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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.'"
Ok, if you want to make that argument, you take an F16, skin it to look like an F22, make hundreds of them and fly'em around and look scary.
Would work for about a month until the paint fell off. I'm all for shock and awe, but spending 80+ billion on a bluff is just batshit stupid.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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
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.
Yeah... no.
All your 9mm Glocks and hunting rifles and even AK-47's and AR-15's aren't going to do much good against an armored column. The point of a guerilla response is to make the enemy bleed enough that it (eventually) saps the popular and political will supporting the invasion and occupation, forcing an eventual withdrawal. But that can be an awfully long time: How long was Russia in Afghanistan? the US in Iraq, Afghanistan? The French in Vietnam? The British... everywhere? An "armed resistance" sounds great. But it does not compare in the slightest to a modern, well-equipped, well-trained military. If you think a hundred thousand Angelenos and New Yorkers are going to meet the invaders on the beaches in a pitched battle rivaling Normandy... I want some of what you're smoking. Without a standing military, we'd be eminently invadable.
The only thing we'd have is the firepower to offer some resistance after the occupation. But even still, 300 million amateurs with handguns are still fucking amateurs. The vast majority will know nothing of small unit tactics, communications, survival, evasion, etc. required to effectively fight against an occupying force. And there's a pretty steep learning curve when the smallest mistake means you catch a .50 caliber round in the face. There's a VERY small number of people who own guns and who would be capable of mounting effective resistance. The rest would be ground meat in about 2 days against any reasonably well-trained military. "Red Dawn" was a fanciful notion, but it's just that: fanciful.