. End of Story.
And the USA citizens should rise up in civil war against the USA government, especially Barak Obama and the other Non-Elected elements of the bureaucracy appointed by him who steal from the 'real' citizens of the USA day-by-day 24/7 so shamefully but they have no regard for their action otherhan satisfying their inner ID (google Freud).
So that is it!
United States of America domestic and international polocy is a matter of sexual gratification of the Elected and Non-Elected Officials. It has nothing what so ever to do with conduting the 'affairs of State'. Nothing at all.
Post Script
The Titanic has hit the 'ice berg'. Time to jump ship fast!
I recommend anyone reading this to emigrate (out of the USA) to another contry as a matter of personel safety.
LoL
It is the duty of America to worry about Americans, and feed its people, not feed the world. You want to feed the world, go donate all your money to others and livei n poverty. But don't you tell us what to do you little shit.
IIRC, the last actual one-on-one dogfight an American fighter was involved in was in Vietnam. Everything since then has been long-range missiles and control from AWACS planes. And air-to-air missiles can be carried by drones as easily as air-to-ground.
In pure dogfighting capability, the latest from MiG and Sukhoi would eat the lunch of anything we have, or are likely to have in the near future. We could buy them from the Russians for a lot less than we could build our own.
Another issue is that the US doesn't build "fighters". The planes we call "fighters" are actually light attack bombers. Very fast and maneuverable attack bombers, true. But that dual role is one reason why they're so bloody expensive. The Russian planes are real "fighters" -- short range and no particular capability for lugging JDAMs around.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
The F22 is needed to counter the S300 / S400 anti-aircraft missile. Once such defenses are down, then the F35 would take over. We are not currently threatened by such a system but the British never thought they'd see the Exocet missile either. We don't know what we might see in North Korea or Iran or some unguessable foe. Syria has this missle air defense.
Well, I have to say this, John McCain is certainly an expert in this area. After all he is one of the few people in the military who has crashed not just one but several multi million dollar airplanes, so he must be a trustworthy source.
The US outspends China almost 10:1, and has for the past 10 years, that doesn't look to be changing, but China will still be spending more in 13 years than the US, who is spending 10 times as much today.
Did you even TRY to verify your facts before you posted that? Or are you seriously believing the official China figures of $25BN? You're off by an enormous amount:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#Comparison_with_other_countries
"Jane's Defence Forecasts in 2012 estimated that China's defense budget would increase from $119.80 billion to $238.20 billion between 2011 and 2015. This would make it larger than the defense budgets of all other major Asian nations combined."
That's about a third of current US military spending. Which is currently declining (as it should.) And was sized to support 2 wars, both of which are largely over. And the current pentagon leadership has declared their spending to be unsustainable for the country.
Please help metamoderate.
...not attacking us; there's no point. They want to challenge our force projection and protection of other countries, especially those they want land and resources from. They could care fuck-all about North America. They want oil, rare earth metals, and territory buffer/control near them. We've been a thorn in their side, protecting Japan and a whole lot of the rest of Asia from them.
Please help metamoderate.
Considering that the Russians developed the theory used behind the design of the stealth shapes of modern stealth aircraft it was probably fear of the Russians doing it first. The Russians only started work on their own stealth fighter designs later, after the theory was more developed and it was less computationally expensive to compute the radar reflection characteristics of an aircraft shape.
I don't know about $50M, but I remember somewhere that the marginal cost for another F-22 was something like $60M. That's discounting the R&D and operational costs.
Excepting the RAM coatings, the F-22 was actually designed to be cheaper and easier to maintain than a F-15. The hypoxia is a serious design flaw, yes, but it's actually a pretty tiny portion of the plane.
If you want a $50M plane, we're going to have to build them by the thousand to justify the R&D and tooling to automate manufacture to the point that they're that cheap.
IE want 10 F-22s? $75M a piece, discounting R&D. Want 100? $60M because they end up automating more.
