Congress kills it. Air Force gets a third of what they wanted. I'm happy for those. The F-35 will be a replacement. Then we go unmanned? I guess that's the current thinking.
It is possible, that the F-22 will be cleared for limited export. Australia, Israel, and Japan are all interested in buying, a potential export version of the Raptor.
They'd better hurry up, or the line will be shut down entirely before foreign jets can be started. The F-22 has more support in the House than in the Senate, so there's still hope, albeit slim. But I'll bet they're celebrating right now in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, Tehran, Caracas......
True. I loved President Obamas comment on it when he said "Every dollar we slash in our defense budget can be spent in helping the troops." Uhm... isn't spending money on F-22 considered helping the troops? He is so out of tune.
And so goes the history of American military preparedness. It repeats over and over. When we have brought the military to the brink of uselessness we will have to rebuild, rerecruit and retrain and in the end it will cost us all so much more. Jimmy Carter revisited "Qui deserderat pacem, bellum praeparat"
Next comes a slash in the number of F-35s. And in "unrelated" news, 600+ Hornets are grounded to check for stress fractures that were recently discovered where they shouldn't be. And anyone want to take a guess on what was the cause of the crash of that F-15 in Iraq the other day? It wasn't enemy fire, and I'll bet it wasn't pilot error either. New jets can't come soon enough. Oh wait, in a few years we won't have anything to refuel them with anyways! Quite a mess... It's amazing how hard our government will fight to eliminate <$2billion in our defense budget for something that is not only important to our national defense, but has 100,000+ PRIVATE sector jobs on the line. The ROI on the money spent to keep the assembly line open and procure a few more raptors would probably be an order of magnitude more (at least) than the same amount of money spent in the stimulus package. Unfortunately, this is a zero-sum game for the new administration.
Despite all the support Australia has given and continues to give to the US congress will not export the classified systems onboard the F-22. Without those systems its just a plane and ain't much use
I was told that this years entering class to the Academy was told by the Chief Staff that their class would be the last to get manned fighter slots.
tru dat. The F-22 has good cruise missile interception capabilities with the supercruise. It also has the legs, that the F-35 lacks. You guys will soon miss the legs and payload of the Aardvark. Perhaps a knocked down version, can be exported with subtle changes ? Another alternative might be the F-15SE. Although it is not cheap and only includes a sprinkle of stealth.
The F-22 cannot be exported with certain avionics and stealth features. Although it is still an extremely capable aircraft without those, removing avionics/stealth for export greatly increases the cost per plane which is something for potential buyers to consider. However, with super cruise, this plane can fly 60,000ft at mach 1.5+ (I think I read it could do 1.7). Even without the stealth or avionics of the domestic version, that is something no plane in the world can do or will be able to do for a long time, and it gives the Raptor and incredible advantage in being able to engage and disengage at will, along with being able to drop bombs from much longer distances and reducing the threat of IAD.
I have been saying this for years that the days of manned aircraft will be seen in our lifetimes. (We are fighting two wars right now with pilot-less drones; it is just a matter of time before we go all drone. And just a few years ago we were entering the jet age...
I would think that air-to-air combat would be the last bastion of manned aircraft, as it will take a great deal of artificial intelligence to make unmanned dogfighting possible. While the F-22 will likely be the last large manned fighter that we will field, I think that it will be 25 years at least before we can seriously start to consider phasing it out in favor of unmanned fighters. As I remind people, even the fighters in "Star Wars" are manned!
It will be a sad day, when some nerd with thick glasses, a tiny watch, and greasy hair walks around a computer panel at Langley, with a cup of coffee in his hand, while in control of the brand new F/A-51 Mustang II, with a 94th Fighter Squadron "Hat in the Ring" cloth patch (Made in China - of course) on his flight suit.
It will be way more than 25 years before we have AI dogfighters. Unmanned aircraft just means there is no man in the cockpit..however, it's not entirely unfathomable to have UAVs in dogfights with the pilot sitting behind the stick at his desert base in Nevada within the next 25 years. Although unlikely, it's possible that the F-22 is the last manned air superiority fighter. Unmanned aircraft have several advantages in a dogfight, the big one being that the performance of the jet is no longer held back by the amount of g's a pilot can take. The only problem with unmanned aircraft though is that they become vulnerable to cyber attack/jamming. Personally, I think we will always need aircraft with a man in the cockpit. At the very least, there will always be a man in the loop. In our lifetimes there will not be any fighting done by fully autonomous combat aircraft, not because the technology isn't there but because of the inherent risks involved with setting robots loose to kill people without anyone watching.
