By David Crane
defrev (at) gmail (dot) com

May 29, 2009

While Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ decision to halt production of the costly Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor low-observable/stealth fighter aircraft is perhaps not the best long-term strategic decision he could have made, it’s certainly understandable. Given the U.S. government’s–and thus DoD’s–current money crunch vs. the program’s high cost and lack of current combat-utility in Iraq and “Stan” (Afghanistan), cutting the Raptor program’s reported $3.5 billion per year cost certainly has some logic to it. Some programs simply have to go, and we might as well start with the expensive ones that don’t have any seeming immediate tactical or strategic utility for the two wars we’re currently fighting, right? Let’s face it, air superiority is not exactly an issue right now in either theater. We’ve got the air, and we don’t need F-22s to maintain it.

So, what’s wrong with cancelling the Raptor? Well, for one thing, we finally got the production cost down to approximately $143 million per aircraft. If they cancel the F-22 program at 187 total aircraft–56 aircraft short of the 243 aircraft the U.S. Air Force had stated as its requirement–the F-22 Raptor will really come in somewhere around $350 million apiece, with the last four aircraft coming off the line at an estimated cost of approx. $200 million per, due to the $147 million “end-of-production expenses” that will be rolled into their procurement price. Understand that the Air Force originally wanted 750 aircraft, but they wittled that number down to 442 aircraft, then 381, then 243, and then 183, before bring that number back up to 187.

This leads us to the second reason why F-22 Raptor program cancellation is a bad idea. Strategically, 187 F-22 Raptors simply isn’t an adequate number for a future war against China and/or Russia, and the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), also made by Lockheed Martin, simply doesn’t have the Raptor’s air-to-air combat capability, so it can’t fulfill the same air-superiority role against the latest Russian fighters, let alone their Gen-5 fighters that are currently either under development or on the drawing board–and Russia likes to export their fighters. DefenseReview would therefore feel much more comfortable with a quiver of at least 1,000 Raptors for a war against the Dragon or the Bear. Both countries are currently developing low-observable, supermaneuvarable 5th Generation fighter aircraft, and Russia’s latest 4th-Gen. Sukhoi and MiG aircraft are arguably superior to our latest F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft in a number of aspects.

But, having stated the above, do we have any sympathy for the Air Force, Lockheed Martin, or Boeing? No, and here’s why. First, it’s they’re own fault. They brought this situation on themselves. The fact is that the F-22 Raptor took WAY too long and cost WAY too much money to develop, period, end of story. There is simply no reasonable explanation for it to have taken almost 16 years for the F-22 to have entered service from the time of contractor selection. Actually, it really took about 19.5 years if you start the clock from the Air Force’s request for proposal (RFP) in July of 1986, which resulted in the YF-22 and YF-23, and over 24 years if you start the count from the inception of the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program in 1981.

There is simply no justifiable reason why ANY new tactical fighter aircraft, or any new combat aircraft of any kind, for that matter, should take longer than 5 years to develop from initial concept to combat (production and procurement). And it definitely shouldn’t take longer than 5 years for any aircraft system to go into production from the time the Air Force selects a contractor. Don’t agree? Well, here’s our retort, consisting of four examples:

1) The North American Aviation (NAA) P-51 Mustang, the most advanced piston-engined fighter aircraft of World War II (WWII) was developed in approx. 120 days. That’s 4 months, folks. Wikipedia provides more specifics: “The prototype NA-73X was rolled out just 117 days after the order was placed, and first flew on 26 October 1940, just 178 days after the order had been placed — an incredibly short gestation period.”

2) The Messerschmitt Me-262 Schwalbe (Swallow), the world’s first operational jet fighter aircraft and the most advanced fighter aircraft of WWII went operational within 5 years from the start of development. This was a truly revolutionary aircraft for its time, and was arguably more revolutionary than the F-22 relative to contemporary aircraft of both models.

3) The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was brought from concept to production by Lockheed Skunk Works as a black project within 5 years. The SR-71 and its precurser aircraft (the A-12 and YF-12A) were truly revolutionary aircraft in a number of ways (design aspects, speed, capability, materials, manufacturing requirements, maintenance requirements, etc.), every bit as revolutionary as the F-22 Raptor, if not more so, relative to their contemperary aircraft.

4) The McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) F-15 Eagle, our most advanced and capable 4th-Gen. fighter aircraft (and a very large leap ahead of the F-4 Phantom), went into production within 5 years of contractor selection.

