6 ms·

The Strategic Consequences of F-22 Termination (2009)

42 points by gcv 13y ago

jacques_chester 13y ago
For those wondering why Air Power Australia care so much about the USA's military hardware, part of the APA agenda is to lobby for the Australian government to obtain an export license for F-22s from the US Congress. Currently no country has been granted such a license. Australia is participating in the F-35 program, but there is a case to be made that with its limited range and loadout, the F-35 doesn't suit Australia's defensive requirements.
- james3 13y ago
  What are their defensive requirements then? As far as I know Australia does not have any island territories not close the it's mainland. Would range really be a problem for Australia's defensive needs?
  - skyraider 13y ago
    The Australians picked the F111 for its range. There is a good discussion of the politicking that lead to the selection on the "Replacing the Canberra" section of this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111C Apparently the criterion for range was the ability to bomb Jakarta. Sounds arbitrary but I have no idea.
    - jpatokal 13y ago
      Considering Australia's immediate neighbors and the likelihood of them attacking, that's not exactly arbitrary. (Not to say said likelihood is high anytime soon, but it's higher than, say, needing to bomb Auckland.)
  - bigiain 13y ago
    With a combat radius of under 600 nautical miles, quite a lot of mainland Australia would be outside useful range of existing airbases and supply lines. 600nm circles drawn around Darwin and Perth leave a fair bit of resource rich WA coastline uncovered…
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - demallien 13y ago
      It is not the defence of the mainland that creates problems. For example that unprotected Western Australian coastline that you pointed to is substantially covered if you take into the account the existence of bare bases such as Curtain. No, range is more of an issue because Australia's current defensive posture is to try to stop any potential enemy in what is called the air-sea gap. That means interdiction at long distances off the coastline. With aircraft carriers being financially out of reach that leaves long range aircraft as the only viable option. The f-35 is going to be a disaster for Australia's defence, we can only hope that the US honours the goodwill that the purchase of those systems was supposed to procure. Of course, they're going to be flying the same crappy airframes, so meh. Just one last thing in defence of the JSF though. It's unique capabilities in takeoff / landing make cheaper aircraft carriers a real possibility. Of course Australia hasn't actually tried to procure any such thing so it's only a theoretical, but if tensions were to start to mount in Asia that is something that could be rectified relatively quickly...
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    > Would range really be a problem for Australia's defensive needs? Yes. Leaving to one side that Australia is in itself very large, we rely almost entirely on 3 lanes of approach for all our trade. Those lanes extend thousands of kilometres to the west, the north (which includes -- whisper it quietly because we are good friends and neighbours -- Indonesia) and the east. To win a genuine shooting war, or merely to stalemate, we would need to be able to control those lanes. One critical element of controlling sea lanes is to control the air over those lanes. Since we don't have aircraft carriers, we need aircraft that can fly a long way, penetrate naval air defences and shoot at enemy planes and ships. It also matters in case of a straight up land invasion. Australia's best defence in such a case is Australia. The sheer bulk of the landmass makes an invasion from any direction a long slow slog to occupy the rest of the country. Especially if that country possesses aircraft capable of very long flights from bases dispersed around the whole perimeter. So in actual fact, aircraft range is worthy of consideration. Air tankers help, but while they multiply force, they also multiply vulnerability.
  - simonswain 13y ago
    I think the edge case scenario is Australia vs Indonesia. Fighters need to be capable of making a bombing run from the north of Australia.
    - sirkneeland 13y ago
      Just curious since I'm not as familiar with military science as I am with the wonderful world of product management... is "edge case" an acceptable term in military planning parlance?
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    Australia is huge. So range is important even if all you're planning on doing is defending the Australian mainland. Any conflict they would be engaged in would also have a significant naval component, so range is valuable there as well -- it allows land-based planes to join battles far out at sea, so you can meet the enemy away from civilian population centers instead of right over them. The alternative is to use naval aviation (i.e. aircraft carriers) instead of land-based planes, but carriers are hugely expensive so the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) doesn't operate any.
- neurotech1 13y ago
