the case for the F-22
At $350 million per copy, the F-22 Raptor is the most expensive fighter ever built, and what's the point? The F-22 is an air-superiority fighter--that is, it clears the sky of enemy fighters so that lesser breeds of pilot can do their work of delivering goods, surveiling the battlefield, and supporting the troops on the ground. But who will challenge the US Air Force in the 21st century? A lot of bad people, if we don't acquire the F-22 in sufficient quantity, argues Mark Bowden in an awfully good article in the March Atlantic. He recalls, for example, that the Indian Air Force did very well against the USAF in 2004:
“We came rolling in, like, ‘Beep-beep, superpower coming through,’” Colonel Fornof told me. “And we had our eyes opened. We learned a lot. By the third week, we were facing a threat that we weren’t prepared to face, because we had underestimated them. They had figured out how to take Russian-built equipment and improve upon it.”It seems that the Indians had added electronic pods to their dirt-cheap Russian MiG-21s, enabling them to meet and sometimes beat the F-15 Eagle, adopted during the Carter administration and still the plane that America depends upon to maintain air superiority. If India can do it, why not North Korea? Why not Iran? 'If the cost of air supremacy is not paid in dollars, it may be paid in blood', Bowden concludes. Worth a read. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
Labels: F-35
posted by Daniel Ford @ 9:04 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Amen!! F-22s are only $142M each flyaway jet. 183 F-22s only allows us, the USAF, to immediately deploy about 100 or so F-22s to defend an ally like Japan or Taiwan from China (soon 450 Flankers) or take out nukes in Iran (soon SA-20). 100= Simply Not Enough!! With 250 F-22 and 2400 F-35 (AF/Navy/MC) we will be able to defend our allies and our nation with “moderate risk” .. which is code for lose a bunch of guys but hopefully still win the war. Too many people forget, we last lost a lot of jets/pilots in first Gulf War–43 allied a/c and bunch of pilots, but we shot down 41. 37 were shot down by our USAF F-15C’s. Mark Bowden's piece in Atlantic magazine "The Last Ace" is right: Now lots of countries can take on our F-15/16/18 forces and it is past time to modernize our Air Superiority forces with 60 more F-22 and start building the F-35s. If we screw up future Air Superiority then we unravel our wholesale ability to execute our national military strategy and protect this nation and our allies.
Hm. Here's an off-band comment by a British observer, about the Indians' success against the F-15: "But there is also some speculation that the exercise was rigged by the USAF so that they would get the F22 over having the F15s extended further. The USAF agreed to no beyond visual engagements, took the oldest F-15s they had and to all intents and purposes didn't fly the latest tactics. By 'losing' they were able to encourage Congress to fund the F-22 programme." Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
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