Alex- No USAF or USN fighter (or other aircraft) flies above 50,000' without the pilot in a pressure suit and only the U-2 pilots currently use pressure suits. The aircraft lost in SW Asia was an F-15E. There are no structural problems with the F-15E, which was considerably beefed up over the F-15C/D. Range on the F-35 and F-22A are comparable, because the F-35 only has one engine. Taz Terry Phillips
Correct me if I'm wrong, but most (if not all) modern jet fighters with fly-by-wire have measures put in place that PREVENTS the pilot from over-exceeding a specific amount of g-force on the plane so that it can continue to fly safely for years, correct? That was one of the things always mentioned about the F-22 in interviews as well. While yes a jet can sustain g-force for longer than a human being can, there's not a lot of turning involved in shooting a plane down from 50 miles away especially when you're flying a fighter jet that has the radar signature of an insect. The F-22 is so superior in the sky right now that it's very likely that the enemy won't even know the plane is in the same air space with them until they're blowing up. The big advantage of un-manned aircraft, IMO, would be that the pilot is removed from the cockpit itself. It'd be far easier on the brain/person to fly a jet from a joy-stick in a room hundreds (if not thousands) of miles away, especially when you know that even in a dogfight that you aren't going to die if you're shot down. That's a serious confidence-booster.
Disapproved: $1.75 billion for additional F-22 Raptors to help defend the country for the next 25-30 years. Approved: $2.0 billion to extend the "Cash For Clunkers" program for one month. What is wrong with this picture??
I've been a big proponent of unmanned systems for a long time. I was doing drone systems almost 30 years ago and was always amazed at the lack of interest we got from the "scarf and goggles" guys in the Pentagon. If it didn't have a cockpit, they fought it tooth and nail. They were dead set against using unmanned systems the way we do now. That said, an unmanned system really needs a sky that is swept clean of the enemy (as we have in Iraq and Afghanistan right now) to effectively operate, and unmanned fighters are still a good ways off. The number one priority for the A/F has to be air superiority. After that, all of other things that the air force does (be it bombers, ground attack or surveillance) are second order. While it is nice to say, "we're spending too much on fighters", I don't think that is possible. If you want to see people coming home in body bags by the thousands, just give up air superiority for a few minutes..... The people in command now are forgetting that we obtained air superiority with our fighter aircraft and if you give that up you have lost the umbrella that the unmanned systems operate under. I would hate to have to go to war with China, against the overwhelming numbers of fighters that they will have, with less than 200 F-22's.....
I think pulling a 20g maneuver for a second or two to avoid getting shot down is a little more important than trying to extend the life of the airframe by a few hours to avoid one quick maneuver. If you take a man out of the cockpit of an F-22, you could probably make 20g maneuvers without breaking up in mid-flight, and that might be extremely useful in a few rare but crucial situations. And don't be so sure that all future fighting will be BVR - right now we have the LO advantage, but the Russians and Chinese will have stealth eventually - in 30 years we might be starting all over again, with stealth surpassing radar and BVR becoming obsolete until radar catches back up. This is a cycle that could go on forever..it would be foolish to put all your eggs in the BVR basket ( taking the cannon of the F-4 in Vietnam cost a lot of pilots their lives be cause we were so certain that missiles were the permanent solution to dogfights )
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124960404730212955.html#articleTabs%3Darticle The F-22 isn't a good investment per our government, but this is?
"Boeing plans to have a new unmanned platform based on the X-45C in the air by December 2010. Dubbed Phantom Ray, the internally funded venture will build on the knowledge gained in the shelved X-45 project, which saw the X-45A unmanned aircraft complete 64 flights between 2002 and 2005, achieving a number of milestones including the first precision weapons demonstration by an unmanned combat system and the first autonomous multivehicle flight under the control of a single pilot. Phantom Ray will be based on the larger, fighter-sized, X-45C which appeared at airshows as a full-scale mock-up during 2004." http://www.gizmag.com/boeing-to-develop-fighter-sized-uav-based-on-x-45c/11636/ Instead of a squadron or flight of fighter type aircraft there'll be swarms of UAVs instead. In addition, loitering autonomous weapons platforms as multi-role aerial sentrys. Not now, but definately within the next ten years, IMO. http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=751 http://www.spawar.navy.mil/robots/air/aums/aums.html Image Unavailable, Please Login
^^ I can't wait until we start getting more info on the Phantom Ray...I really hope Boeing goes big on this one and it pans out.
I only have interest in manned systems. No aircrew = no interest. I know the F-35, is probably the end of the line. sad but true. Most likely with modern warfare, you will get more bang for your buck with the UAV. Who cares ! I am not driving to an air base, to watch a UAV display. ...restart the line in St Louis and built some more Rhinos !