  Isn't going to happen. The cost of making an export version of the F-22 is too high for Australia and Japan. That is after Congress hypothetically approve it for export. Carlo Kopp & Peter Good were trying to get the RAAF to contract them to upgrade the F-111s into a 5th gen strategic strike fighter that was cheaper than the F-22. The F-35A with aerial tanker support can meet Australia's requirements just fine. In full production, the F-35A will be cheaper than competing jets like the F-15 assuming they are still in production.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    > The F-35A with aerial tanker support can meet Australia's requirements just fine. I don't feel sufficiently expert to say if that's so, but I note that Air Power Australia vehemently disagrees with you.
dalek_cannes 13y ago
The article repeatedly claims: "The F-22A Raptor is the only US fighter aircraft design in existence or planned which has the capability to penetrate and survive the advanced air defence weapons now proliferating globally". I'm no air defense expert, but why do I have a hard time believing this? Existing fighters, bombers and drones seem to work fine with most of the countries the US is dealing with right now. If the US has to go to war with a Russian or Chinese armed adversary, would small fighter planes play a huge offensive role anyway?
- TylerE 13y ago
  Yes, hugely. Ground attack fighters are basically THE first wave going in to take out things like rader and C&C equipment. Missles can get in, but they have limited search capabilities.
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    The F-22 isn't a ground attack fighter, though.
    - skyraider 13y ago
      It does have ground attack capability and given its stealth capabilities, is probably a good fit for the role and maybe even a better fit than other ground-attack aircraft in the US arsenal.
- skyraider 13y ago
  Sure, fighters, bombers and drone work excellently when your adversaries have few if any functional modern aircraft, or when their ground defenses are so vulnerable and/or disorganized that (often risky) strikes can take them out. However, there is more than one type of adversary. It is important to control the air, or the adversary will be able to deny the air and probably the ground and/or sea to you. In that sense, whatever is playing a huge offensive role very likely depends on air superiority. RAND runs studies on the effectiveness of the (quickly aging) US fighter fleet. There are quite a few of these out there and generally the conclusion is that US aircraft like F16s (cheap multirole fighter) and F15s (fighter/bomber or air superiority fighter) designed (and sometimes even built) in the 70s and 80s, even when equipped with modern electronics, don't have a clear advantage (assuming they don't fall apart on the way to the battle - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f156nov06,0,7052818.story#axzz2jjwv2XGO http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f156nov...).
xolve 13y ago
Propoganda.
Narkov 13y ago
I'm completely naive when it comes to this technology but surely drone technology is making all these piloted war machines redundant? Surely it must be easier/cheaper/faster to develop a pilot-less drone to perform these tasks.
- lmkg 13y ago
  In the future, sure. At this very moment, no. The drones aren't good enough yet. The American military would rather take the conservative & expensive approach of developing a new traditional fighter until drones are good enough. I have no doubt that drones are the future (they are a truly 'disruptive' change, in the sense that they commoditize fighting power), but that future may still be 30 years away.
  - Narkov 13y ago
    I see what you are saying however clearly these traditional "new" fighters aren't good enough either. I think everyone agrees that drones are the future so why not dump the $$$ into development?
    - mitchty 13y ago
      The answer is, they are, but we have aging airframes that need to be replaced now. That is basically the F22/F35 right now. The F15/16/18's won't last forever, and most early block number airframes won't survive the transition to drones. This is really no different than past fighter replacements. Like the F80->F86->F104->F4 etc... (i'm intentionally skipping planes). Actually the F4 is a great example of where the accepted "future of air combat" was proven wrong. As it turns out missiles weren't the best idea for the only armament on an aircraft. Drones may end up in the same category and we still want manned fighters, we might not yet want to go whole hog into as yet unproven territory.
- vladich 13y ago
  Are you talking about remotely controlled drones or self-sufficient robotic ones? Any remotely controlled drone deployed against technically advanced enemy is very vulnerable, so are you ready for SkyNet future?
sseveran 13y ago
I will take 4000 drones please. I bet we could russell that up for less than the price of those F22s. The world is changing so fast. You will be better off with smaller weapons systems that can be evolved.
- d5tryr 13y ago
  Russell up? Is this 4000 drone army the revolution that Mr.brand is speaking of?
  - igravious 13y ago
    I believe they speak ironically of Bertrand R., he of philosophy and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament fame.
    - d5tryr 13y ago
      it was a Russell Brand joke, nm...
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    I think he meant "rustle up", an idiom meaning "to gather", usually at short notice.
