This is worth further consideration. The fact that the current inventory of air planes are near or exceeding their life times, and so they need replacement of some sort. The F-22 and F-35 have had decade+ long development times and lots of money has already been invested. So are these planes worth spending the extra money vs the latest F-15's or F/A 18E and so on. Buy enough F-22's to deal with whatever future threat as best as possible by being far and away the best air superiority fighter available. Once the skies are owned, then there are much much better options for supporting troops on the ground. Terrorist hunting in Afghanistan for instance, would benefit from AC-130's being overhead 24/7. Setting aside money to keep more A-10's in the sky and up to date etc. and putting mothballed B-1B's back in service. But instead, 200 Billion dollars is supposed to be spent on a plane that carries two bombs and two missiles while being stealthy, which means you need a lot of them, and a lot of tankers. If you're terrorist hunting in the mountains you want to carry lots of bombs and be overhead all the time. Bombers. If you're penetrating hostile airspace and hitting high value targets, you want the stealthier, faster, more capable of defending itself, F-22. And the kicker is that money is still being spent developing the F-35, while every dollar spent on the F-22 is buying heavy metal. Actual airplanes. There are times when many air frames would be valuable such as in support of an armored division, which is why I think a sensible buy of Hornets would provide an affordable stop gap at half the price of the F-35. UAV's and heavy bombers will take over this role entirely in the future. The idea that we need a cheap all-in-one fighter falls apart at twice the price of a Super Hornet currently and will rise drastically once reality sets in and the proposed 2000 F-35 air frames gets cut.
Just like manned space flight, manned air superiority fighters are so close to obsolescence I see it as a waste not to go ahead spend all that money on robotic technology and artificial intelligence. For one, they are symbiotic, any developments will benefit both. #2 they will actually lead cutting edged technologies that will advance the American economy, much the same as manned space flight did in the 70's. #3 in the end it will be more economical for both, not to have to protect and sustain a fragile human body in a hostile environment. You want to win a dogfight? (and I doubt there ever will be another one one but if you did) pull 10 or 15 G's and try to watch the manned aircraft match you. and #4 it will save lives in both endeavors. How good would your combat pilots be if you could send them on hundreds of combat missions that they always walk away from; no pilot losses, none. That ought to be our "man on the moon this decade" goal.
One of the points lpbman is making is that the F-22 is already developed, already flying. That spending the money to build enough of them that the Air Force isn't going to worry about saving the damn things for the unexpected is a good idea. Iran? China? Putin's Russia? War with the last two is very unlikely, but you have to be prepared for anything. The F-22 is on an entirely different order of magnitude compared to the best a possible adversary might deploy. Any adversary. We should be building twice the number that are going to be available. Is the future unmanned aircraft? Sure, but that future is still far away. So is deployment of the various models of the F-35, which is not in the same class, in my opinion.
Last time we discussed this, I brought up the Musashi and the Yamato. The Japanese spent a whole lot of money and effort to built the two biggest and baddest battleships that the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, they didn't bother to notice that battleships were made obsolete by aircraft carriers. The F-22 has the "cool toy" factor going for it. It inspires pride. It makes you feel invincible. I'm sure all over Japan, patriotic Japanese people felt great pride and a strong sense of comfort as the two battleships went out to sea to be promptly sunk by American airplanes.
Yeah, well the plan is you launch 10 to 15 cheap units networked together and slaved as a swarm, and after the F-22 uses its stealth kung-fu sneaking up and launches a big, noisy, hot missile, the other 9 to 14 units units return fire, and the F-22 is turned into vapor several times over. So one side has lost a trained pilot and a $142 million dollar F-22, and the other side has lost a $12 million UAV and maintains combat effectiveness. Which side do you think came out ahead? So yeah. It won't win one on one because that isn't the way it is going to be designed. If they wanted to make something that would win in an old-fashioned dogfight, they could, since no meat pilot can handle a 15G turn, but that would be like equipping tanks with longsword. It would be anachronistic. Dogfights belong to the history books.
If the networking technology works that well, I think the F22 pilot would have a few UAV slaves of his own. If he for some reason found himself up against 15 UAVs my guess is he would drop as many as he could from beyond the horizon then outrun them to get away. This would be 6 to 10 kills depending on if he has external hardpoints in use from 20 miles away.
You could indeed add a group of UAV's but you'd still require a management team on the ground, so I still don't understand why having a piloted center unit is necessary. If you want to make them all stealth planes, you can do it much more easily without the constraint of a pilot's compartment. A UAV is just as good as shooting over the horizon using instrument outputs for targeting. What is it exactly the pilot there for? I mean, besides as recipients of all the extra purple hearts we have sitting in storage?
I didn't know how long development has gone. So I guess if they already sunk so much money into building it, then you might as well keep going. But it's still sucks that I really don't see them as any more useful than our F-15s and so on. It's not like China or Russia is going to come in and obliterate our current fighters. I guess my point is whether you spend money on the enemy in front of you? Or the enemy that may or may not cause harm in the (fairly distant) future. Right now our problems are with Al Qeada/domestic market collapse. Seems like any potential skirmishes with China/Russia should take a HUGE backseat. Iran? I don't really see it. If we need F-22s and F-35s against Iran, then I'm seriously underestimating their military potential.
The new Predator version 'Predator C' will be stealth and jet-powered. http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htnavai/20090817.aspx It makes for one hell of a scary ground-strike/ reconnaissance plane but it ain't no fighter/interceptor.
Actually, the f-35 can't do a real Vertical Take Off, It can do a short takeoff and a vertical landing. And it can hover. I've been a war plane bluff since a kid. I love the f-22 and the b-2, but I'm going to have to agree that the F-35 is huge a waste of money for American tax payers. It maybe for Britain because they spent a fraction of the development price, to the point where we're virtually subsiding the plane for them. Much more of their money will go into purchasing the each unit. I never understood the need for multi-role planes for a country like us. A mix of hi-lo is much more effective. The hi being f-22 and the lo being f-15's and a-10. Why spend that much money on something in between when we already the whole spectrum covered? The f-35 isn't revolutionary nor does anything great. What I think is that the development cost over-run went overboard and they can't stop and risk a political backlash like they did with the Comanche.
For strictly air superiority purposes, I think 30mil a piece is a great price, and we already have over 600. Since it's already in our inventory, there's no additional development cost (minus the avionics and missiles). I'm not saying we should buy a huge new batch of f-15's.
caseyh, Oh, I guess I misunderstood your reply a little. What advantages as a "low" end fighter? First, and foremost, it's already in our inventory. Second, it's never been downed in battle. It's proven reliable and the only real challenge today, in numbers is the su flanker series. Since it's playing the "low" role, the f-22 will take care of those. It will play the cleanup role against much inferior fighters. Again, this scenario is for air superiority purposes only.
