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"The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is one of the world’s premier fighter jets, thanks to its unique combination of stealth, speed, agility, and situational awaren

"The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is one of the world’s premier fighter jets, thanks to its unique combination of stealth, speed, agility, and situational awareness." A huge understatement. It's the only true 5th gen that's tailored for performance, rather than cost savings (ala the F-35). The others are completely unproven (Chinese) or both unproven and in extremely limited quantities, while not providing true stealth (PAK FA, though if anything, the SU-35 family is the closer analogue).

checktheorder 7y ago
>cost savings (ala the F-35) What.
- ohaideredevs 7y ago
  Hue hue, but it WAS the theory. The F-35 was planned as: A. The "light" F/A part of the heavy/light fighter model. B. Meant to save costs by having one aircraft with shared parts (across the three models) fill virtually all roles.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dharmab 7y ago
  Yup, that was the original goal of the F-35. The idea was that by sharing parts across multiple variants and across multiple militaries, the F-35 would be a cheaper fighter than the F-22 that could scale to a larger fleet. It's not totally crazy on the face of it- The expensive but undefeated F-15 and the relatively cheaper F-16 successfully pulled it off in the 20th century.
- jandrese 7y ago
  It was supposed to be the next generation F-16. The lightweight single engine jack of all trades fighter that could be exported to other countries to help defray development costs. There was even a notion that you could use the same plane across all branches of the military so the same supply chain could be used for all three and you could build them in higher quantities to spread the development costs over more aircraft. But then of course the aircraft got saddled with requirements from three different branches of the military at once which made it extremely difficult to design and build and thus very very expensive.
  - checktheorder 7y ago
    >But then of course the aircraft got saddled with requirements from three different branches of the military at once which made it extremely difficult to design and build and thus very very expensive. Sounds rather like the Space Transportation System. During design, it went from a compact inexpensive passenger shuttle with modest payload capability, to a complete pig of a ship. And all because the Air Force contributed cash on the condition that it be capable of classified high-payload-pass missions to polar orbits. It is nothing short of a tragedy that fully-reusable compact shuttles with flyback boosters (like the Rockwell P333) lost out to the disposable-booster design that was eventually built.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      An extremely important part of project management is the ability to say "no", even if the customer is bringing extra money to the table. Extra requirements have a way of increasing costs in an exponential way and it's very easy to lose sight of your original goal. Of course this is a problem when you have Congress breathing down your neck and looking for any excuse to cut your program. One big advantage of skunk works projects is that they keep you firewalled off from idea men.
dmix 7y ago
Nothing saves money like designing your airplane by saying yes to every persons idea in the conference room!
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Insert Pentagon Wars Scene Here
  - dmix 7y ago
    Based on a true story too: https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Wars-Reformers-Challenge-Guard-ebook/dp/B00HXY969W/ https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Wars-Reformers-Challenge-Gua...
consumer451 7y ago
I’m not a huge fan of obscene military spending, but the cancellation[0] of F-22 production must be one of the most boneheaded decisions I’ve seen in US military procurement. I must add the caveat that I have no security clearance so there may be other factors. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor > Service officials had originally planned to buy a total of 750 ATFs. In 2009, the program was cut to 187 operational production aircraft...
- jedberg 7y ago
  Keep in mind the military has a history of claiming they stopped production and then producing them in secret or producing a slightly modified version as a way of making our enemies think we have fewer weapons than we actually have.
  - detritus 7y ago
    Ooh, do you have any articles on this? Sounds interesting!
    - ohaideredevs 7y ago
      Stealth Blackhawks (pretty much confirmed by the Bin Laden raid) are definitely an example of the cancelled Comanche program tech going into black projects.
- cc81 7y ago
  I assume they realized they don't need that many air superiority fighters and that they are costly to maintain. What would you even do with 750 planes that have very limited use in bombing Taliban fighters in caves?
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  I always wondered why they couldn’t have just used the F-22 for both the air superiority role it was originally designed for and the multi-purpose role the F-35 was made for. The F-22 is more capable in every way, and more survivable with dual engines. They would have needed to figure out vertical take-off/landing version of the F-22 but I’m sure that was not impossible. It may have looked more expensive on paper with ideal assumptions to produce lots of expensive F-22s instead of a few F-22’s and lots of cheaper JSFs. But in practice I bet the costs would have equalized, due to the increased volume of F-22s and the development of extensive institutional knowledge of that airframe - from manufacturing to maintenance to piloting/operating.
PedroBatista 7y ago
"Cost savings" and "F-35" in the same sentence made my brain crash.