So, what happened with the ATF and subsequent F-22 Raptor programs in the 1980’s, 1990’s, and 2000’s? In a word, racketeering. In another word, corporatism. Here’s one more: corruption, corruption of the U.S. military procurement system. Somewhere along the line, someone (or a number of people) somewhere in the U.S. military industrial complex discovered that they could accomplish a number of objectives by dragging system (including aircraft) development time out over many more years, instead of developing and fielding a finished product as quickly as possible. The private sector/contractors figured out that they could make a lot more money, squeezing hundreds of millions to billions of dollars from the Department of Defense (DoD) before ever going into production. After all the development money, the actual production contract was just a bonus, the icing on the cake, if you will. And, the public sector/military folks realized that they could safeguard or prolong careers and create a more advantageous public-sector-exit/private-sector-entry strategy for themselves. Synergy. Of course, you can apply this to pretty much all areas of current U.S. military procurement.

And so went the F-22 Raptor, which has cost the U.S. government approx. $11 billion–that’s “billion” with a “b”–for Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) alone, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). That’s before you even get into production! According to GlobalSecurity.org, “as of 2002, DOD had [already] spent $26 billion of the $69 billion planned for the F-22 program.” $69 billion…for an aircraft program.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the F-22 program’s suppression of evolutionary 4th-Gen. figher aircraft design concepts. The F-15 Silent Eagle (F-15SE) is a perfect example. What, you think Boeing just came up with Silent Eagle in the last few months? Anyone reading this who doesn’t think that significant capability and performance upgrades haven’t been available for the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Falcon, and F/A-18 Hornet–including low-observability/stealth upgrades, thrust vectoring, canards, and upgraded flight software and systems, (for supermaneuverability), conformal fuel tanks (CFT), integrated flight and fire control (IFF) and ramjet missiles with tail control, just to name a few–for the last 20-25 years while the F-22 Raptor has been ravenously and rapaciously eating taxpayer dollars, well, let’s just say I’ve got some swamp land in Florida I’d like to sell you. All of a sudden, just as the Raptor is getting cancelled, here it is (Silent Eagle)! As the Church Lady might say, “Well…isn’t that convenient!”

Of course, the F-15 Silent Eagle is only the latest in succession of F-15 and F-16 upgrade/improvement/modernization concepts. It’s been preceded by the F-15 ACTIVE (Advanced Control Technology for Integrated Vehicles), F-15 S/MTD (Short Takeoff and Landing/Maneuver Technology Demonstrator) a.k.a. STOL Eagle, and the AFTI F-16, just to name a few. “AFTI” stands for “Advanced Fighter Technology Integration”, by the way.

Note: DefenseReview has been informed by an aerospace insider that an even lower-observable/stealthier F-15 than the Silent Eagle was flown across the continental United States without detection by radar during the 1980’s, and that it’s possible to make an F-15 just as low-observable/stealthy as an F-22. Since we only have one source and no confirmation or documentation on this ’80’s-era low-observable F-15, we have to consider it as an unconfirmed/unverified report for now, no matter how trustworthy our source is (but this source is very trustworthy). If anyone out there has any more information on this unconfirmed low-observable F-15 project, we’d love to hear from you on it.

The bottom line is that we could have had F-15s, F-16s, and F/A-18s with low-observable design upgrades, thrust vectoring, canards, conformal fuel tanks, IFF, better missiles etc. a long time ago had these types of upgrades to our 4th-Gen fighter aircraft not been considered a threat to our 5th-Gen fighter program (F-22 Raptor) and therefore suppressed. In other words, F-22 Raptor program survival trumped viable upgrades that would have brought our 4th-Gen. aircraft into flight-capability parity with the latest Russian Sukhoi and Mikoyan fighter aircraft like the Sukhoi Su-30 MKI Flanker-H and Su-35 Flanker-E, and Mikoyan MiG-29OVT, and MiG-35 Fulcrum-F.

So, while Defense Review likes the F-22 and thinks we should build more of them (again, at least 1,000) to be help to ensure U.S. air dominance even if China and/or Russia become a serious military threat or enemy in the future, we’re not going to cry about it, since the Air Force and contractors (Lockheed Martin and Boeing) could have developed the F-22 much more quickly and at significantly lower cost. If they had done it the right way, we could have had operational Raptors by the 1996-1997 time frame and had the full compliment of 750 aircraft–or possibly even DefenseReview’s desired 1,000. Let this be a lesson to the United States Air Force. Do it right, do it better, next time.