  - sseveran 13y ago
    I simply think that drones will/are be vastly more cost effective.
caycep 13y ago
What was the deal about the funky oxygen tanks in these things?
mapgrep 13y ago
> Central to whether the US can maintain its global strategic posture is having sufficient numbers of F-22 Raptor fighters Assumes facts not in evidence: That we will wage, threaten to wage, or deter against fighting a conventional war with either Russia or China, the only two nations on the planet who could theoretically develop the capability to thwart our current air power arsenal (F-15, F-18, etc). I mean: Really? A gunpowder war against Russia or China? There is a large body of evidence, including but not limited to the past 50 years of U.S. military history, that we are more likely to end up in a war against guerillas, insurgents, terrorists, or third world regimes -- the strangely named "low intensity conflicts." For which these very expensive (and very cool, to teen boys) fighters are useless. Not suboptimal; useless. And I haven't even begun to discuss how military power is only one component of "strategic posture." For example, China's enormous economic engine is far more important to its clout on the world stage than its military arsenal. Ask Pakistan or North Korea how much respect and real power a fearsome military buys globally. This whole article is basically propaganda designed to puff up the importance of a weapons program held over from the cold war. It could have been written by Boeing (although even Boeing would have been more subtle). Its assertions are laughable. ("Unless the US deploys a minimum of 500-600 of these aircraft, it will lose the ability to access hostile airspace with acceptable losses in aircraft and aircrew." We access hostile aircraft every day.)
- forktheif 13y ago
  You didn't actually read the article did you? The vast majority of air defence systems the US has gone against are SA-2 which is late 1950s tech, SA-3, which is early 1960s tech and a few SA-5s and SA-6's, which are late 60s tech. Over the past decade and a half, things have started to change. Russia has started exporting large numbers of modern air defence systems, and modern digital upgrades to older systems. Systems that were designed from the start to be highly resistant to jamming and decoys and to be highly mobile. Air defences have suddenly got a lot more capable in many nations around the world, while western nations are by and large still using the same defence suppression tools they had during the first gulf war. If the US needs to attack a nation like Iran or Syria, it will not be a rerun of 1991. Instead of the US having a 20 year technological advantage over enemy air defence, enemy air defences will have a 20 year technological advantage over the US air force.
knappador 13y ago
"...many good men had career changes..." It's a little hard to believe someone's on the high-ground while apparently unconscious of sexism. Might as well hold up a flag with "entrenched cultural views of the establishment" written on it. This doesn't aid the counter-argument against the notion that the F-22 was designed to fight a "defunct Soviet threat." Let's face it. Japan and China are feinting, in the way that nations do silly things that ultimately get settled through war, at some random rocks with natural gas nearby while only 10m gets spent on focus fusion development and 4trillion with a 'T' flows through the fossil fuels industry every year. Meanwhile we seem to still fight wars on the back of outright lies ("yellow cake?") and carry out dragnet surveillance to figure out Angela Merkel's plot to bomb the white house. Let's just say I have some problems with the overall priorities in this picture. On the other hand, assuming defense(?) actually is important, we have carriers that cost billions and are complete sitting ducks to anti-ship ballistic missiles like that China has developed, which have stealthy, guided warheads apparently. Good thing we have Aegis cruisers guarding them to intercept any wayward missile bodies that might also impact the carriers. Military spending is worse than healthcare.gov.
TheMagicHorsey 13y ago
The articles conclusions seem rather devoid of reasoning. Why would an F22 be the only way to access hostile airspace? The F22 is extremely expensive and carries a crew onboard. Remotely piloted drones can be used in a semi-disposable manner to access hostile airspace. Manned aircraft are going the way of horse cavalry. We have a lot of romantic attachment to fighter jocks, so we can't accept that they are no longer relevant. Missiles and drones. Face it people.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
I completely disagree. The F22 termination is a good thing, it means the US stops wasting money that could use to other things. There is a "law of diminishing returns" in fighter aircraft that makes improving them extremely expensive. They are also designed by committee, with such expensive things risks are minimized. It is big company thinking versus startups thinking. In a real world those super expensive machines would me destroyed in a minute by UAVs that can accelerate and decelerate 4 to 5 times what any manned vehicle, and are 1000 times less expensive, and could be programmed for doing risky things by Johny the geek.