checktheorder 7y ago

>cost savings (ala the F-35) What.

ohaideredevs 7y ago
Hue hue, but it WAS the theory. The F-35 was planned as: A. The "light" F/A part of the heavy/light fighter model. B. Meant to save costs by having one aircraft with shared parts (across the three models) fill virtually all roles.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dharmab 7y ago
Yup, that was the original goal of the F-35. The idea was that by sharing parts across multiple variants and across multiple militaries, the F-35 would be a cheaper fighter than the F-22 that could scale to a larger fleet. It's not totally crazy on the face of it- The expensive but undefeated F-15 and the relatively cheaper F-16 successfully pulled it off in the 20th century.
jandrese 7y ago
It was supposed to be the next generation F-16. The lightweight single engine jack of all trades fighter that could be exported to other countries to help defray development costs. There was even a notion that you could use the same plane across all branches of the military so the same supply chain could be used for all three and you could build them in higher quantities to spread the development costs over more aircraft. But then of course the aircraft got saddled with requirements from three different branches of the military at once which made it extremely difficult to design and build and thus very very expensive.
- checktheorder 7y ago
  >But then of course the aircraft got saddled with requirements from three different branches of the military at once which made it extremely difficult to design and build and thus very very expensive. Sounds rather like the Space Transportation System. During design, it went from a compact inexpensive passenger shuttle with modest payload capability, to a complete pig of a ship. And all because the Air Force contributed cash on the condition that it be capable of classified high-payload-pass missions to polar orbits. It is nothing short of a tragedy that fully-reusable compact shuttles with flyback boosters (like the Rockwell P333) lost out to the disposable-booster design that was eventually built.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    An extremely important part of project management is the ability to say "no", even if the customer is bringing extra money to the table. Extra requirements have a way of increasing costs in an exponential way and it's very easy to lose sight of your original goal. Of course this is a problem when you have Congress breathing down your neck and looking for any excuse to cut your program. One big advantage of skunk works projects is that they keep you firewalled off from idea men.

dmix 7y ago

Nothing saves money like designing your airplane by saying yes to every persons idea in the conference room!

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Insert Pentagon Wars Scene Here
- dmix 7y ago
  Based on a true story too: https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Wars-Reformers-Challenge-Guard-ebook/dp/B00HXY969W/ https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Wars-Reformers-Challenge-Gua...

consumer451 7y ago

I’m not a huge fan of obscene military spending, but the cancellation[0] of F-22 production must be one of the most boneheaded decisions I’ve seen in US military procurement. I must add the caveat that I have no security clearance so there may be other factors. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor > Service officials had originally planned to buy a total of 750 ATFs. In 2009, the program was cut to 187 operational production aircraft...

jedberg 7y ago
Keep in mind the military has a history of claiming they stopped production and then producing them in secret or producing a slightly modified version as a way of making our enemies think we have fewer weapons than we actually have.
- detritus 7y ago
  Ooh, do you have any articles on this? Sounds interesting!
  - ohaideredevs 7y ago
    Stealth Blackhawks (pretty much confirmed by the Bin Laden raid) are definitely an example of the cancelled Comanche program tech going into black projects.
cc81 7y ago
I assume they realized they don't need that many air superiority fighters and that they are costly to maintain. What would you even do with 750 planes that have very limited use in bombing Taliban fighters in caves?
SkyMarshal 7y ago
I always wondered why they couldn’t have just used the F-22 for both the air superiority role it was originally designed for and the multi-purpose role the F-35 was made for. The F-22 is more capable in every way, and more survivable with dual engines. They would have needed to figure out vertical take-off/landing version of the F-22 but I’m sure that was not impossible. It may have looked more expensive on paper with ideal assumptions to produce lots of expensive F-22s instead of a few F-22’s and lots of cheaper JSFs. But in practice I bet the costs would have equalized, due to the increased volume of F-22s and the development of extensive institutional knowledge of that airframe - from manufacturing to maintenance to piloting/operating.

PedroBatista 7y ago

"Cost savings" and "F-35" in the same sentence made my brain crash.