Posted on 08/14/2011 11:58:36 AM PDT by skeptoid
It's the most expensive fighter jet ever built. Yet the F-22 Raptor has never seen a day of combat, and its future is clouded by a government safety investigation that has grounded the jet for months. The fleet of 158 F-22s, including those in Alaska, has been sidelined since May 3 after more than a dozen incidents in which oxygen was cut off to pilots, making them woozy. The malfunction is suspected of contributing to at least one fatal accident, in Alaska. At an estimated cost of $412 million each, the F-22s amount to about $65 billion sitting on the tarmac. The grounding is the latest dark chapter for an aircraft plagued by problems and whose need was called into question even before its first test flight.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
My 357 hasn’t killed a man yet but I have no doubt it will work as advertised when called upon
Do the geniuses at the Anchorage Daily Rag want there to be more combat, or do they just want us to risk our best assets on it, whether they're needed or not?
The LA Times is way more left-wing than the NY Times. Weirdly enough, it used to be more conservative, but those days are long gone, thanks to massive immigration (into CA) from the liberal states, as well as from abroad.
Mostly Chicago Bears sites?
Never had seen a 24-foot Powerfoil X before!
I see there's an official BigAssFans Whoopee Cushion available.
No, Steelers....
Quite an engineer.
“Remember the Sherman vs. the Tiger? Mass produced cheaper weapons will win the war.”
Poor analogy. The Tiger was designed as an offensive strike weapon and had kill ratios of greater than 10:1 in that capacity. The defensive nature of its combat with Shermans was a use it was not designed for.
The Cold War; we never went into battle, we just outspent the enemy.
Plus.. the ‘countermeasures’ are cheaper.
The pols were also against the F-15 and the F-16.
They wagged their tongues how the venerable F-4 was good enough for future wars and we could just push the development of any new fighters into the "future."
They nearly killed the B-1 until Reagan pushed it through and even then they only built 100. It was a great nuclear capable bomber and has even been admirable in a conventional form. We should have built more of them.
“The service calculated that for every hour in the air, the F-22 spends 45 hours undergoing maintenance.”
I’m guessing much of that is maintaining the RCS. It takes a lot of work....
Wow!So what.The F-22 has never seen battle.Maybe we should start a war to try out our new toys.These People are out of their minds.Every new Aircraft or ship or weapons system has had troubles in the development stage even well after it went into production.
The history of military equipment development in the U.S. is loaded with such incidents.
The Air Force will determine what the Problem is with the Life Support systems and they will be repaired.
wrong on both counts
Okay. Count me as someone who sees this title as fatuous, as it implies that the F-22 isn't worth having because it has never seen combat. The nuclear missile submarine had never seen combat, but it was damn sure worthwhile during the Cold War. The M1 Abrams had never seen combat for eleven years after deployment, likewise the Tomcat for about fifteen years.
When we get into a shooting war with an opponent who really wants to go toe to toe with us to contest something, and has capable aircraft in large numbers, there will be a lot of hand-wringing and wailing on why our kill ratio is only about one-to-one or two-to-one, and we get attrited to the point our troops on the ground are left with no air cover.
We depend on air superiority for the success of our armed forces. For our ground troops, our ships at sea, and nearly every single thing you can relate to.
We have been spoiled, because we have had adults in charge most of the time who understood this necessity, and worked towards maintaining it. We have had air superiority in every single engagement of any kind from the end of WWII up until today.
If we do not maintain control of the skies and cede that to our next enemy, we will see American blood shed in ways we have not seen since WWII.
We won’t be able to supply and transport our troops by air. Helicopters are sitting ducks for the enemy if they control the air. We won’t even be able to medieval.
Our supply columns will be destroyed, as will our tank formations. Our ships at sea will suffer the same fate.
In the same way that nearly the entire food chain from livestock down to corn is dependent on water, military power is dependent on air power. Without it, you cannot have and project military power.
So, this stuff is going to get cut. And when the rules of war have to be re-learned and re-written with NEW American blood, people will be looking for scapegoats, as to why we sent our troops into combat without the tools to get the job done. And none of the people responsible, those that made the cuts in the government, and those that agitated for it (including many here on Free Republic), and those dickweeds who wrote this article will be nowhere to be found.
As a matter of fact, those dickweeds that wrote this article will be the ones who are screeching the loudest about the situation when Americans die.
The fleet of 158 F-22s... has been sidelined since May 3 after more than a dozen incidents in which oxygen was cut off to pilots... suspected of contributing to at least one fatal accident... $412 million each, the F-22s amount to about $65 billion sitting on the tarmac.
DAMNED auto spell checking.
Geez. Remember the handwringing about the Abrams? They said it would never work, that it would be a disaster, that the desert would destroy and degrade its capabilities.
Funny. You NEVER HEARD ANOTHER PEEP FROM A SINGLE DAMNED ONE OF THEM after Desert Storm.
“At an estimated cost of $412 million each, the F-22s amount to about $65 billion sitting on the tarmac.”
This is somewhat misleading. Since the buy was cut from 650 planes to 158, the sunk engineering costs are only spread across that many, and are counted into that price. The real cost to build a new F-22 is around $150 million per plane. The F-35 is rapidly catching up in price, and is a much less capable airframe.
The F-22 is a great plane, other than the issues cited. It’s hard to understand why we’re having trouble building reliable breathing systems in 2011. As to the coatings problem, it seems to me that the way to go might be to put on a thin protective coat, as long as it can be removed easily and quickly. Maintain a few frontline planes at full levels, and seal the others to preserve the stealth coating and avoid maintenance costs.
As to the “haven’t seen combat issue”, we could always send them to bomb a few camel jockeys. That’s the only combat role the super hi-tech B-2 bombers have seen...all 19 of them that we have left.
Don’t worry, sooner or later we’ll be up against a first-tier opponent and the F-22s will prove their worth.
I also have a very strong hunch there are lots of untried ways to cut costs while maintaining the force.
I don’t disagree with that statement at all. The procurement process is a huge millstone around the neck of military spending.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