Think about it. If another country can develop a next-gen fighter in 5 years, but it takes us 15-25 years to develop one, that puts us at an obvious and very significant deveopment-cycle and cost disadvantage, and potentially a strategic warfighting disadvantage, as well, since the technology might be obsoleted by other countries’ tech by the time development is done. So, U.S. Air Force, give us an operational next-gen aircraft (fighter, CAS, tanker, transport, whatever) within five years. That’s 5 years from concept to combat. We need to be able to do that, and we can do that. After all, we’re still the United States of America, at least for the time being.


http://www.defensereview.com/f-22-raptor-p...view-weighs-in/

Wow... talk about hosing the country (and the taxpayers). Amazing that those other plane examples entered service in under 5 years.
By way of contrast, I wonder how long it took to get the F14 Tomcat in service from concept.

Sign me up for an F15 Stealth with nose canards and thurst vector technology. Meow.

Heck, if you can put an operational fighter plane into service in 5 years... we should/could have technically been seeing the "Talon"
fighters from the movie "Stealth" in service this year.

Russ

The other thing to wonder is how long will it eventually take before we can get the turkey known as the F-35/JSF into service and what do we do about the fighter gap in the meanwhile. It was really stupid to cancel the F-22 early since it was already in service and further orders would only bring down the per plane cost where as the F-35 is unproven, is not in production, much less in service yet. Meanwhile, everybody, both allies and non-allies, are busy either developing and/or acquiring 5th gen air superiority fighters like the F-22 of which we'll only have a small handful of and the Air Force will be forced to make up for lack of F-22s with the inferior F-35.

Hopefully Boeing and Northrop/Grumman are busy working on the F-22 replacement so that we can maybe actually have a real 5th gen fighter that will actually be able to perform the air superiority role that the F-22 was supposed to have and that the F-15 did so well. In the meanwhile we should be looking at getting some Stealth Eagles to fill in the gap that the cancellation of the F-22 will be leaving and to supplement the few F-22s we do have and help out the F-35s.

I agree with you Phill.

By the way, we have the same problem in France, with the Rafale, that is operational, but very expensive, and difficult to sell to foreing countries.

The F35 won't be able to replace the Raptor, as it has not been designed for, and that cancellation, in my opinion, is an error, because the last version of the F-15, with some stelth improvements and vectorial thrust, as you talked about Rool, the F-15 "Active" (tested by the NASA if I'm right), will never have the capabilities of a 5th Generation plane, and in case of a combat in war conditions against Chinese or Russian planes like the J1 or the Mig29/31.

Well, maybe the DoD will turn back in its decision.

Sure... it will happen right after Firefly gets a second season.

Russ

I think it's highly unrealistic to expect development of next-generation fighter aircraft within a timeframe of 5 years, for a variety of reasons.

1) Multi-functionality. The aircraft are expected to fulfill a variety of roles compared to the past, more bang for the buck. Every time you add mission requirements, you add cost and development time. No way around it.

2) Feature creep. You want supercruise without afterburners? Increased combat radius? Well, not exactly off-the-shelf features.

3) If you're drawing comparisons to other aircraft, well, the MiG-29 took nine years to develop, from the start of initial design work in 1974 to completion of acceptance trials in 1984. Similar timeframe for the Su-27.

4) The government bureaucracy is the customer. Enough said.

The problem is we don't arm, equip and train for the next battle we expect to fight. We arm, equip and train for the last battle we fought. Right now the emphasis is on individual body armor and heavy, slow vehicles that can withstand a bomb blast. What happens when we face an enemy that can field a real Air Force and mobile armored warfare returns ? Speed and lethality are the keys to mobile armored warefare. MRAPS wont cut it. We need to look at the possibility of facing China in the future and should equip for that. That means having the baddest aircraft in the sky.

My thoughts exactly. This is something that Secretary Gates seems to be overlooking, he also seems to be overlooking the fact that both Russia and China aren't exactly sitting on their hands and are quite busily upgrading/updating their militaries and Russia already has 4.5 gen aircraft which can give our Eagles a run for their money and are also working on 5th gen aircraft. While China doesn't have the aircraft development capability that Russia does they have been getting much friendlier with them over the years and have been buying some of the new Sukhois from them and have traditionally been very good at backwards engineering and improving upon Russian military tech; the best selling version of the MiG-21 in the world is the Chinese made variant.

