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Originally Posted by SUBMAN1
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.
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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.