US Air Force requests funding for 20 more F-22 fighters

What did they do with the one’s that they already have??? Do we really need to be spending this kind of money right now??? Have they tried to cut costs and perhaps save money???

Oops. I am not talking to my kids right now am I. LOL.

Give the Air Force those planes they need them!!!

Related...

Air Force officials: Service is getting too small, aircraft too old

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1916399/posts

Those are mighty perty planes.

I bet when all is said and done...we end up with the 381...

It's possible, especially given the economy of scale, etc., being bandied about, but remember the Air Force has already had to make a lot of cuts to get the fighters they are getting - they've RIFed 10s of thousands of airmen in order to help pay for some programs (I've heard 40,000 were forced to leave or take other jobs or join other branches). They are probably also going to have to give up some money to the Army and Marine Corps for Iraq and Afghanistan (rightfully so - the Army and Marines have got to be chewing through their budgets at a rapid pace since both theaters are hard on equipment and manpower).

It's almost like Vietnam - you have a very expensive ongoing operation (two actually), that is competing with a program whose components won't all be built and deployed for several years to come. Some good programs got cut during Vietnam in favor of operations in Vietnam, and I don't put it past the Democrats to use Iraq against the Air Force and say something like "wouldn't it be better to spend the money on the Army and Marines, since you aren't fighting anybody in the air".

It's also the age-old problem of fighting the last war - F-35s could be used fairly extensively in both Iraq and Afghanistan if they were available in production numbers right now, whereas the F-22s would be really limited (they do have air-to-ground capabilities, but not like the F-35s). Just watch, somebody will say "the F-22s are for threats that don't currently exist".

I hear what you are saying and can understand the sentiment, to a degree. But reality remains, when your boots are on the ground, in the sh*t, and you have to call in a run danger close......You want it from actual human eyes in the sky, with real SA....not some pilot-less drone (where the pilot is actually thousands of miles away looking through a straw-size hole and has absolutely no real SA).

UAVs are wonderful. They are here to stay. They are only going to improve. But human piloted military aircraft will be needed well into the future.

Manned aircraft will be around for a while, but what you will see in UAVs over the next five-ten years will knock your socks off. I've got a friend working on UAVs, and just mentioning what has been published, i.e. unclassified, (Popular Mechanics/Science, Wired, Military Channel, Discovery Channel, etc., some of which he has contributed to), there is some stuff coming online that the ground pounders will love.

They are looking at UAVs with a loitering capability of 24+ hours with a lot bigger payload than what we have deployed now with the Predators, Reapers, and Warriors and they are working on putting this power directly into the hands of a company or even platoon commander.

I'm talking about a platoon commander under fire pulling up map on a small computer, designating some targets, and from a "flock" of UAVs circling overhead, a couple of UAVs drop down and within a few minutes have put Hellfires or Viper Strikes on the targets.

They are talking about having UAVs basically follow platoons/companies out on patrol. That's very hard to do with manned aircraft, especially in some of the situations you have in Iraq where attacks can be brief, and by the time Apaches (or Cobras) or A-10s or F-16s are on the scene, the bad guys have fled. Because of the fuel requirements, expense, etc., it's very hard to have manned aircraft standing by directly over a patrol on the off-chance there is an attack.

I'm not going to say anything else, other than there are going to be ground support capabilities coming out of UAVs that manned aircraft cannot even come close to matching.

‘179 F-22’s for the entire Nation...... That’s 3 - 4 aircraft per State!

Come On USA...We can do better than this!! Fund them all!!!’

I couldn’t agree more - you’ve spent all that money developing it, so build them. Britain has more Typhoons to cover a small country that would fit into Texas than the US has Raptors covering the whole US!

Next year over Tehran, we’ll need every Raptor we can get.

Your #7 is well said.

I couldn’t agree more - you’ve spent all that money developing it, so build them. Britain has more Typhoons to cover a small country that would fit into Texas than the US has Raptors covering the whole US!

Britain is going to have around 220 or so Typhoons. We are going to have 180 or so F-22s PLUS 1800 F-35s. The F-35s could take on (and take out) any aircraft currently deployed in the world (including anything in the US Air Force or Navy) with the possible exception of some of the stuff the Soviets are bringing online (although that's questionable and very much up for debate).

Some of you are really underestimating the F-35s. As a matter of fact, the F-35 has elements of the F-22 (and a few tricks the F-22 doesn't have).

All the Air Force brass has to do is tell congress they don’t want them, they don’t need them, spend the money somewhere else.

Congress would be sure to make the Air Force take more of the planes.

Overnight update from the Titanium Queen: "This ain't gonna happen. Orders for the F-35 and 787 will keep every spindle and production house in the US, Canada and Europe busy for the next 2 years. Boeing will have to shut down the F-22 line for 2 years."

Cartman voice: "Son of a b*tch!"

Obviously, there is a concern about F-22 tech getting in the hands of China, Russia, etc if it’s sold to Japan, the UK, Australia. But it may eventually anyway, and if the US does all it’s production first, and is working on the next gen at the same time, by the time our allies get to buy, it’s probably too late for an enemy to get too much of an advantage, because it takes years to integrate the tech they mught steal into their own designs.

Besides, if we do what the Russkies used to do - only sell an export version (i.e. not quite bleeding edge), then the Russkies and Chinese will be even further behind the technological curve while we build more F-22s at a lower cost per.