Posted on 07/21/2009 5:36:56 PM PDT by Kaslin
Defense Spending: The TARP bailout may hit $24 trillion, but the Senate says the F-22 is too expensive to build and maintain. So why are the Japanese so desperate to buy this "unnecessary" Cold War weapon?
After some hope the production lines would be kept open, the Senate succumbed to arguments by the administration and others that the fighter was too expensive, too hard to maintain and not built for the wars America is fighting these days.
President Obama welcomed the Senate vote, saying he rejected the notion that the country has to "waste billions of taxpayers dollars" on outdated defense projects.
Well, the inspector general in charge of overseeing the Treasury Department's bank-bailout program now says the massive endeavor could end up costing taxpayers almost $24 trillion in a worst-case scenario. Yet we can't afford to build just seven more F-22s?
Keeping the F-22 production lines open would be a real stimulus saving real jobs. Lockheed Martin, the main contractor, says 25,000 people are directly employed in building the plane, and another 70,000 have indirect links, particularly in Georgia, Texas and California. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., a supporter of the program, says there are 1,000 suppliers in 44 states. That's wasteful?
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Ping.
Remember who voted this down!
I wonder how many of those unionized workers at L/M voted for “0”?
This is really simple, the F-22 is a first strike weapon. Muslims get scared of this, especially Iranians and othe nuclear aspirants.
ZERO said her would defang America.
What wrong with the Japanese throwing their money away, good for them. Has nothing to do with the united states not buying the over priced garbage.
Everyone should remember
HS. Trident missiles are our first strike weapons. Part of the reason why the guys who push these systems lack credibility is that they try to justify them with nonexistent missions like the argument that we need them for nuclear strike.
The Cold War is so over and no serious defense analyst argues that we don't have far more nukes than we need.
The reasons in the childish so-called editorial, you are pissing away billions on Tarp, whine, cry, burp, why want you piss away a few more million on a plane that has no useful purpose and costs millions in upkeep. Damn that is really clear thinking.
Yeah, my senator is one of them. I will definitely remember when he runs for reelection
Yes, but there were legitimate arguments to shut it down. If nothing more, the savings can go to the unexpected maintenance costs.
I disagree however, with the argument stating that it meeds to be cut because it hasn’t even been used in IZ or AF. That is intellectual dishonesty.
Why in the heck would you wheel out this technology for your enem(ies) to study, in a fight where the technology is irrelevent?
If you need to check the performance of the F-22, go out to the Mojave desert.
Or practice on Venezuela. Something.
Now how much money was given to Acorn again? $6-8 billion if I remember correctly.
China, Russia, Venezuala, NoKo, Iran all still exist & are gunning for us.
I guess people forget what deterrent means.
tahDeetz
Gates et al seem to think that if we need an air superiority fighter next time we have a war, they'll just order one up. The F35 certainly will not do the job, if it ever gets off the groound and goes into production.
So begins the first stage of the Obama/Gates unilteral disarmament program.
The F-22 is waste of resources on many levels.
It’s 6X as expensive as Russian/Chinese 4.5 Gen Fighters.
It requires 70 HOURS of maintenance for every 1 hour of flight. Russian/Chinese fighters require 10 hrs for 1 hour of flight.
SU-35s/J-11Bs are already coming off the production line with reduced RCS, AESA radars, and updated Infrared and Visual range missile targeting systems.
We simply cannot win the attrition game with such a platform. It would be a better allocation of resources to build effective delivery systems which would destroy enemy air bases and complement that effort with updating the entire fighter fleet to 4.5 Gen technology. And money left over really should be plowed into unmanned, autonomous fighter development.
Hopefully all those union stooges at defense contractors lose their jobs. I knew someone who worked at one of them and they found out they were not a Dem. They pushed them out in less than a month.
Third eworld countries that are bankrupt now do not need advanced fighters or a space program. Shut down NASA and fire more union stooges and govt make work jobs.
"First Strike" is not a phrase applied only to nuclear warfare. The F-22 is, after all, a combination of the roles of the F-15 and the F-117 Stealth Fighter. The latter was most assuredly a first-strike weapon and was used as such in the Persian Gulf War and later - air superiority missions are by no means a thing of the past. Nobody is losing credibility over claims that the F-22 is the tip of the airpower spear.
Or maybe I just missed CNN's report on our Tridents taking out the Iraqi army on 16 January 1991.
Not sure...but I think that I agree with the cut. I would rather see the money spent on the strike fighter. I know this will (may) rile some, but I see both as useful, but the strike fighter more promising and needed immediately. The F22 may be a requirement in a few years...
"The plane is too good! It's an air superiority weapon. Wouldn't be fair to (ahem) other countries. Die Infidels!"
And that line proved the other posters point. ROFLOL
You may be correct, that is pretty close to where the last one crashed.
Take the computing technology of the smallest cell phone, put it in a fast small missile and a plane like the f 22 cannot live on the battle field. Heat seeking missiles are a thing of the past. The new ones knows what your plane looks like and it coming after you.
Here’s a newsflash for some of you:
When an air war is fought, the side flying 40 year-old designs is in trouble.
The F-15 is a 40 year old design. (”An industry-wide competition ended on December 23, 1969 when McDonnell Douglas was awarded the contract for the F-15.” - GlobalSecurity.org)
Yeah, improvements have been made, but it is still a 40 year-old design.
The F-16? 35 years old. (”On 13 January 1975 the Air Force announced that the YF-16’s performance had made it the winner of its Air Combat Fighter (ACF) competition. “ - GlobalSecurity.org)
The F-18? 34 years old (”The resulting redesign was extensive and, when the McDonnell Douglas design was selected as winner in 1976, it was assigned the F-18A designation.” - GlobalSecurity.org)
Yeah, the F-22 is expensive. It outclasses everything else in the sky.