I don't read AC A human right
Those stolen Russian designs are hard to replicate, I guess: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23ohOKthO18
$175 billion a year to end global extreme poverty (Jeffery Sachs)
This is a chimera - a mythical beast. It's also a false dichotomy, equivalent to "eat your peas, there are children starving in India". And it's a phony number do boot. One _might_ say that with $175 billion we could _mostly_ eliminate some of the most egregious problems that the extremely poor are subject to - such as that less than 1/2 of the people in India have access to toilets.
Let's just assume that $200 billion is suddenly made available to 'end poverty'. (that basically means sending or spending $66 dollars to every poor person.) $66 dollars per year is basically going to do nothing but inflate the cost of housing for the poorest, and (by the evidence of programs in the US) increase the jackpots for various lotteries - by some estimates as much as 10% of all of the food stamp aid in some states is going to buy lottery tickets (after being discounted in exchange for cash on the black market.)
Those are contemporary objections. But the real problem, and the one why I say it is a chimera, is that 'poverty' is an abstract that changes over time - poverty is essentially the point of view by those in upper tiers of society with respect to those who are in the lower tiers. If by some stroke of magic, every person on the planet suddenly started receiving, say, a minimum of $5000 per year guaranteed income, and assuming (again, by magic) no resulting inflation or other unintended consequences, then the definition of poverty would gradually move up the ladder, until, again, something between 20% and 50% of the populace would be seen by some groups as deprived of essentials because $5000 per year just wasn't enough to buy the 'things they need' - things that would have been considered the realm of the social elite a few generations before.
What is the definition of poverty? Of course it varies over time, place and culture. The 'poverty line' in the US is something like 60 times wealthier than the mean annual per capita income in India. Which one is poor? The US poor person has healthier food, more comfortable lodgings and much better health by almost any measure than the wealthiest king 200 years ago. In some states, welfare pays for cable TV. Is the aboriginal from the Brazilian rain forest who, having seen civilization, fights to be able to continue to live his old life without an 'economy', or the trappings of civilization, poor or rich? He eats as well as he desires, needs little or no clothes (that he makes himself), and sits by the river and fishes all day. His distant relative works in a sunless cubicle in the city, hoping someday to retire so he can sit by the river and fish all day.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
The REAL reason is that unlike past planes that used Liquid Oxygen, The F-22 uses a Solid Oxygen Generator. This particular generator contains contaminants in along with the oxygen. NO PILOT worth their salt, that knows their personal limits, would risk the plane, let alone their life under such conditions.
A smart opponent will bring broad spectrum active jammers (on automatic drones) and now the ground pilots can't fly the drones. I don't think any drone A.I. is going to be good enough in air combat maneuvering so down they will go. It's just another version of combined arms. Plan for both and make them able to play together.
too late http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2#Accidents
already happened
Only the "loss" of Vietnam (a political loss, not a military one, the military could have held the south indefinately, like Korea, if only the public hadn't stopped supporting it, and the dead people helped undermine it, though more die in car crashes than the Vietnam war and nobody cares, so people are insane and fickle).
Of course the public cares about car crashes that's why we have seat belts, air bags, speed limits, crumple zones, crash testing with safety ratings, speed limits, drink driving bans, license requirements to be allowed to drive, vast amounts of police resources enforcing the above rules and so on. I'd say the public cares enough to demand that quite significant resources are spent to help reducing car crash deaths.
Now the public also realized that: Deaths from Vietnam + Deaths from Car Accidents > Deaths from Car Accidents. So a great way to save a whole bunch of lives is to stop fighting a pointless war of aggression on the other side of the world! In addition to that if you find them you can also introduce measures to reduce the road toll and save lives!
I'd say the public far from being fickle and fearful were quite smart.
There isn't a precise count, because records aren't kept centrally. Though there is a federal background check done on new weapons sold to civilians in the US there are two things:
1) It is quite new, most firearms were sold prior to it.
2) No record is kept by the government. The sale is approved or denied and that is it.
Records are kept by individual gun shops (as required by law) but not centrally.
However it is a lot. Best estimates are around 270 million or so. Not more than the population but close.
You are correct about uneven distribution in that many people who choose to own a gun, choose to own multiple ones as different types are good for different purposes, and like most hobbies they simply enjoy it. About a third of homes have firearms as best as surveys can tell.
