Here’s the latest news on the current longest lasting weapons system project which isn’t nicknamed “Star Wars” and trust me, it isn’t good news:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Air Force F-22 fighter, designed to be the world’s top air-superiority aircraft, crashed Wednesday near Edwards Air Force Base, California, while on a test mission, an Air Force official said.
The Lockheed Martin Corp -built F-22 went down about 10 a.m. Central Time about 35 miles northeast of Edwards, where it had been based, said Maj. Michelle Coghill, a spokeswoman for the Air Combat Command.
This program started in the early 1990’s as the next generation air superiority fighter to take on the by then non-existent Soviet threat to NATO based on studies done by the Air Force in the 1970’s and 1980’s about the necessity to stay ahead of Soviet air defense technology. The initial contracts were awarded to Lockheed’s successor in 1991.
Originally the USAF was to purchase 750 of these super-duper stealthy advanced fighters, but that number steadily declined to the 183 planes for which orders have currently been placed. As of 2005 production costs were “capped” at $37.3 BILLION in 2005. And here we are in 2009, still testing the mission capability of this advanced fighter jet that we clearly haven’t needed in the wars we have been fighting, after having pissed away $65 BILLION on this wonder plane.
So the question which I will restate for you in a slightly modified fashion why are we continuing to fund the damn thing when by all accounts it isn’t combat ready after nearly 18 years? It couldn’t be because its a welfare program for the military industrial complex, could it?
[The] anonymous “Protect American Jobs / Save the F-22 Raptor” ads on Drudge — and every other political website to the right of LOLcats — make my free market blood boil. Someone is spending a lot of money to gin up a petition to save history’s most expensive fighter plane. […]
Here’s some of the ad:
Act Now!
Production of the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft, the F-22 Raptor, is in jeopardy. Your help is needed to urge the Obama Administration to save more than 95,000 American jobs and more than $12 billion in national economic activity.
There’s no source given for either of these numbers. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 647,000 people work in industries where at least a fifth of the products are related to defense production, which would mean that roughly one out of seven Americans who work in the defense industry works on the Raptor. This is unlikely.
Last month, in a letter to Obama from 44 Senators arguing for more Raptor money, the number of jobs was only 25,000. I guess they’ve been hiring. Maybe they’re working on the website. […]
It’s built with super-secret stealth technology. The F-22 is invisible to radar, except when it switches on its radar to aim its weapons, opens its bomb bay to fire them, or turns.
[T]here’s a perfectly good reason the Raptor has never been to Iraq …The reason we’ve never used the Raptor in Iraq is it doesn’t work in places where there are wars.
According to Aviation Week & Space Technology, there’s just too much radio interference. To quote the man in charge of Air Combat Command, Gen. Ronald E. Keys:
“We didn’t anticipate there was going to be this level of jamming. Every patrol is out there with personal jammers. We’ve got lots of airplanes that are also jamming. At the same time, we’ve got people trying to listen [to insurgent conversations], a lot of it on the same or overlapping frequencies.”
The jammers he’s talking about are the ones the troops use to disable roadside IEDs. So the F-22, at $351 million a pop, is an excellent plane; it just doesn’t work over a battlefield where one side is using booby traps activated by TV remotes and electronic garage door openers.
So Iraq is out. And anyplace else with TVs, radios and cars.
Also according to Aviation Week:
(A) possible vulnerability in the stealth fighter’s legendary electronic surveillance system–located in the leading edges of the wings and vertical tails–became apparent during operations by the first operational squadron flying in the Chesapeake Bay area. The strong radars on nearby Navy ships were overwhelming the delicate sensors.
So it also doesn’t work around warships.
So, as mad as we all are about the “Banksters” as Atrios has nicknamed them, reserve a little anger for that segment of our economy which has mastered the art of wasting government tax dollars: our Defense Contractors. And write your Senator and tell him or her we really don’t need to build warplanes that we can’t use in any war were currently engaged in (nor do we need) merely to save a few thousand jobs, the lobbying fees of K-Street firms, and the executive bonuses of a few Senior Lockheed Executives. Aside from a really cool name which evokes meat eating dinosaurs and birds of prey, the F-22 doesn’t seem to have been worth all the time and money we’ve spent on developing it. There has to be better ways to spend the money allocated to purchasing these junk warplanes. Like developing green energy efficient technologies, for example. Right?
No
This has been simple answers for simple questions.
Call it a sunk cost and move on.
It’s a beautiful airplane, no doubt about it. My heart belonged to the YF-23, though.
It’s interesting to me that this plane is getting all the attention for what it can’t do while another plane that can do what the military requires these days, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, (aka the Warthog), is no longer in production. The Air Force likes sleek fast-movers whereas the A-10 is a slow and ugly beast.
I’m all for cutting the F-22 because the legacy basing requirements for using it, even if it were flawless, no longer apply. I don’t remember which Central Asian country it was that kicked us out due to Russian pressure, but with events like that, the signs speak clearly that we don’t have the global reach we once did and need to shorten our sights considerably. Killing this plane would be a good start.
