F-22 fighter program gets the axe

[steelreserve]

Originally Posted by synegymus

I know you are mainly talking about our superiority to the North Korean military, but you are missing the entire issue with North Korea. They have 1000's of short range missiles pointed at Seoul which is only 40 miles from there boarder and boast a population of 10 million.

You are right that we would probably walk all over them but not before they completely leveled Seoul the death toll would be enormous.

The comparison to Iraq is right on except lots of soldiers is an understatement DPRK army has over a million soldiers and don't forget they have at least two nukes! Although presumably no way to delivery the payload.

I don't think they actually have any nukes that work. Remember when they tried to set the first one off, and it fizzled to like 5% of the size of the original Hiroshima explosion? That's what happens when you make a plutonium bomb and can't build the detonating mechanism correctly. They haven't tried again, so I'm pretty sure they're still too incompetent to get it right.

Anyway, yeah, North Korea could definitely cause a lot of destruction if it suddenly attacked South Korea unannounced. But if that happened, I don't see how F-22s or the U.S. Air Force would help. The U.S. could probably counterattack and win the war pretty quickly ... but we can't react instantly, so there would inevitably be a day or two that were pretty bloody while we tried to organize a response.

I don't really see a way around that, no matter what kind of air superiority we have. But the important part in my mind is that we're so much more powerful in general that North Korea knows a short 24-hour period of destruction is all they could accomplish -- then it'd be over for them. To keep that effect in place, it doesn't matter whether we're using ... F-18s, F-22s, F-35s, B-1s, B-2s, B-52s, AC-130s, A-10s or whatever. Unless something drastically changes, we'll always have a whole array of aircraft that could wipe the floor with whatever they're using. It's too bad it's the end of the line for the F-22, but I'm sure we'll be on to the next one plenty soon.

[MasterOfPuppets]

List of active United States military aircraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ircraft#Attack

[Killer]

Originally Posted by steelreserve

Exactly. Air superiority today is more like, can you afford to have ANY modern planes or can't you? The dozen or so countries that can afford to blow $100M-plus per aircraft don't get into wars with each other, and they'll automatically win any war against the mid-major countries that use old Soviet stuff, or the Division II countries with no air force at all.

In fact, I think that's what the JSF is all about: Once you're in that elite club, there are just a handful of options for top-of-the-line fighters, and nobody's got anything that's leaps and bounds ahead of anything else.

That's not entirely true. The F-22 could get through the SAM sites and missle defense of any country and knock them out for the rest of the planes. The F 35 can't do that.

The question will be is the 187 F-22's we have already, enough. That and Congress can still have their say about Gate's recommendation.


I don't know, but the word on the street is the Air Force says let them stop and it's the contractors who are crying the loudest.


In it's 10 years of development, the Air Force wants something newer and better already? They must have found something. Or that $140M price, that could buy a couple of thousand new Predators - the AF likes their toys.

---------------------------

F-22A development

By 1990 Lockheed Martin, teamed with Boeing and General Dynamics, had built and flown the demonstration prototype aircraft, designated YF-22. The first F-22 fighter aircraft was unveiled in April 1997 and was given the name Raptor.

In September 2002, the USAF decided to redesignate the aircraft F/A-22 to reflect its multi-mission capability in ground attack as well as air-to-air roles. The aircraft's designation was changed again to F-22A when it achieved initial operating capability (IOC) in December 2005.

The decision to proceed to low-rate initial production (LRIP) was authorised in August 2001 and Lockheed Martin delivered 49 aircraft under LRIP contracts. Initial operational test and evaluation began in April 2004 and was successfully completed in February 2005.

A further 60 Raptors were ordered in July 2007, bringing total ordered to 183, with production to 2011. The USAF has a total requirement of 381 aircraft but funding may not be made available for more than 183. By July 2008, 122 aircraft had been delivered.

The first operational wing of F-22A Raptors was Langley AFB in Virginia with a fleet of 40 aircraft. Elmendorff AFB, Alaska, became the second in August 2007 and Holloman AFB, New Mexico the third in June 2008. Operational Raptors will also be based at Hickam AFB Hawaii.

The F-22 achieved full operational capability in December 2007.

In February 2007, 12 F-22 aircraft began the first overseas deployment of the fighter at Kadena Air Base in Japan. The aircraft returned in May 2007.

During flight tests, the F-22A has demonstrated the ability to 'supercruise', flying at sustained speeds of over Mach 1.5 without the use of afterburner.

Lockheed Martin has put forward proposals for a fighter-bomber version of the F-22, the FB-22, which will have larger delta wings, longer range and the ability to carry an external weapons payload of 4,500kg and total weapons payload of 15,000kg.