It would make for an exceedingly armed militia. While there aren't a lot (relatively speaking) of fully automatic weapons in civilian hands (100,000 or so) there are plenty of weapons with military value, hunting rifles, AR-15s, AK-47s, etc. The US does not restrict such things from civilians, and many civilians own them. Likewise there is little restriction on ammunition. Some types (like steel) cannot be bought but legal ammunition is unrestricted to the point of being sold over the Internet and shipped directly to homes.
A foreign power conquering such a populace, if they chose to fight, would be near impossible. The whole "getting shot from every window" would be a fairly literal reality. Blowing shit up is easy from afar, but occupation requires soldiers in cities and that is where the problem would be.
Don't get all up on the "Oh look at how many cheap aircraft they crank out!" The reason is that as you note the man matters and put a trained pilot in an amazing aircraft, and you can cause a lot of trouble. It gets really hard to just throw away tons of aircraft and get no results, and harder still to find pilots to do so. Also as you run through them, you get worse and worse quality leading to worse and worse results.
For example take a look at the F-16: It is about 102 to 0 in terms of actual combat (meaning 102 air-to-air kills, no losses). Or the F-14 which is about 135 to 4, and most of those kills (and all the losses) were Iran during the Iran/Iraq.
Well if you have numbers like that, it is extremely problematic for a "just have lots of jets" force. You CAN afford to put your extremely expensive fighter, with the best pilots, forward if zero losses is a reasonable scenario. Even with a few losses, that is fine. Heck, say that they figure they can kill one F-22 with 50 SU-27s. Ok, that means you have to expend almost 10,000 aircraft to take out the current F-22 fleet. Then of course there's the 500 F/A-18 E/Fs, and few hundred F-16s and so on.
The problem is also that flying an aircraft is difficult period, a fighter more so and actually fighting in one effectively is really hard. So you don't find some dude in your armed forces and say "Here's a new plane, go get 'em!" and expect any results other than a plane shaped hole in the control tower. A tank rush like the USSR did is more feasible, takes a lot less training particularly for low tech tanks. Not so much for aircraft.
That's the reason the US is willing to go extremely high end on the aircraft. You get a really good pilot, and give them a really good aircraft and you aren't talking 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 kill to loss situations, you can be talking 100 to nothing. Not all at once, of course, but in general, you can have situations where the enemies expend the aircraft and pilots for no gain, and eventually have no airforce.
That money was not wasted, it was merely research. Think of all the civilian applications the technology created for the project will foment. Not to mention the TSA. It would never have happened if our beneficent leaders had not at least tried. State planning is the best!
(Does my goosestep look ok?)
"lack of losses"
That should clue you in to the real problem. Most of the wars that are won by 'lack of losses' are the wars that most of the people in the country don't want to be in, in the first place,
The solution is to not do those wars.
If a war was really worth fighting, we would fight it despite losses.
The F22 will be ideal figher jet to gain air superiority during the 2013 invasion of Canada.
Canada has been on the USTR's Special 301 Watch List for far too long, and it's about time something is going to be done about protecting US Intellectual Property (including the rights to "Happy Birthday To You"); we've tried it one way, now it's going to be the other way. IsoHunt is going down!!!
Once the CF-18s are taken care of, y'all can continue your whining.
Would be an incredible success. Part of the cost of medicare is that only disabled and seniors are allowed on it, leaving the profitable rest of the population to the private insurance market. If the risk pool were allowed to include the healthy and young, you would start to see serious improvements in medical outcomes and at a reasonable coverage rate.
[1] http://thehill.com/homenews/house/64029-medicare-for-everyone
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China is a threat alright, but the real threat is that they're gaining influence everywhere and in every sense, the military part being the least important one, and the US is convinced it has to counter that and the only thing that the US sees to counter them is the military, which is unmatched and will be unmatched for a long time. And they're using it. China has a lot more reason to call the US a threat. The US is surrounding China militarily, not the other way round, and the US is throwing its weight around. There is a new cold war starting alright, and it's started by the US because China is becoming too important. Whether this is a smart approach from the US is doubtful but it's the only way of thinking they understand.