42 points by gcv 13y ago

For those wondering why Air Power Australia care so much about the USA's military hardware, part of the APA agenda is to lobby for the Australian government to obtain an export license for F-22s from the US Congress. Currently no country has been granted such a license. Australia is participating in the F-35 program, but there is a case to be made that with its limited range and loadout, the F-35 doesn't suit Australia's defensive requirements.

james3 13y ago
What are their defensive requirements then? As far as I know Australia does not have any island territories not close the it's mainland. Would range really be a problem for Australia's defensive needs?
- skyraider 13y ago
  The Australians picked the F111 for its range. There is a good discussion of the politicking that lead to the selection on the "Replacing the Canberra" section of this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111C Apparently the criterion for range was the ability to bomb Jakarta. Sounds arbitrary but I have no idea.
  - jpatokal 13y ago
    Considering Australia's immediate neighbors and the likelihood of them attacking, that's not exactly arbitrary. (Not to say said likelihood is high anytime soon, but it's higher than, say, needing to bomb Auckland.)
- bigiain 13y ago
  With a combat radius of under 600 nautical miles, quite a lot of mainland Australia would be outside useful range of existing airbases and supply lines. 600nm circles drawn around Darwin and Perth leave a fair bit of resource rich WA coastline uncovered…
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - demallien 13y ago
    It is not the defence of the mainland that creates problems. For example that unprotected Western Australian coastline that you pointed to is substantially covered if you take into the account the existence of bare bases such as Curtain. No, range is more of an issue because Australia's current defensive posture is to try to stop any potential enemy in what is called the air-sea gap. That means interdiction at long distances off the coastline. With aircraft carriers being financially out of reach that leaves long range aircraft as the only viable option. The f-35 is going to be a disaster for Australia's defence, we can only hope that the US honours the goodwill that the purchase of those systems was supposed to procure. Of course, they're going to be flying the same crappy airframes, so meh. Just one last thing in defence of the JSF though. It's unique capabilities in takeoff / landing make cheaper aircraft carriers a real possibility. Of course Australia hasn't actually tried to procure any such thing so it's only a theoretical, but if tensions were to start to mount in Asia that is something that could be rectified relatively quickly...
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  > Would range really be a problem for Australia's defensive needs? Yes. Leaving to one side that Australia is in itself very large, we rely almost entirely on 3 lanes of approach for all our trade. Those lanes extend thousands of kilometres to the west, the north (which includes -- whisper it quietly because we are good friends and neighbours -- Indonesia) and the east. To win a genuine shooting war, or merely to stalemate, we would need to be able to control those lanes. One critical element of controlling sea lanes is to control the air over those lanes. Since we don't have aircraft carriers, we need aircraft that can fly a long way, penetrate naval air defences and shoot at enemy planes and ships. It also matters in case of a straight up land invasion. Australia's best defence in such a case is Australia. The sheer bulk of the landmass makes an invasion from any direction a long slow slog to occupy the rest of the country. Especially if that country possesses aircraft capable of very long flights from bases dispersed around the whole perimeter. So in actual fact, aircraft range is worthy of consideration. Air tankers help, but while they multiply force, they also multiply vulnerability.
- simonswain 13y ago
  I think the edge case scenario is Australia vs Indonesia. Fighters need to be capable of making a bombing run from the north of Australia.
  - sirkneeland 13y ago
    Just curious since I'm not as familiar with military science as I am with the wonderful world of product management... is "edge case" an acceptable term in military planning parlance?
- smacktoward 13y ago
  Australia is huge. So range is important even if all you're planning on doing is defending the Australian mainland. Any conflict they would be engaged in would also have a significant naval component, so range is valuable there as well -- it allows land-based planes to join battles far out at sea, so you can meet the enemy away from civilian population centers instead of right over them. The alternative is to use naval aviation (i.e. aircraft carriers) instead of land-based planes, but carriers are hugely expensive so the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) doesn't operate any.
neurotech1 13y ago
Isn't going to happen. The cost of making an export version of the F-22 is too high for Australia and Japan. That is after Congress hypothetically approve it for export. Carlo Kopp & Peter Good were trying to get the RAAF to contract them to upgrade the F-111s into a 5th gen strategic strike fighter that was cheaper than the F-22. The F-35A with aerial tanker support can meet Australia's requirements just fine. In full production, the F-35A will be cheaper than competing jets like the F-15 assuming they are still in production.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  > The F-35A with aerial tanker support can meet Australia's requirements just fine. I don't feel sufficiently expert to say if that's so, but I note that Air Power Australia vehemently disagrees with you.

