Obama has greased the skids, though, and I hate being right about that. Here was a little graphic I created before the election:
Posted on 04/06/2009 10:52:31 AM PDT by jazusamo
In a blow to Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon has decided to purchase to end funding of the F-22 fighter jet.
The decision by Defense Secretary Robert Gates will rouse widespread opposition in Congress and is likely to bog down the 2010 budget approval process, with F-22 supporters maneuvering to secure more money.
The Pentagon will fund four of the radar-evading stealth fighters in the upcoming 2009 emergency war-spending request, but those additional aircraft will do little to keep the production line in Marietta, Ga., open beyond 2011. Lockheed Martin is the main contractor for the F-22, each of which costs about $140 million.
Gates announced the decision at a press conference on the Defense budget on Monday afternoon.
No money will be requested in the fiscal 2010 budget, congressional and industry sources familiar with the budget briefings told The Hill. Gates has been making calls to the chairmen of the congressional defense committees.
The final F-22 of the 183 currently on order will be delivered at the end of 2011. Building another four would keep the line open for only a few months beyond that end date.
Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors, including Boeing, in recent weeks have stepped up their campaign to keep the production line open. They argue that 25,000 people work directly for the 1,000 suppliers of the F-22 in 44 states, and another 70,000 indirectly owe their jobs to this program.
OK Messiah Obama can we sell them to the countries that are not willing to succumb to the Chicoms and Russians?
The stupidity of this man knows no bounds.
“I think it’s been outrun by technology anyway. Much cheaper to go unmanned.”
You don’t know enough to express an opinion. That is why national defense strategy shouldn’t be determined by amateurs.
Ideology trumps facts and common sense. A priority of The Usurper is to neuter the US. His logic will be that if people are not afraid of us the will not attack us. Now think about that for a second. What happens when people are not afraid of you? But that will be the talking point and the brain dead American public will just sit there shaking its yes like a bobble head.
Incredible.
Exactly. When we go up against a dedicated, well equipped and well trained foe who makes the decision to challenge the US in the sky, and we don’t have the best equipment to make it an unfair fight, American blood is going to flow.
We are so used to having complete air superiority, that the idiots just cannot imagine that it isn’t a God Given Right.
I am a student of history (to the best of my ability) and when we don’t OWN the air, our troops bleed. Everyone today looks at WWII like it was a done deal, that there is no question that the allies were going to win, but early in the war we and the axis forces had our hands on each other’s necks, and the carnage was great. And the outcome was not a sure thing.
Imagine what Iraq would have been like if Saddam had an airforce as well equipped and trained as the Russians or the Chinese and decided to put up a fight. Sure, we could have beat them eventually...but we would have paid a price in hardware and lives.
I am a member of U.M. and I can assure you that we did NOT vote for O. Our International union decided to support him {why any defense contractor union would support a democrat is a very good question}
As far as I know most of the campain stuff is still in a room at the union hall—nobody wanted it.
I should point out that McCain is no friend of Locheed/Martin eather but I don’t think we would gut the armed services as Obambi is.
Not in either of our lifetimes. Certainly the UAVs will improve and do more, but the need for a pilot actually flying in the airplane isn't going to go away, ever, whether in combat or peacetime.
And, there will likely be a major setback or two when something goes wrong and the controllers lose control and people get killed when it comes down. After a few really bad accidents, I imagine lawyers will greatly increase the cost of UAVs, if you catch my drift.
Sigh. I wish you didn’t have to start this thread. There are a lot of people who have strong opinions about this, and there always seems to be the same type of discussion so it gets hashed out again and again.
There are the people who say it should be cancelled because it is a pork barrel project.
There are people who advocate unmanned craft.
There are people who say we should re-engineer our existing fighters to be stealthy.
There are people who say there is no need for air superiority because the last wars didn’t involve fighting for it.
There are people who understand engineering but don’t understand history, aviation or warfare, and there are people who don’t even understand engineering, much less the rest.
It is true the platform is expensive. But there is nothing more expensive than the blood and lives of our men and women in uniform.
I could hypothesize a 'cockpit' that rivaled cost of the F22 it is to substitute for. Actually, lots of them.
Also, unless it is pretty much like a full scale simulator - the 'pilot' will have a heck of a time dealing with a 3-D battle (currently, they are concentrated on a fixed target or a zone; not looking for gomer at the six...hun in the sun...etc.).
If you want to go all Sara Conner, you might think about a man-less battle with AI providing discretion to the platforms. In which case I'd invest heavily in anti-unmanned platform defenses.
I agree that guns will have a large role in unmanned development, the vehicle is cheap enough to put in close and a missile hanging on the wing basically doubles the cost.
Jamming, misdirection, and EMP are the true weapons of the future (if we're willing to address them) unless there's a wholesale reversion to wire cables and vacuum tubes. Oh, and hand cranked telephones with miles of wire.
Or, maybe I'm just old fashioned.
Obama has greased the skids, though, and I hate being right about that. Here was a little graphic I created before the election:
While it's true that use doesn't mean abuse, it would be interesting to see how much the monthly and yearly average flight hours have changed since 9/11 as well as the tonnage of munitions dropped. The F-15s (other than the F-15E) are starting to come apart.
I believe you covered about every argument by some people why we should scrub the program but your last sentence trumps all those arguments and though it’s expensive it does what it was designed to do and more.
My friends OUR America is slipping under the waves.
Once it's in service, the branches and countries flying it will figure it out, how to use it and how to improve it. Just takes time and money and more money.
The F-22 is a big leap beyond the F-15. The F-35 will be an improvement on the AV-8B and it has supercruise, unlike the F-18 and F/A-18. It has stealth and computer power over all of three and much easier maintenance, but is it a major leap better at doing the job it needs to do? We'll have to wait and see...someday...
There will be no need to surrender because we will already be one of them.
heh heh heh love that one...he will probably also use the Klinton model and give the enemy our secrets....and by the way...why is the Sneaky Little Bitch slaming our Nation in Islamic Europe and in Islamic Turkey? WTH?
Very good pic of the Raptor, thanks.
Yes, although the F-22 program DOES gobble up a lot of DoD money, it also is the centerpiece of how the USAF has built its battle strategy on air superiority, based upon Quality vs. Quantity.
Send in a squadron of F-22s with some B-2s, E-6s, A-10s and KC-10 refueling support and you can knock out key nodes of logistics, communication and command/control for nearly ANY nation very quickly and with minimal US loss.
I hope the affect Congressional districts, special interests groups and entire political machine in D.C. bite Obama on the a$$ for this one.
It's a short term gain for a long term loss! Pure stupidity.
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