And the price was only the US getting its ass kicked and the death of hundreds of young men fighting a superior force in obsolete planes. But hey, it is not you doing the dying is it, just someone elses son.
WW2 saw the US hopelessly unprepared and it wasn't the fat cats who paid the price for it. Afterwards, the US promised itself to never be caught unprepared again. Preparing your national defense for what is happening now is silly, it takes decades to prepare and nobody can predict even 5 years ahead. War is wasteful, being prepared so war can be avoided only seems wasteful. Until you get it wrong.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
McCain clearly is a first-rate idiot. Many nations now possess a sizeable fleet of modern Russian fighters like the Su 27 and the Su 35. These will make little pieces of metal and meat out of F15s, as these are much older, less maneuverable planes, if piloted by well-trained crews. The F15, F16 and F18 are already Very Old Designs, so it is obvious that a new fighter is required. Currently, the F22 is all America has and it is clearly needed if you look at the competition.
Thank god McCain never mad is POTUS. He is one of these Sound-Bite Idiots which permeate American Politics.
Of course the public cares about car crashes that's why we have seat belts, air bags, speed limits, crumple zones, crash testing with safety ratings, speed limits, drink driving bans, license requirements to be allowed to drive, vast amounts of police resources enforcing the above rules and so on. I'd say the public cares enough to demand that quite significant resources are spent to help reducing car crash deaths.
Most of those were created and enforced b the government over the general objections of the public. The public didn't ask for seatbelts, the public complained about them. The public didn't want airbags, airbags were introduced in the US in the early 1970s, and nobody wanted them until forced on us in the 1980s. The people didn't want most of the changes.
Learn to love Alaska
The philosophical discussion around the rational for the F22, F35, et al is pretty entertaining, but I am surprised that no one has commented on the pilot oxygen system itself. On the Sixty Minutes program last night they showed a diagram that appeared to pull a side stream from the engine EXHAUST(!), filter it chemically and then pass it to the pilot. While this would be warm and compressed, it really bothered me that the pilot was basicly sucking his own tailpipe. Does this not seem wrong to anyone? The other thing I was curious about was that it seemed there was a lot of static analysis of the implementation, no one mentioned gas chrom analysis of the pilots breathing stream during flight. Makes me think back to the days when I coded for a living and I would not see logic errors on the screen that jumped out at a casual passerby. So just saying that on the face of it there appears to be a curious myopia in how the problem is being addressed.
As for the military aspects, we seem to be pretty quick to abandon technology because 'no one does that anymore' (like the Canadian destruction of the Avro Arrow and much of the aviation industry here because with missiles no one needs fighters any more... ) or the Saturn V...
Well then why the fuck didn't "the people" vote that way? Or perhaps your "the people didn't want X" hindsight isn't actually true? Aside from particularly idiotic things like that short-lived seatbelt-ignition-interlock thing, vehicle safety measures were generally pretty popular.
"I don't think the F-22 will ever be seen in the combat it was designed to counter, because that threat is no longer in existence.'"
I beg to differ. Our military is notorious for fighting the last war. Humvees were built to replace jeeps and were great for Gulf War 1...until the IED came about.
So the F-22 isn't good for dealing with terrorists. If those who say that the war on terrorism (or specifically Al Qaeda) is over then the next war might just be with North Korea or Iran where the F-22 would be more useful.
Can't they just add an O2 tank with about an hour's worth of air in parallel to the current system? If it detects a drop in O2, it can start feeding the pilot O2 and he can drop to a lower alt.
>What is the definition of poverty?
In the US?
The bottom 20% is 'poverty'. They could be shitting into gold toilets and it would still be "poverty", because that is the definition we use.
You mean when the Cold War was just getting ramped up between the two largest superpowers in the world? Just what is the modern equivalent to the USSR to which we need this military counter, exactly?
The United States spends $1.2 trillion a year on it's military, more than the rest of the world. Combined. We could stop spending money on new armaments entirely and still have military supremacy over the rest of the world. For decades.