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/f22/

[steelreserve]

Well, it certainly looks like we're relying heavily on the F-35, but if I had to guess, we'll probably still be using F-22s well into the 2020s or 2030s even when it's relegated to the status of the "lower end" plane in the arsenal. If there's still a use for them that other planes can't fill, our military isn't stupid enough to quit using them entirely. I mean, we're still flying B-52s, for crying out loud. When did they build the last one of those, the 1960s?

[hindes204]

Wow...as a member of the Air Force, you would think i would be able to intelligently contribute to this conversation...unfortunately i have always worked on heavy aircraft and I'm not too familiar with fighters, it seems that most of you know more about this subject than i do...kinda sad actually

[MasterOfPuppets]

Originally Posted by Killer

That's not entirely true. The F-22 could get through the SAM sites and missle defense of any country and knock them out for the rest of the planes. The F 35 can't do that.

In it's 10 years of development, the Air Force wants something newer and better already? They must have found something. Or that $140M price, that could buy a couple of thousand new Predators - the AF likes their toys.
]

they'd need a lot of em

Cost for an early production Predator was about $3.2 million

]More than one third of all deployed Predator spy planes have crashed. 55 were lost because of "equipment failure, operator errors or weather". Four of them were shot down in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq; 11 were lost in combat situations, such as "running out of fuel while protecting troops under fire."[1]

The F-35 appears to be a smaller, slightly more conventional, one-engine sibling of the sleeker, twin-engine F-22 Raptor, and indeed drew elements from it. The exhaust duct design was inspired by the General Dynamics Model 200, a 1972 VTOL aircraft designed for the Sea Control Ship.[15][verification needed] Lockheed teamed with the Yakovlev Design Bureau, developer of the Yakovlev Yak-141 "Freestyle", in the 1990s.[16][17] Stealth technology makes the aircraft difficult to detect as it approaches short-range tracking radar.

Some improvements over current-generation fighter aircraft are:

* Durable, low-maintenance stealth technology;

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II[/url
[IMG][/IMG]

F22
[IMG][/IMG]

[OneForTheToe]

Originally Posted by Killer

That's not entirely true. The F-22 could get through the SAM sites and missle defense of any country and knock them out for the rest of the planes. The F 35 can't do that.

That is a good point. However, the thing that worries me a bit about planes that rely a great deal on stealth technology is that, since radar and sam technology wouldn't seem to take as long as a high tech jets to turn over into a newer, better generation, a miitary plane's invisibility to radar could be compromised shortly after the plane roles off the assembly line. You also have to think about space detection technologies if considering the Chinese or Russian military. I think this might be the issue a bit with the F-117. I find it hard to believe that is a full scale war the the Russian Military wouldn't be able to find an neutralize the 117s. It's not like they have many other capabilities other than their radar evading one's.


Fortunately, with the Raptor, it seems that the plane has many capabilites other than it's low radar profile. Still, given the time from design to entry into service for many military planes (20 years sometimes) it is an issue.

[xfl2001fan]

Originally Posted by steelreserve

Well, it certainly looks like we're relying heavily on the F-35, but if I had to guess, we'll probably still be using F-22s well into the 2020s or 2030s even when it's relegated to the status of the "lower end" plane in the arsenal. If there's still a use for them that other planes can't fill, our military isn't stupid enough to quit using them entirely. I mean, we're still flying B-52s, for crying out loud. When did they build the last one of those, the 1960s?

Yeah, but are the politicians smart enough to listen to our military?

[Killer]

Originally Posted by MasterOfPuppets

they'd need a lot of em

Predators are cool - I used to hang out with them guys in their hanger.





...an yes the F-35 is stealthy - but it's still not in the same class as the F-22.

And with bombs hanging under the F-35's wings (the job it's designed to do) that "stealth" advantage goes away.


more tidbits

-F-22 carries twice as many air-to-air missiles as the F-35A, fights at nearly twice the altitude and at 50% greater airspeed than the F-35 , turns at twice the rate of the F-35 and only the F-22 has vectored thrust, giving it twice the maneuverability of an F-35.

We're selling to F-35's to half the world - we won't sell them something we can't beat.

anyhow - Gates' decision not to build any more than the 187 currently on order will still give the AF 8 or 9 full squadrons that will be around for quite some time to come.

[revefsreleets]

Sounds like 200 of the F-22's might be enough, GIVEN CURRENT CONDITIONS<> for us to maintain superiority against any enemy.

But we need to stay one step ahead of those crazy effers...