Considering that since the end of the Vietnam war we have based our tactics and strategies on having air supremacy can we afford to have anything less than the best flying protecting the boots on the ground? We need to be able maintain the strategy of "if it flies it dies" and a small handful of F-22s and F-35s just aint going to do that.

Anyone know how long it took to get the F-14 from concept to in-service? Just curious.

Russ

According to Wikipedia NAVAIR issued an RFP (Request for Proposal) for the VFX program sometime after May of '68, Grumman & McDonnell Douglas were finalists in December of the same year. Grumman won the contract in January of '69 and first flight was in December of '70, the Tomcat reached Initial Operating Capability in '72 and finally entered service in '74. So if you were to calculate from 1968 when Grumman won the contract to 1974 when the Tomcat entered service that would equate to roughly 6 years from concept to entering service. Apparently one of the reasons that the F-14 and the F-15 were able to enter service in fairly short order was because (once again according to Wikipedia) both planes skipped the prototype phases by order of SecDef MacNamara for the purpose of speeding up development time.

I think y'all are severely overlooking the role of the F-15E in the equation.

Besides that, the 22 has been a thorn in our side since the inception of the project, mostly for the reasons stated above. As someone who works within the F-22 realm I witness this first hand.

Isn't the 35 supposed to take over that role? I know it's supposed to replace both the F-16 and A-10 for the Air Force and take over the mud moving role with a secondary role in air superiority. Also, isn't the 22 supposed to also have ground attack capability as well, being able to carry the new small diameter bomb in its internal weapons bay?

The F-15E isn't going anywhere, anytime soon. The A-D models are being scrapped because of the 22, but the E model has certain advantages that even the Raptor can't touch, primarily the payload capacity. In an area where stealth capability is not necessary, the Strike Eagles will dominate the air for some time to come.

As for the JSF, yes it's taking on the role of the F-16, and in theory the A-10, but in reality it will never be as effective in ground support operations as an A-10 is.

I saw the mockup for the Raptor before it was even called that, I think in 1992 if I remember correctly. The C-17 was there, too. They called it "Budha" because it was fat, never went anywhere, and people came to worship it.
They're going to just keep the F-15 around (and adding all kinds of aftermarket crap on it) until it's seriously in need of retirement. Anyone who didn't see this coming had their heads buried deep in the sand.True, but they have to be planes (and other weapons) that can go with deferred maintenance when the baloon goes up, and can be handled and worked on with people with a middle-school-grade education (because that's who's working on things like that). Also, if you have a hundred planes that cost several times what you had before and you don't really see the resturn on that money, congress will shut you down. That's what happened here.
This is also why the DoD is finally looking at replacing the M-16-series of infantry weapons after 40 years +. The military loves to change things but without a good reason to take to the bean counters, it never happens.
As for finding a serious opponent, nobody in the green machine is willing to accept the possibility. Sure, North Korea and China have numbers, but only the European nations have anything that machine-per-machine put up any serious threat in a straight fight. However, some of the newer Russian stuff out there is starting to scare some folks. I know when I first hears that the Russians were looking into making DPU rounds (depleted Uranium, pretty much capable of punching through any existing armor plate) for a proposed 130MM smoothbore main tank gun, I started to worry about the tankers I worked with. Thankfully that never came to pass. But something like that is only a matter of time. But until then, the last time we've been caught with our pants down weapon-wise was against the Germans in Europe in WW2...

Any updates on this? There was an article in the Minneapolis paper 2 weeks ago (didn't get to read it) and a radio story
in the news last week (only caught the tail end of it, so it didn't make any sense).

Russ

The JSF is still on unstable ground as well...

The older F-18's will not make it in a few years and its going to mean less flight time, less pilots that can't stay current and more man hours per jet and longer maintenance time for us!

It sucks all the way around. I hope someone wakes up and stops drinking the cool-aid!

Congress shut down the F-22 procurement. What we have is what we are going to get, unless somebody starts shooting at us. Then they will not be able to build tham fast enough. Yes, the most A** kicking military hardware on the planet is expensive. But when you need it, you are glad you spent the money. America did not become the gretaest nation on Earth because we half a**ed and let others innovate.
Reminds me of an old Canadian news broadcaster I heard as a kid. "You talk about Japanese technology and you get radios. You talk about German technology and you get automobiles. You talk about American technology and you get a man on the Moon."