Some USAF Pilots Refuse To Fly F-22 Raptor 569
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that some of the nation's top aviators are refusing to fly the radar-evading F-22 Raptor, a fighter jet with ongoing problems with the oxygen systems that have plagued the fleet for four years. 'We are generally aware of a small number of pilots who have expressed reservations about flying the F-22, and each of those cases will be handled individually through established processes,' says Maj. Brandon Lingle, an Air Force spokesman. Concern about the safety of the F-22 has grown in recent months as reports about problems with its oxygen systems have offered no clear explanations why there have been 11 incidents in which F-22 pilots reported hypoxia-like symptoms. 'Obviously it's a very sensitive thing because we are trying to ensure that the community fully understands all that we're doing to try to get to a solution,' says Gen. Mike Hostage, commander of Air Combat Command. Meanwhile Sen. John McCain says that the jets, which the Air Force call the future of American air dominance, are a waste of their $79 billion price tag and serve no role in today's combat environment. 'There is no purpose, no mission in Afghanistan or Iraq, unless you believe that al Qaeda is going to have a fleet of aircraft,' says McCain, a former combat pilot himself. '[The F-22] has not flown a single combat mission... I don't think the F-22 will ever be seen in the combat it was designed to counter, because that threat is no longer in existence.'"
Re:There is a point (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, if you want to make that argument, you take an F16, skin it to look like an F22, make hundreds of them and fly'em around and look scary.
Would work for about a month until the paint fell off. I'm all for shock and awe, but spending 80+ billion on a bluff is just batshit stupid.
Re:No purpose? You sure about that? (Score:5, Informative)
So the expensive equipment is better for the War effort, even if 1000 F16s and A-10s would kill more enemies in a shorter period of time for less money, because A-10s get shot down because they go low and slow. And it's not successes that win wars anymore, but lack of losses.
Short sighted much? (Score:5, Informative)
McCain might be right, but his statement sounds frighteningly a lot like when they believed in wars after WW2 that dogfighting aircraft were no longer needed, and then had to make an about-face when the MiG fighters had no American competition in Korea. For a short time in Korea, we had WW2 propeller driven Mustangs fighting against MiG jets. There were even some pilots from WW2 flying, and supposedly helped advise the design of modern jet fighters and dogfighting techniques to counter the MiG.
Re:Not only that... (Score:4, Informative)
"Having an aircraft designed, tested, and an assembly line in place, these very small aircraft can be built in great numbers very fast as soon as cost become not a constraint."
You would need MORE parallel lines, not a speedup.
That also doesn't solve component lead times, crew training times, maintainer training times, maintenance infrastructure buildout times, and the other things which make spewing out modern aircraft a bit different than knocking up a WWII piston-engined fighter.
Re:Not only that... (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure precisely (Score:4, Informative)
There isn't a precise count, because records aren't kept centrally. Though there is a federal background check done on new weapons sold to civilians in the US there are two things:
1) It is quite new, most firearms were sold prior to it.
2) No record is kept by the government. The sale is approved or denied and that is it.
Records are kept by individual gun shops (as required by law) but not centrally.
However it is a lot. Best estimates are around 270 million or so. Not more than the population but close.
You are correct about uneven distribution in that many people who choose to own a gun, choose to own multiple ones as different types are good for different purposes, and like most hobbies they simply enjoy it. About a third of homes have firearms as best as surveys can tell.
It would make for an exceedingly armed militia. While there aren't a lot (relatively speaking) of fully automatic weapons in civilian hands (100,000 or so) there are plenty of weapons with military value, hunting rifles, AR-15s, AK-47s, etc. The US does not restrict such things from civilians, and many civilians own them. Likewise there is little restriction on ammunition. Some types (like steel) cannot be bought but legal ammunition is unrestricted to the point of being sold over the Internet and shipped directly to homes.
A foreign power conquering such a populace, if they chose to fight, would be near impossible. The whole "getting shot from every window" would be a fairly literal reality. Blowing shit up is easy from afar, but occupation requires soldiers in cities and that is where the problem would be.
Re:Not only that... (Score:3, Informative)
You're wrong about the V-22; the development program was long delayed and over budget, and several complications arose during testing. However, since operational deployment, the aircraft has an excellent safety record--in fact much better than the CH-47s it's been replacing. Your opinion on the aircraft is dated, and doesn't represent how things have turned out in actual practice. And unlike the F-22, the V-22 is very well suited to recent types of conflicts--it can rescue downed pilots or deploy a special forces assault team more quickly and over a longer range the a conventional helicopter (at the cost of less payload and more complexity).
The F-22 is a different beast, but we've already stopped production and now have these airframes. We should work out the issues, and there's nothing fundamental to say we can't do so, and then take older airframes offline once the F-22 is fit for combat operations as newer airframes are cheaper to maintain than older ones, even the F-22. We should probably also build a minimal complement of F-35, and then actually replace the remainder of our combat aircraft resulting in a much smaller total fleet, sized more to our needs. The US is losing its status as hegemon of the Western world, and look to itself as just one of a bunch of Western democracies--part of this is to scale back militarily and let the other NATO countries take a bigger role in their own military defense and power projection.
Lastly, as for UAVs the days are over where they are necessarily cheaper than manned aircraft--so much capability is demanded from these aircraft that in the end, they're now costing as much as manned vehicles, and consequently corners can't be cut on reliability, either. Vehicles like the Predator and Global Hawk are actually requiring more ground crew than comparable manned aircraft in order to interpret incoming data and act on it effectively. They will play a bigger role in the future, for sure, but don't think building UCAVs to replace F-22s will save a single penny.
Re:Not only that... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah... no.
All your 9mm Glocks and hunting rifles and even AK-47's and AR-15's aren't going to do much good against an armored column. The point of a guerilla response is to make the enemy bleed enough that it (eventually) saps the popular and political will supporting the invasion and occupation, forcing an eventual withdrawal. But that can be an awfully long time: How long was Russia in Afghanistan? the US in Iraq, Afghanistan? The French in Vietnam? The British... everywhere? An "armed resistance" sounds great. But it does not compare in the slightest to a modern, well-equipped, well-trained military. If you think a hundred thousand Angelenos and New Yorkers are going to meet the invaders on the beaches in a pitched battle rivaling Normandy... I want some of what you're smoking. Without a standing military, we'd be eminently invadable.
The only thing we'd have is the firepower to offer some resistance after the occupation. But even still, 300 million amateurs with handguns are still fucking amateurs. The vast majority will know nothing of small unit tactics, communications, survival, evasion, etc. required to effectively fight against an occupying force. And there's a pretty steep learning curve when the smallest mistake means you catch a .50 caliber round in the face. There's a VERY small number of people who own guns and who would be capable of mounting effective resistance. The rest would be ground meat in about 2 days against any reasonably well-trained military. "Red Dawn" was a fanciful notion, but it's just that: fanciful.