dalek_cannes 13y ago

The article repeatedly claims: "The F-22A Raptor is the only US fighter aircraft design in existence or planned which has the capability to penetrate and survive the advanced air defence weapons now proliferating globally". I'm no air defense expert, but why do I have a hard time believing this? Existing fighters, bombers and drones seem to work fine with most of the countries the US is dealing with right now. If the US has to go to war with a Russian or Chinese armed adversary, would small fighter planes play a huge offensive role anyway?

TylerE 13y ago
Yes, hugely. Ground attack fighters are basically THE first wave going in to take out things like rader and C&C equipment. Missles can get in, but they have limited search capabilities.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  The F-22 isn't a ground attack fighter, though.
  - skyraider 13y ago
    It does have ground attack capability and given its stealth capabilities, is probably a good fit for the role and maybe even a better fit than other ground-attack aircraft in the US arsenal.
skyraider 13y ago
Sure, fighters, bombers and drone work excellently when your adversaries have few if any functional modern aircraft, or when their ground defenses are so vulnerable and/or disorganized that (often risky) strikes can take them out. However, there is more than one type of adversary. It is important to control the air, or the adversary will be able to deny the air and probably the ground and/or sea to you. In that sense, whatever is playing a huge offensive role very likely depends on air superiority. RAND runs studies on the effectiveness of the (quickly aging) US fighter fleet. There are quite a few of these out there and generally the conclusion is that US aircraft like F16s (cheap multirole fighter) and F15s (fighter/bomber or air superiority fighter) designed (and sometimes even built) in the 70s and 80s, even when equipped with modern electronics, don't have a clear advantage (assuming they don't fall apart on the way to the battle - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f156nov06,0,7052818.story#axzz2jjwv2XGO http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f156nov...).

xolve 13y ago

Propoganda.

Narkov 13y ago

I'm completely naive when it comes to this technology but surely drone technology is making all these piloted war machines redundant? Surely it must be easier/cheaper/faster to develop a pilot-less drone to perform these tasks.

lmkg 13y ago
In the future, sure. At this very moment, no. The drones aren't good enough yet. The American military would rather take the conservative & expensive approach of developing a new traditional fighter until drones are good enough. I have no doubt that drones are the future (they are a truly 'disruptive' change, in the sense that they commoditize fighting power), but that future may still be 30 years away.
- Narkov 13y ago
  I see what you are saying however clearly these traditional "new" fighters aren't good enough either. I think everyone agrees that drones are the future so why not dump the $$$ into development?
  - mitchty 13y ago
    The answer is, they are, but we have aging airframes that need to be replaced now. That is basically the F22/F35 right now. The F15/16/18's won't last forever, and most early block number airframes won't survive the transition to drones. This is really no different than past fighter replacements. Like the F80->F86->F104->F4 etc... (i'm intentionally skipping planes). Actually the F4 is a great example of where the accepted "future of air combat" was proven wrong. As it turns out missiles weren't the best idea for the only armament on an aircraft. Drones may end up in the same category and we still want manned fighters, we might not yet want to go whole hog into as yet unproven territory.
vladich 13y ago
Are you talking about remotely controlled drones or self-sufficient robotic ones? Any remotely controlled drone deployed against technically advanced enemy is very vulnerable, so are you ready for SkyNet future?

sseveran 13y ago

I will take 4000 drones please. I bet we could russell that up for less than the price of those F22s. The world is changing so fast. You will be better off with smaller weapons systems that can be evolved.

d5tryr 13y ago
Russell up? Is this 4000 drone army the revolution that Mr.brand is speaking of?
- igravious 13y ago
  I believe they speak ironically of Bertrand R., he of philosophy and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament fame.
  - d5tryr 13y ago
    it was a Russell Brand joke, nm...
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I think he meant "rustle up", an idiom meaning "to gather", usually at short notice.
- sseveran 13y ago
  I simply think that drones will/are be vastly more cost effective.

