Another F-22 thread
 

Something I was wondering about while reading up on the whole '187 F-22's' thing...some USAF higher-ups have apparently supported Gates assertion that that's all we'll need, and while I'm aware that military folks tend to back up their superiors...the question I have is why?

By all reports, it's supposedly one of the greatest fighters ever built, and can more than fill the role of the F-15's it's slated to replace, right? Sure, we may not be in a conventional war right now. We may not be in one for quite some time, but the U.S. Military generally prefers to be prepared for one.

So the question that keeps rolling around in my head is this: Is there something wrong with the F-22? Or if there isn't, is it possible it's the pinnacle of a type of aircraft that the USAF upper management believes is about to become obsolete?

I think that the f 22 will be replaced by something better soon... It is a good plane now.... but boeing, or lockheed, or some one will comeout with a new plane...:yep: and then they will be saying... I want that plane, I want that plane...

The F-22 is expensive...I think that pretty much covers it :06:...

With an administration which thinks butter is better than guns. That is the answer.

I'm sure I saw this before...the Carter Administration. Clinton wasn't much better.

Either the US will be seen as strong or week, and much of it depends who is president. Where do you think the US stands now?

What is "Wrong" With the F-22 is the simple fact that at best it is a replacement for the F-15C not the E

What I mean by that is it is a defensive weapon by nature. It carries good but few missiles and by far the worst is its ability to only drop 2 ground weapons.

Granted Granted it was not built for such. It was built to thwart any attempt of a soviet air invasion of our allies or ourselves. But the F-22 cant do jack against people with IEDs. Where drones have such a advantage multiplier it is not even funny.

The F-22 is the last major air combat fighter the F-35 will do better as the F-16s replacement. And its in a position to sell a great many to allied nations. But both can be overwhelmed by masses of drones which we will see as we approach the 2030s and possibly sooner.

So it suffers at both ends. Until the drones it wont be much needed. After the drones they can use group tactics to defeat its stealth capabilities and trash it (You kill 5 of the flock the other 20 are still after you)

Exactly. The F-22 has one and only one major fault: its price tag.

As far as USAF higher-ups siding with Gates, all those things are usually a result of backroom politics inside the Pentagon. The USAF brass probably realized that Gates' decision is final, so they decided to back him up to stay in his good graces, in the hope that he'll give them more money for other stuff later on.

Remember, what happens inside the Pentagon is never about keeping our country safe. It's always about getting the most money for your service and your program.

Sad but true words. :nope:

Which is why it is very important to support the work going on in the nonmilitary sector that may help the military sector one day.

Universities all over the nation are developing tech that will mean cheaper components for advanced craft for the military in the future.

Wrong! The F-22 is an air-dominance weapon. It is often referred to as the high ground by many.

Air Dominance over the United States or an Allied Nation or MAYBE in the opening stages of a major war (You know just to slap around the enemy experienced a little)

There is no use afterwards. You don't see them in Iraq do you? They do they job the F-15Cs did before a few seconds faster then go back to their climate controlled hangars for the next episode of desperate housewives.

If we were attacked they would do a good job of hitting the first wave of enemy aircraft. Yet then again the remaining work can be done with F-15s and even F-16s. Not to mention the badboy F-18s once the other forces get involved.

And by the time the enemy gets enough numbers of some uber craft that can wipe a F-15 away by looking at it. It wont be manned.

Well all your points have a place. But perhaps not all the future points. Why remove the technology from the issue. The F-15 was thought to be a dinasour at the time, now its 200-0 in air combat.

I know its a tad off topic but do you not believe drones are the future?

The F-22 advantage is stealth right? If you can keep the stealth features maybe even the supercruise and have 20 of em. You not only can do the job of the first and wipe out anything in sight. But if one gets knocked out it is not a disaster requiring a congressional hearing.

Programming a drone is not difficult think about what our enemies can do with multitudes of small drones using hacked onboard computers from just about any modern electronic device. Look what they did with IEDs and small drones flying very low are almost invincible to SAM systems.

Now think what WE can do with serious drones.

UAVs are the future, for sure. It's just a matter of how long it takes to get the technology right.

Well I guees only in our current atmosphere of resignation (*\surrwnder Obama)will the F-22 and its human pilot come up. If you believe people are less effective than UAV's that is ok, but men on the spot seems more effective to me.

It does seem like we're on the cusp of a 'drone revolution' and the way a lot of them work, there's still a human being in the loop. But we've been here before. Britain canceled pretty much every manned aircraft program in the '50's since drones were going to take over the skies, but they ended up paying for it.

Sure, we've come a lot farther along, technology wise, and the concept of battle drones is more viable now. But it's been proven that relying on what technologies seem to be the wave of the future is risky at best. Maybe that's why they want at least 187 of them.

I personally feel the air-to-ground capability is a more important issue, but that can, at least partially, be improved upon.

Like I said, I've not seen a thing that indicates there's anything physically wrong with the aircraft, but some of the USAF types don't seem all that enthusiastic about her, so I wondered.

Well it has to be treated well on the ground. I don't know if they still require dedicated hangars but I did read recently that Iraq diddn't have the facilities for long term operations of them there.

Of course you cant leave drones hanging around either. But I would imagine you can easily pack a bunch of drones into one hangar.

Now I will admit I am in love with drones. I see them as the lifesavers of the men and women who have to endure Iraq. That report on 60 minutes just about brought me to tears.

I'm not terribly comfortable with the term "drone." To me that implies an unmanned aircraft that performs a pre-programmed mission automatically. I think we're a long ways away from having that sort of aircraft as an air superiority fighter.

Instead, we'll probably use UAVs with a human operator on the ground, on a one operator per plane basis. In essence the operator will be the pilot, flying the plane like he'd fly a simulated plane in a video game. So we will still have a human making the important decisions during the mission.

What he said. The Air Force needs more money since it doesn't have enough money already. America is going broke, and the F-22 is just the tip of the iceberg.

-S

Exactly. It may be one of the last aircraft still capable of enemy penetration. No modern fighter in inventory of any nation has airspace penetration of a well equipped foe anymore. It's just not possible.

-S

Maybe, but then whats more effective, a fleet of a mere 100 F-22 or 500 F-15's ? I mean shear numbers are important also. You can suppress enemy air defenses by sending hundreds of fighters instead of 10 or 20 F-22's.
Really the F-22 project is like the space shuttle, something that was given to the aerospace industry to keep them occupied, while the world around them changed completely. The F-22 is a fighter for another era just like the seawolf submarines were. The Navy was coerced in abbandoning the seawolf because of its enourmous cost and because its primary foe just vanished/collapsed, while the air force on the other hand kept their pet project.
Billions of $ for a single B-2 for what ? Nuclear detterence that can be achieved with SSBN's ? Using a B-2 for conventional bombardment missions where a B-52, or B-1B's would have done the job just as well ?
The F-22 is just the natural evolution of this line of thinking. You'll come at a point where the cost of the aircarft is so great that it will be absurd to put in harms way.