But, do you know what is even more expensive? Losing a war.
Russia, China and India have the manpower/expertise and/or experience to build an Air Force capable of stalemating or defeating the US, IF we don’t keep pushing the envelope.
These crummy little shooting matches in Iraq and Afghanistan (no disrepect intended here) will pale in comparison to an all-out shooting war with China or Russia.
That will never happen, right? 20 more years of liberal leadership will result in the US retiring it’s nuclear arsenal, or diminishing it to the point that conventional war becomes viable.
Some of you people need to wake up. Never fight a war from a position of weakness. EVER.
But I thought that under Barry the Magnificent that all world leaders would be forever sitting around the campfire sharing a beer and singing kumbaya with no need for war? (sarc/)
Just a few years ago the B-1 bomber was taking huge criticism for only being able to deliver 51 percent MC rate. The fact of the matter was that the pauper USAF was only funding 49 percent of the aircraft systems required maintenance plan to keep it healthy. Dedicated maintenance personnel squeezed out an additional 2 percent through just plain hard work.
Looking at recent history of the F-22 shows a different story than that painted by the Post. Around the 2005-6, the F-22 upgrade schedule was on track. This effort was thrown into disarray when the needs of the Afghanistan and Iraq war—at over $10-13 billion per month— pulled scheduled funds from the F-22 program.
The F-22 reached initial operating capability (IOC) in 2005. In the years 2006-2008, maintenance metrics from real live USAF squadrons came in. This is where real life at the squadron level validates (or disproves) the optimistic planning from previous years of aircraft development. What was shown is that the aircraft was spending a lot of time at the unit level in the low observable (L.O.) maintenance hanger. Consider that the aircraft was designed to be maintenance friendly where only 5 percent of maintenance actions required refurbishment of the low observable components on the F-22. In the end it wasn’t any kind of disaster but a learning curve. It took a while for airmen and NCO’s —the enlisted maintenance force that makes or breaks a flying unit—to get maintenance experience on this new kind of aircraft That process includes everything from training, keeping methods that work, throwing out ones that don’t and filtering all of that into a reliable form of tribal knowledge.
Fast forward to where in one deployment, an F-22 unit put up all of their scheduled missions (350 sorties) for a stunning 100 percent MC rate. This means that the F-22 community has risen to the challenge and put up MC rates that match or exceed current “legacy” aircraft in deployments. Of course none of this was mentioned in the Washington Post article.
More? Maintenance Supers (the lead maintenance NCO in a unit) will tell you a lot of things that are hassle-free with the jet. For example the Pratt and Whitney F-119 motors don’t require a lot of extra work. Still More? The F-22 community has won sustainment awards for its maintenance processes. Of interest is that the methods of logistics and sustainment used in the program are a baseline for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. While the F-35 has a long way to go to prove itself, it is designed so that only 1-2 percent of maintenance processes require L.O. refurbishment. No matter. When the F-22 is out of production, guess what the yellow journalism crowd will pick on next?
http://www.f-16.net/news_article3621.html
As opposed 2 giving Acorn 5 times that much money?
Whats a billion or 2 here or there when your mortgaging trillions...eh?
The F22 & F35 are designed for different roles & are not interchangeable.
To win any conflict outright, air supremacy must be achieved. That is the F22 role, bottom line.
I’ve heard otherwise in re maintenance.
Do u really think a gaggle of Lib/Dems are gonna plow that money back into the military budget?
Hell no!!
Its gonna be used to buy more Dem votes, simple as that.
tahDeetz
To the contrary they are so much of an advancement over even our own current fighter inventory, that it's almost scary. I've read reports of training exercises where one or two F22's routinely face off against current US fighters (F15's, F16's or F18's) and achieve 100% kill rates against odds of 8 to 1 and more. You can't fight what you can't see.
The reason that we don't want to sell these to other countries is the danger of one of them falling into the wrong hands. If China or Russia got their hands on planes like these, we would be in big trouble if we were to ever go to war with them.
ROTFL
I hope it didn’t happen.
Nothing surprises me anymore.
...because it would kill their MiGs and Sukhois in A2A combat like child's play, and bomb their nuke and missile facilities by surprise.
RINOs.
Obama lost Georgia by 5.2% to McCain. He lost Texas by 11.7%. Need I say more?
The people working on building these planes are proud, patriotic Americans - just the kind of people who the Obamas most despise. What do they care that such people will lose their jobs?
Apparently we have not developed the aerial technology to defeat the F-LP...(Liberal Politician)
nukes, not for low intensity wars ... Like taking out Irans nukes.
Russia wins with better fighters to sell and we lose. Why is this a surprise from the fraud occupying the oval office.
What's wrong with using punctuation and syntax in a meaningful way?
It’s not an attrition game with the F-22. I have spoken to F-15 pilots who have taken them on in exercises. The score generally runs: Raptor kills everything flying and the F-15 never sees them coming. That’s not attrition, that’s total air superiority.
Is that anywhere near where the F-15E crashed this month? Or the F-15D that crashed last year? Or the two F-15C's that crashed in 2007? Or the F-15K that crashed in 2006?
Good post, thanks!
Five more years of text messages and no one will know the meaning of your post!!
Has anyone calculated how many F-22s could be bought with just 1%
(or 10%) of TARP, or Healthcare ???
Hundreds !!!
Call McCain and tell ‘em
(I’m tired of doing it - he never responded. And lost.)
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