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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.'"
The projections are wild guesses based on a few years data and sustained exponential growth. 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.
China will never have enough to invade the US, so it isn't a worry. At best, they could attack/invade isolated islands, but China wouldn't be able to invade the US. It would take 10 years of obvious build-up to where they could. The LA police is better armed and trained than any force China could project in California, and would likely be able to repel an invasion of Long Beach without US military involvement.
China has lots of people in their military, and unless Russia completes the tunnel under the Bearing Straight, China couldn't get them to US soil without us killing them faster than they could land them (and if the tunnel was built, I expect it would be shut down fast, in case of war).
There exists no scenario where China threatens the US mainland. The US could abolish the standing army, let China build up for 5-10 years, and China would still be unable to invade the mainland. China is as much a threat to the US as someone who gets a picnic overrun with ants, then asserts they must spend $10,000,000 to ant-proof their $100,000 house because ants could invade at any time, and insecticides would be too little too late.
Learn to love Alaska
His point seems valid. Air superiority hasn't been remotely in question in any war the US has been involved in since WWII. $80B was a massive waste of money for a plane that after 15 years of development is still not combat-ready (and more notably hasn't been missed in the slightest).
The BIG problem with the F22 and F35 is the military is putting the cart before the horse. They design an aircraft that has never flown and pushes the technical envelope in dozens of different ways and then try to come in on a budget. They NEVER, EVER get even close to budget. Never.
Why they think it will be different this time I don't know.
What they SHOULD be doing is giving the advanced designs over to the various skunk works. Let them come up with the tech. When it's mature enough for production, then put it in line of battle machinery. Not before. Yes, that means you have to fund R&D better, but that's what you're doing anyway, just doing a half assed job of it. The advantage there is you aren't hosed if one of the high tech gizmos doesn't turn out the way you want it - you just design the device around another tech. Once you freeze the design, it's much harder to change.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Which in fact seems to be China's exact strategy with the J-20. Build a barely working prototype that superficially looks like the F-22, and let the US continue to spend billions (borrowed from them!) to pay for development of something to "counter" it.
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.
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!
But as we saw everywhere from WWII to Gulf War it ain't the bird, its the man. There is a good reason that the only time the USA pilots score went down was during the political bullshit of Vietnam (give them missiles that work best at long range and then refuse to let them engage until visually IDed, yeah what could go wrong?) and that is because our pilots are insanely well trained and the other guys? Not so much. The only ones so far that could go head to head with us was the Russians who likewise gave an insane amount of training to their pilots.
The problem we are making is funnily enough the exact same one the Germans made in WWII, that is quality over quantity. As McCain said we have NEVER allowed the F22 in combat, why? Too damned expensive to risk it. doesn't make for a good selling point, it's like Nigel's guitar "Don't look at it! Well don't point either!" while the Russians are cranking out MiGs for less than $60 mil flyaway and the SU27 was even cheaper last i checked, something like 35 mil.
IMHO the MUCH better choice if you want stealth is the F15 Stealth Eagle which is a battle tested platform and you can buy 3 for the cost of 1 F22 or F35. We should cancel the lame duck F35 and buy improved F-18s, F16s, and F15s in both regular and stealth packages and concentrate on giving our boys plenty of time in the sims and in the air instead of trillion dollar turkeys. Remember what Stalin said "quantity is a quality all its own" and considering they built 60,000+ T34s to Germany building less than 2000 Tiger Is I'd say the man had a point. If you want even more stealth than the Eagle build a fricking drone, with the new engines that would be a better goal anyway since they can pull more Gs than a pilot can survive.
BTW that reminds me...WTF are we doing still making planes you sit down in? We have known since WWII that if you put the pilot flat on their belly they can take 3 to 5 times the G forces as someone in a sitting position, so why are we building superplanes where you sit down? all that means is we'll have to put limits on their performance much lower than the plane can actually take to keep from killing the pilot, so why do it?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace. ~Charles Sumner
It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
I'll just leave these in this thread...
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
There are already UCAVs- unmanned combat air vehicles- being tested, including the Boeing X-45 and Grumman X-47. Neither is capable of matching the performance of an F-22; these are subsonic aircraft with lower ceilings. But there's no reason that you couldn't build a UCAV with the performance of the F-22; in fact it would have better performance- higher speed, longer range, lower observability- since you could build it without needing to worry about the weight added by the pilot and cockpit, and without worrying about the stealth characteristics of the cockpit.
At any rate, the F-22 program is no longer an issue- production stopped at 187. The idea was that the F-35 would take its place. The problem is that the development of the F-35 has been a nightmare of delays and cost overruns. It turns out that making one fighter to fill the conflicting demands of the Navy, Air Force, and Marines is a lot tougher than it sounds. Right now the program is estimated to run a total of 1 trillion dollars.
I'm all for maintaining air superiority, but I think that spending a trillion dollars on F-35s is insane when our enemies, for the foreseeable future, are goat herders with IEDs and AK-47s. It would make more sense to cut back the F-35 program drastically and continue to use F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s until we can build stealthy, supersonic drones to take their place.