What I don't get is this: They could make equal money building out a fleet of say, 1000 F16 / F18 Superwhaterver BlockZ aircraft. Scary enough and potent enough to deal with any adversary in the next several decades. Cheap enough for generic use.
Building more of the same wouldn't keep all those defense systems engineers employed. Then they go off and find other jobs in other industries. Then some new enemy comes along and we really do need a super-capable new system, and where are the engineers to design it? Trying to stay out in front technically means you need to keep and maintain viable industry support, and that means keeping the defense contractors fed. Eisenhower tried to warn us about this over 50 years ago... :(
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Not when social spending is being slashed while military budgets are ever-fattening sacred cows (decades after the end of the Cold War), it's not. If the United States lopped a trillion dollars off it's annual $1.2 trillion+ war budget, it would leave a lot of money available for other things.
So: they need to be left homeless, otherwise they would end up being unable to afford housing? Ah, the beauty of Randian logic....
To borrow Clinton's line about the economy: it's the standard of living, stupid. If $5000 is enough to ensure a decent lifestyle (i.e. decent housing, food, education, health care, transportation) than $5000 isn't poverty level. If $20000 isn't enough to afford decent housing, food, transport, health care and education, then $20000 falls within the poverty level.
If America is going to bully the rest of the world through it's military and economic imperialism, it could at least feed the world while it's doing it.
Blow it back up your own ass.
As a software engineer working on on-board oxygen generating systems (OBOGS) like the one in the F-22 that's having problems (made by a competitor, btw), I have to call bullshit. OBOGS isn't anything new. It's been around for decades, and is in a laundry list of planes.
That said, this particular OBOGS in the F-22 appears to have some issues. But the pilots aren't refusing to fly because of OBOGS in general.
Performance, weight, cost, and space.
OBOGS will generate a nigh infinite amount of O2 for you, which means you can keep flying longer. The device is smaller and lighter than canisters of oxygen, which makes the plane overall better. Also, working with liquid oxygen, LOX, apparently had an expensive logistical to it on base.
All thanks to the magic of zeolite. Yeah, we call it kitty-litter in the industry too.
Also, when the OBOGS stops working, the pilot can manually switch on emergency bottled air. Duh.
but the f22 has so much use in air combat games by tom clancy lulz
Shut up, get in the plane, and fly it like you were trained, or you will be summarily discharged with criminal proceedings pending. You swore an oath, and you are forsaking that oath to serve your own cowardice, based entirely on rumors and lies.
The US poor person has healthier food, more comfortable lodgings and much better health by almost any measure than the wealthiest king 200 years ago.
The only one of those that may be plausible may be better healthcare. I don't see many poor people living in something like the Palace of Versaille or eating as voraciously as Louis XIV
I would say that the USA economy suffers from hypoxia from military expending.
Wrong. You're off by 2x. At least. Cowboy. Even if China starts spending 200 billion a year, the U.S. is still spending 7 times that.
Did you even TRY to verify your facts before you posted that? Or are you seriously believing the official DOD figures of ~$600BN?
Wrong again. One of those wars is largely over - Iraq - but we've merely redeployed those troops in the region in preparation for the next bogus war of choice - Iran. Or to re-invade Iraq if we decide it's "necessary". Then there's the bevy of undeclared drone wars from Africa to Asia.
The military industrial-congressional-contractor-surviellance complex has only ballooned since Bin Laddin's death, not started to recede.
You seem to be a little light on facts. Medicare's unfunded liability is $89 TRILLION. In other words, $89 trillion in future obligations, for which we currently have no idea where the money will come from. This figure was published in the 2009 Medicare Trustees Report. So it's not right-wing FUD, unless you consider the Medicare Trustees to be right-wing FUD slingers.
When Lyndon Johnson created Medicare, the projected costs of the program were orders of magnitude smaller than the actually turned out to be. (We are going down that same path with Obamacare. The projected costs are already far higher then they were when the program was sold to Congress.) If President Johnson had known the true extent of the monster that Medicare would eventually grow into, he wouldn't have touched it with a ten foot pole, because -- love him or hate him -- he didn't have a deathwish for America's economy.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
My understanding is that the F-22 is the first to attempt to use bleed air for the pilot, so, there is no working system to go look at, the planes you mention all use bottles of oxygen.
emt 377 emt 4
In the long term, the military has to get away from its Top Gun mindset. It's 2012 - all future combat aircraft (and possibly support aircraft as well) should be unmanned. Why?
