...but for those who say the threat "isn't there", I guess this [ausairpower.net] is just a figment of the imagination then? And they certainly didn't have any "help" [dailymail.co.uk]...

Oh, I know, China isn't a "threat". The fact that it's on track to exceed US military spending by 2025 [economist.com] must be for "peaceful regional defense". This [nytimes.com] isn't [economist.com] really [economist.com] happening [nytimes.com].

What about the F-35? Oh, yeah — that, too. [aviationweek.com]

To use the F-22 correctly we'd have to go to war with Russia or China. If that happens then there are a lot of other issues that are more important than the F-22.

If we fight another proxy war (like Vietnam was or when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan) then we'll probably be using drones.

Follow the money. Who's making the profit on the F-22?

Precisely.

I'll note that members of the military are sworn to follow only lawful orders, and are likewise duty-bound to disobey unlawful orders.

One could definitely argue that while "fly this plane into extremely dangerous enemy territory and blow them up, we'll give you all the support we can but there's still pretty good odds you won't make it back" is a lawful order, "fly this plane on a routine practice mission over our own, undisputed territory, that's likely to kill you for no reason" is not. At the very least, you could argue that your death and the subsequent loss of the aircraft would amount to sabotage of America's defenses.

If the Libyans had acquired Eurofighters, rafales or if the syrians had any decent russian aircraft he'd be singing a different tune. Yes NATO has air assets that can handle SU27's and Mig 29's, but you end up in a shooting war with eretria, or sudan or syria and they manage to down even one US aircraft people will be wondering wtf there wasn't something better available.

The problem with *all* military spending is that you're trying to guess future needs and have something that can cope with an unknown problem. It's not like the US was stupid enough to only buy f22's (at the astronomical price that would have entailed). The US Air force has something like 2400 'fighters' of which about 200 are F22's. That's not counting the Navy. For what they do that seems like a fairly reasonable allotment of 'might need for air superiority role' for the next 20 years or so. One can argue specifics on stealth, performance or total numbers, but it doesn't seem like the F22 purchase was wildly out of place by US standards. As with any piece of equipment it's possible there is something wrong with a system (in this case the oxygen system), but that could be a maintenance issue, a replacement part issue a design issue, or any number of other things. Whenever you buy any piece of equipment (including a car) you take the chance that something on it will be defective.

The sub fleet has been scaled back as well but subs are much more versatile than the F-22s will ever be.

You can assess the effetiveness of a weapon only when its been through fire.
F-22s up to now are a bluff, a very expensive bluff.
The day they go on the battlefield and emerge unscathed after being fired upon by the state of the art sam batteries then we can say yeah F-22s are great.

The F-22s were designed for the cold war and in much greater numbers. So much for forward thinking eh ?
200 aircraft is too small a number to do 2 things :
-insure the integrity of the US airspace
- and deploy a sufficient number of F-22 to insure the air superiority of a hypothetical future battlefield that is not 100 km^2.
In fact the number of F-22 is so small that the US military is too afraid to use them and potentially lose them on the battlefield. Much much better to lose then at home.
They have become so costly as to be useless for all pratical purposes.

Same problem as the B-2s. Why do we keep flying B-52s in bombing missions instead of B-2s ?
Answer : we have a fuckton of B-52s and they are cheap, we have 20 B-2s and they cost a billion each so losing one is not acceptable.

Military weapons that are too costly and in few numbers is never a good thing.

It seems valid only to people who will not learn the lessons of history.

And I will point out that the reason there has never been a question of Air Superiority is precisely because the US was always looking at the Soviets as the next potential combatant, and developing high-tech planes for that eventuality. Now they are looking at the Chinese, or their client states, as well as places like Iran or Syria that have something like 50 times the anti-air missile technology that Iraq had.

You can't seriously be suggesting that we wait till there is a superior opponent kicking our asses before we start development can you? It sure sounds like you are.

The money was all spent here, and the aircraft will server for 30 years.

200 is plenty.

You build the weapons you need in the quantity you need. We have drones to do the super dangerous missions, and tons of F16s FA-18s, F-15s to rule the roost once the the F22s sweep the skys. Please don't assume because you have a computer and an internet connection that you are qualified to design force levels for a theater you can only guess at. Production has been purposely held back so that the country can be bankrupted paying for healthcare.

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.

The F22 was not designed for a cold war. It was deigned for air to air combat.

I don't know what backwoods piece of shit branch of service you served in but in the Marines we are honor bound to do the right thing.

I will tell you how my drill instructor told us many years ago while on one of our many island hopping campaigns (those were fun ugg)

"A Marine is bound to always do what is right. If a superior gives you an order that you know you should not follow you better not."
"However bitches here is the kicker. YOU HAD BETTER BE FUCKING RIGHT!"

in other words when an enlisted person refuses an order he deems unlawful he had BETTER BE FUCKING RIGHT! (or he is fucked)
There is no gray area for an enlisted person it is a very black and white situation, right or wrong.

