[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

So it is arguably not such a disaster on the economic front. It would seem that most of the 30 hours is waiting for glue to dry - so it is irreducible, but presumably at least they are not man-hours.

The article states that they have too many major malfunctions even in flight, so I doubt that those 30 hours maintenance is just about glue to dry. with regard to that I called it economic inefficiency - not so much meaning the insditrial economy damage or the GOP and national budget, but workinging efficiency. In a big major confloict - the scenario that I argue is to be unliekly nowadays - compared to other planes, the F-22 spends too little time in the sky and too much on the ground.

The problem with just going for the above number is that they came from a 90s DERA analysis, with unknown assumptions, but it is not hard to see that the Typhoon's advantages are less robust than the F-22.

The specifications for the F-22 roots back in the 70s.

Might also remember that 2-2.5 times poorer kill ratio means 2-2.5 times more planes that won't ever fly again, regardless of the maintenance time you dump on them.

But the F-22 makes any oplane lost more hurting , since it costs more and the enemy can buy more polanes for the same money. A power depending on maximum-priced platforms obviously suffers greater damage from the same ammount of numerical losses than a power using less precious sytems. the first needs to achieve a higher kill ratio therefore, to compensate for that. But as I said, the redcued time-in-air also plays into the - admitted: abstract and academic - comparison.

Not too mention that those kill ratios found in that SU-35 simulation are, like any military exercise and analysis, not beyond disucssion.

There are also the problems of SAM penetration when facing a first-rate power, and here the difference is one of being engagable versus unengagable (at least with current tech). The Eurofighter IIRC has a cruise missile class RCS or something similar, which in the modern SAM world might as well mean it wasn't stealthed at all.

As you said: against a first-rate power. the argument is that a conflict against a first rate power is extremely unlikely, and the kind of wars we have seen since WWII and in the present and will see in the forseeable future are no conflicts against firtst rate powers. The F-22 is a overpriced system for a type of war that will not be.

Indeed the Obama admisnitration plans a slight increase if defemnce spendings over the medium and long range. to say they just cut spendings, is nonsense. Instead they try to cut what is not really needed but still costs a lot of money - and still increase spendings. And this with 12 trillions in debt, a bad budget and trade totally off balance. I think that system tries to declare insanity a virtue and tries to cure the disease by redefining sickness as a state of relative health.