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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.
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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 -
...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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
...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.
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
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.
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.
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.