My favorite marine quote.

"The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps! "
Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States, 1945

1. That is incorrect. In Korea the US did have issues with air superiority until we deployed the F-86 and even then it was touch and go.
2. Since then we have had air superiority because we have spent the most to develop it and keep it but even over vietnam we only had a roughly 1:1 kill ratio.

Guess what? The same thing has been said about just about every aircraft ever developed. The F-4 was big and expensive and people said we would be better off just buying more F8Us. The F-15 was big and expensive and didn't see combat for a decade after it's first flight.
And so on and so on.
The F-15 is late 1960s tech. It is older than most of you on this board. It is now getting threatened by SU-32s and Su-37s.

Um, no. Everyone in the military, from E-1 to O-10, has both the right and the duty to refuse an unlawful order. And officers can also convicted for refusing to obey an order if they thought it was unlawful, but the court-martial finds otherwise. Obviously political reality enters into this -- a corporal is a lot more likely to end up behind bars for refusing to obey an order than is a colonel -- but under the law, there's essentially no difference between the obligations of officers and enlisted in this regard.

Is the R&D type military spending does have civilian benefits. The most major and obvious one in recent history would be GPS. It was built because the military wanted to be able to precisely locate all their men and material anywhere. Now? It is the principal navigation method for virtually commercial and civilian all craft, falling back to less accurate measures only should it fail.

GPS is the biggest and most evident, but not the only one.

While that doesn't mean we should just blindly throw money at anything, I think money spent on military R&D is better than money spent on wars, or having a massive military. I'd rather have a smaller military with the highest of the high tech equipment than a massive one with whatever can be scraped together.

And of course, as with any R&D, you can to be ok with the idea that the results may suck, they may not work, they may have problems, or there just flat out may not be any. If you want guarantees, you have to stick with what you have. If you try new things, there may be problems, failures, as you push the envelope.

And if they start landing, they better pay attention to what a few Japanese generals stated about a rifle being behind every blade of grass
Multiple conflicts throughout history have shown what local gurrila fighter can do against a "proper military" - now imagine what one of the best armed civilian populations could do... The 2nd Amendment isn't about deer, duck, or dove hunting - it is about fighting back against enemies both foriegn and domestic.

It seems valid only to people who will not learn the lessons of history.

If you want to learn the lessons of history, just look at HOW the US and NATO eventually conquered the Soviet Union. It wasn't though a SINGLE weapon used in war, it was by forcing them to spend money on their military until it basically bankrupted them.

And big surprise, that's exactly what terrorist networks have done, what China, North Korea, Iran, etc have done. Create perceived threats with little expense and goad the US into responding with trillions of dollars in useless wars and weapons development. In China's case, they are even providing the shovel (ie loans) to dig the hole.

I think the bigger problem is the hypoxia and the cost.

I'm not opposed to be planning for the future, but we can't bankrupt ourselves doing it like North Korea. Build a cheaper plane and figure out how to keep the pilots from fucking suffocating.

Quite franky, if it takes 350 million to push out a single aircraft then it is unsustainable. If it cost 10 million a piece for single family houses we would still be living in caves and huts.

Instead of the constant boondoggles and Military Industrial Complex bailouts let's figure out a plane that will give us air superiority in either tech or numbers for less than 50 million a plane.

Is that really that unreasonable?

Ohhhh, and the ability to breathe too while we are at. For those pussy pilots who need oxygen.

Although many believe that when you sign up for the military, you're agreeing to die for your country, I would like to remind them that this is not exactly Plan A;

As long as SuperPAC donor corporations are making money building the F-22 and the F-35, it doesn't matter one bit what is "safer" or "more effective" or a "better weapon". It doesn't matter how many pilots get splashed and it doesn't matter that the generals don't want those aircraft.

What matters is some transnational corporation's stock price and political donations depend on those boondoggles. They're going to fly the F-22 and like it, because nobody cares what those pilots want. And not one dollar can be cut from military spending, no matter what agreements were made, no matter what votes were taken, no matter how wasteful.

And one presidential candidate wants an additional $100 billion for defense spending, while cutting $600 billion from "wasteful" things like Pell Grants, Head Start schools, infrastructure and food stamps.

Now who are the real "welfare queens"?

The contractors lie about capability and cost because they want to win the contract. The DoD accepts these lies because it wants shiny new toys. Congress goes along with it as long there's pork involved. No-one learns anything because there's no incentive to avoid corrupt behaviour. The MICC at its finest.

Reality intervenes and the project goes overbudget. Production gets cut, yet it doesn't really save any money. The project continues through several cycles of the death spiral until it is either cancelled or delivers a product. And we end up with the congress critters getting their pork, contractors getting their piles of money, DoD getting their shiny new toys, along with promotions for anyone who didn't end up holding the bag. The troops end up with nothing or a handful of gold-plated weapons with less capability than they were promised. Oh, and the taxpayer gets screwed, but that's the usual outcome.