And yet the military still doesn't have a clue - the Navy just released their proposal for a F-18 replacement that includes a "optional manned" variant. In fact, this dictates a design that meets manned requirements first, with "optional unmanned" variant to follow, in much the same way that the F-35B STOVL dictated the design (and timeline and costs) of the JSF program.
UAVs (as well as Unmanned Surface Vehicles) can and should be used to make the US military safer, more cost-effective and more capable.
No I haven't missed out on 30 years of history. You have intentionally misread what I'm saying just to grasp an opportunity to be a dick to someone you don't know on the internet. WTF is with people and their incapability to have a civilized discussion without insulting people? WTF is wrong with you that you have such a insecurity complex that you have to come here and troll people? If you had 1st grade reading comprehension skills, then you would see that I acknowledged in the first words of my post that "McCain might be right". I'm only citing a previous example of similar shortsightedness as a caution. McCain's statement is narrowly based on current enemy's capabilities, which is not something that will remain static. Who our enemies are and what their capabilities are can both change. I'm not arguing for or against the F-22. I would be all for well thought out elimination of excessive military expenditures. I simply think trying to justify eliminating it based on the fact that right at this moment we are fighting enemies where it isn't needed, is pretty short sighted. There are potential enemies out there with much more advanced air capabilities than what we are currently fighting, and if someone like McCain was going to make a case against developing fighter craft then the future scenarios involving those enemies should be considered. Along the lines of what McCain is saying, based on our current enemies, there probably isn't a great need to build a bunch of any advanced fighter, rather simply refine/test for now, and should an enemy come to light where they are needed, then ramp up production. I am less receptive to an argument that seems to say they are not and never will be needed.
I am in favor of careful reduction in military expenditures (and for those "OMG you want to rob the men who defend our country" hyper-patriots... no, that's not what I want. There's a huge amount of spending that could be reduced and instead flow into pathways that would produce jobs so that when soldiers finish their duty with the military, they can come home and be able to find a job instead of facing high unemployment rates. The hyper-patriots can't be bothered to think that far ahead about the well being of soldiers. The same way the hyper-patriots accused those who were opposed to the Iraq war as being anti-American soldier-haters, and the hyper-patriots were the ones who were ready to rush those soldiers off into harms way and then did an about face and said we needed to bring them home when they realized the consequences of war and the fact that Iraq was not the source of terrorist attacks on America. All they really wanted, which many of them stated openly without shame, is that we needed to go over there and indiscriminately kill 3,000 Muslims.).
As far as decades of supremacy, I don't think citing military expenditures is a legitimate measure of supremacy anyhow, as it is probably a diminishing return. I would bet that the relationship between $ expended and effective military capability is logarithmic. By that same logarithmic relationship, probably a large amount of our expenditures could be eliminated without significantly reducing our military power. I've worked for contractors, where at the end of the year they are basically scrambling to come up with proposals of how to burn up the money that commanders have left to spend, because they want to ensure that there budgets are not reduced based on the previous year's reduced spending.
Funny thought: Is it possible POLLUTION is giving them trouble? My first thought was 'look for differences in air mixtures between the bottles and air pulled via bleed air systems', but the more I thought about it, depending on where they're flying, they could be sucking up ozone, air particulates, and any number of other chemicals that might have been a 'cloud' rather than evenly dissipated. Same principle as having your A/C on, and have a car ahead of you belch out thick black smoke, then when you drive through it, guess what the inside of your car is like. Seems to me the smart thing to do would be have some sort of air purity sensors (like the emission tester rigs used for EPA automotive emissions testing) If pollutants above X ppm are discovered, vent the bleed air and switch over to a temporary backup tank (Maybe 1lb tank or something just enough to give you say 5 minutes of clean air in an 'emergency').
IANA engineer however, nor a chemist specializing in gaseous mixtures.