caycep 13y ago

What was the deal about the funky oxygen tanks in these things?

mapgrep 13y ago

> Central to whether the US can maintain its global strategic posture is having sufficient numbers of F-22 Raptor fighters Assumes facts not in evidence: That we will wage, threaten to wage, or deter against fighting a conventional war with either Russia or China, the only two nations on the planet who could theoretically develop the capability to thwart our current air power arsenal (F-15, F-18, etc). I mean: Really? A gunpowder war against Russia or China? There is a large body of evidence, including but not limited to the past 50 years of U.S. military history, that we are more likely to end up in a war against guerillas, insurgents, terrorists, or third world regimes -- the strangely named "low intensity conflicts." For which these very expensive (and very cool, to teen boys) fighters are useless. Not suboptimal; useless. And I haven't even begun to discuss how military power is only one component of "strategic posture." For example, China's enormous economic engine is far more important to its clout on the world stage than its military arsenal. Ask Pakistan or North Korea how much respect and real power a fearsome military buys globally. This whole article is basically propaganda designed to puff up the importance of a weapons program held over from the cold war. It could have been written by Boeing (although even Boeing would have been more subtle). Its assertions are laughable. ("Unless the US deploys a minimum of 500-600 of these aircraft, it will lose the ability to access hostile airspace with acceptable losses in aircraft and aircrew." We access hostile aircraft every day.)

forktheif 13y ago
You didn't actually read the article did you? The vast majority of air defence systems the US has gone against are SA-2 which is late 1950s tech, SA-3, which is early 1960s tech and a few SA-5s and SA-6's, which are late 60s tech. Over the past decade and a half, things have started to change. Russia has started exporting large numbers of modern air defence systems, and modern digital upgrades to older systems. Systems that were designed from the start to be highly resistant to jamming and decoys and to be highly mobile. Air defences have suddenly got a lot more capable in many nations around the world, while western nations are by and large still using the same defence suppression tools they had during the first gulf war. If the US needs to attack a nation like Iran or Syria, it will not be a rerun of 1991. Instead of the US having a 20 year technological advantage over enemy air defence, enemy air defences will have a 20 year technological advantage over the US air force.

knappador 13y ago

"...many good men had career changes..." It's a little hard to believe someone's on the high-ground while apparently unconscious of sexism. Might as well hold up a flag with "entrenched cultural views of the establishment" written on it. This doesn't aid the counter-argument against the notion that the F-22 was designed to fight a "defunct Soviet threat." Let's face it. Japan and China are feinting, in the way that nations do silly things that ultimately get settled through war, at some random rocks with natural gas nearby while only 10m gets spent on focus fusion development and 4trillion with a 'T' flows through the fossil fuels industry every year. Meanwhile we seem to still fight wars on the back of outright lies ("yellow cake?") and carry out dragnet surveillance to figure out Angela Merkel's plot to bomb the white house. Let's just say I have some problems with the overall priorities in this picture. On the other hand, assuming defense(?) actually is important, we have carriers that cost billions and are complete sitting ducks to anti-ship ballistic missiles like that China has developed, which have stealthy, guided warheads apparently. Good thing we have Aegis cruisers guarding them to intercept any wayward missile bodies that might also impact the carriers. Military spending is worse than healthcare.gov.

TheMagicHorsey 13y ago

The articles conclusions seem rather devoid of reasoning. Why would an F22 be the only way to access hostile airspace? The F22 is extremely expensive and carries a crew onboard. Remotely piloted drones can be used in a semi-disposable manner to access hostile airspace. Manned aircraft are going the way of horse cavalry. We have a lot of romantic attachment to fighter jocks, so we can't accept that they are no longer relevant. Missiles and drones. Face it people.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

I completely disagree. The F22 termination is a good thing, it means the US stops wasting money that could use to other things. There is a "law of diminishing returns" in fighter aircraft that makes improving them extremely expensive. They are also designed by committee, with such expensive things risks are minimized. It is big company thinking versus startups thinking. In a real world those super expensive machines would me destroyed in a minute by UAVs that can accelerate and decelerate 4 to 5 times what any manned vehicle, and are 1000 times less expensive, and could be programmed for doing risky things by Johny the geek.