Nice sentiments. But far too idealistic and unrealistic. Your problem is, human nature. Those who beat their swords into plowshares will till the soil for those who have not.

But none of that would have worked if the US had not maintained a large and very well equipped armed forces. Without the ability to hold the Soviets in check militarily, the West would have been screwed.

What defeated the Soviets was Containment. Part of that was economic, and par of it was force projection and the ability to counter or respond to all Soviet military capabilities.

Uh, the Soviet Union was defeated with a lot of help from by surface to air missiles (Stingers among others), antitank missiles and mines supplied by the U.S. to Pakistan which in turn provided them to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union was bled white fighting a brutal, futal ten year war in Afghanistan and some of the returning veterans were a leading voice of disillusionment with their government.

They were pretty cheap weapons, but still you are exaggerating your point when you say "It wasn't through a SINGLE weapon used in war".

It is also something of an exaggeration to say military spending bankrupted them. It may have been a contributing factor but the collapse of the Soviet Union was a lot more complex than that. If Gorbachev hadn't been in power, and a hard liner had been, it might not have collapsed at all.

What defeated the Soviets was that the "Communist" economic model they used was ineffective at promoting long term economic growth and prosperity.

I believe their economic model was best summarized by a saying of the workers: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."

It's a pity the US and the West didn't think about Chinese dominance before they started shipping their hi-tech manufacturing there.

I don't know about $50M, but I remember somewhere that the marginal cost for another F-22 was something like $60M. That's discounting the R&D and operational costs.

Excepting the RAM coatings, the F-22 was actually designed to be cheaper and easier to maintain than a F-15. The hypoxia is a serious design flaw, yes, but it's actually a pretty tiny portion of the plane.

If you want a $50M plane, we're going to have to build them by the thousand to justify the R&D and tooling to automate manufacture to the point that they're that cheap.

IE want 10 F-22s? $75M a piece, discounting R&D. Want 100? $60M because they end up automating more.

That's right. And I don't think you understand how we managed to do that.

1. Superior weapons are not meant to be used. If they were never used, that means they worked beautifully. It's called a deterrent. If you have air superiority, nobody is going to want to fight you in the air.

2. Maintaining superiority is less costly than trying to leapfrog somebody else. If we stand by twiddling our thumbs waiting for everybody else to catch up, then we'll be required to leapfrog them, and the same fate the USSR encountered will be ours.

Or, as USAF types put it, "American troops have not had to fight under a hostile sky since WWII. This did not happen by accident."

That's exactly McCain's point. The aircraft aren't intended for Afghanistan, or Iraq, or any of the wars we've actually been in for the past 10 years, they're intended for a war against Soviet Union. Back in 1981 when the Air Force began looking for an F-15 successor, this probably made sense, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the question becomes, why do we need these planes?

The only countries currently pursuing fifth-generation fighters are China and Russia. At this point, the idea of war with China seems like a remote possibility. The U.S. can't live without iPads and China can't live without U.S. money. Russia's military fell apart after the collapse of the USSR and it would take a long time to rebuild it to the point where it would be a serious threat. At any rate, war with either country is extremely unlikely given this little thing called "mutually assured destruction". Because of that, the U.S. hasn't gone to war with a major power in 60 years, when we fought against China in Korea.

So it's a fair guess that the wars of the next 50 years will look like the wars of the past 50 years- Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Wars against enemies with inferior air forces, and guerrilla wars. In that sense, the Obama administration's move to cut the F-22 program while expanding the role of drones and increasing the size of Special Forces looks like the right move.

Would be an incredible success. Part of the cost of medicare is that only disabled and seniors are allowed on it, leaving the profitable rest of the population to the private insurance market. If the risk pool were allowed to include the healthy and young, you would start to see serious improvements in medical outcomes and at a reasonable coverage rate.

[1] http://thehill.com/homenews/house/64029-medicare-for-everyone [thehill.com]

And the price was only the US getting its ass kicked and the death of hundreds of young men fighting a superior force in obsolete planes. But hey, it is not you doing the dying is it, just someone elses son.

WW2 saw the US hopelessly unprepared and it wasn't the fat cats who paid the price for it. Afterwards, the US promised itself to never be caught unprepared again. Preparing your national defense for what is happening now is silly, it takes decades to prepare and nobody can predict even 5 years ahead. War is wasteful, being prepared so war can be avoided only seems wasteful. Until you get it wrong.

I'm pretty sure drone A. I. is going to be vastly better at air combat maneuvering quite soon. Keep in mind that a plane without a human on board doesn't have to respect the body limits regarding g-force.

The way I see it, humans have the edge on 1-on-1 fight, so then you could just default your drone to follow him as best as it can, even if it ends up in a "draw". Once you start going X vs X, the drones can communicate practically instantly with the whole network, much faster than the humans, and that IMO is a decisive factor (not considering the g-force limitations that the drones don't have).