That was Manas Airbase in Kyrgyzstan.
Great, thanks.
I recall, because I was there – many years ago (early 90s).
The Budget deficit is too high how can we afford this plane that doesn’t work. However, I foresee Republicans lining up to vote for the Raptor, while they decline to increase spending for health care reform as being too expensive.
Me too
Oh, most definitely!
Welfare for MIC = Good!
Welfare for families = Bad!
The balance is always, is between cool weapons like the Lightning (that I quietly hope is the first step towards mecha) or orbital kinetic weapons, and money pits like SDI.
How about we just bring back this Lightning? A tried and true model.
Gordon Novel calls them “gangbanksters” and has for years. I like that term best. 😉
95,000 jobs relate to the Raptor? huh?
at any rate, notice that “defense” jobs are more important, just like the financial sector, than everything else in the U.S.
so that makes at least two narrow, self-serving groups; the financial sector and defense which have already bilked we the taxpayers for Trillions over the years– and that’s not enough, it has to continue– according to them.
“defense” spending, like several other major policy areas, i.e. “aid” to Israel, etc., just never change, regarding which political party occupies the white house and has the majority in the congress.
hmm, now, I wonder why that is?
I wonder how many jobs relate to the Chevrolet Impala. More than 95,000 I bet. So even as welfare, it doesn’t cut it. If we want government sponsored production solely for jobs, let’s subsidize HDTV production in this country. At least that’s something the public wants to buy.
I’m not saying we won’t need an advanced fighter in the future, maybe even the near future, but we don’t need one that doesn’t work and is so sensitive to jamming.
Like missile defense, I support the principal and R&D, but not the production of weapons that don’t work.
I wonder what Jeff Huber would say?
Lt. Huber doesn’t seem to be on the orange site much these days– I’m sure he agrees with you re: wasting money on systems that don’t function. the real question is does Obama get it, or are we just going to let the military/industrial complex suck our Treasury dry?
While I agree that the F-22 is a waste of money, your source has their facts wrong. TV remotes operate by sending timed pulses of infrared light to a receiver on the front of the TV, not by radio waves. They would be quite useless for triggering an IED from outside of its blast radius, to say nothing of the need to stand out in the open with a clear line of sight to the bomb and a TV remote in the operator’s outstretched hand. While that’s certainly an excellent way to receive a free gift of several 5.56mm rounds courtesy of the nearest US Marine, it’s a really shitty way to detonate a roadside bomb.
In any case, if the F-22 was capable of being dazzled by a TV remote, it would be incapable of operating in sunlight, anywhere near an incandescent light bulb, or a lit cigarette.
It’s slightly more useless than the B2 bomber, which has seen limited duty. Of course, there is the hideous cost of maintaiing the B2. There are less expensive and more reliable alternatives. Sadly, we keep adding expensive new toys to the arsenal.
Too true. While the thrust-vectoring technology of the F-22 is quite amazing — and arguably ought to be applied to other, more promising airframes — I think we ought to be spending our money more on developing better unmanned aircraft. It’s a given that machines will eventually outperform humans as pilots anyway, and the major power that discovers that last is going to be in for one hell of a rude awakening someday.
Even without completely matching human performance, being able to field cheaper, more numerous, and more maneuverable aircraft might more than make up for the difference. It won’t matter if the other side has better pilots if our robot planes are almost as good and ten times more numerous.
Agreed – while the F-22 airframe is capable of withstanding (if memory serves) 12G, the pilots can only withstand 9G.
And, despite the amazing things the F-22 can do, I have to agree with the folks who say it is just too expensive.
If they’re too expensive to lose, they’re too expensive to build.
This argues strongly for getting the pilot out of the cockpit & developing small, cheap, high performance remote-piloted aircraft.
(Then you have to develop some kind of sensor system that can relay to the ground-based pilot all of the info, tangible & intangible, he gets while in the cockpit. That ought to cost a few shiny nickels.)
Well Mr. Steven D,
Killing off a dinosaur, like the meat eating F-22 Raptor is a good start.
I`m looking forward to your next target for extinction, especially ones in the bloated military armaments industry & the open ended contracting in the defense field.
Good diary, &
Thank You
.
Or the website “PreserveRaptorJobs.Com” [cache] is gone …
Shutting down the F-22 program would have drastic consequences for our economy and national security. Even a temporary delay would drive up production costs significantly, and it might become impossible to restart the production line at a future date as specialized workers move on to other positions. Conversely, continuation of the Raptor program will protect a vital national asset, save U.S. jobs and economic activity, and ensure that our men and women in uniform have the resources they need to protect our liberty.
F-22 for the 21st Century???
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."While I doubt that we “need” the F-22, I’m quite sure that our Southern GOP Senators and the populace around Atlanta Ga. view things quite differently. Keeping the defense industry viable, while the Government mints keep printing more and more dollars is what this is apparently about. And when you look at the $$$$ amounts we have read about in the last six months or so, $65 Billion can sound like chump change to some.
I did not become aware of the same level of concern to “save U.S. jobs” in the “Big Three” states though. I guess I must have missed something?