The F-22 program is arguably the most maligned military program of the past decade. To many, it represents everything that is wrong with current defense industry and Pentagon policies. Because of this, many seek to kill the F-22 program for a variety of reasons. The problem is that while this may seem tempting in the short term, over the long run terminating the F-22 could have a devastating effect on the entire US military.
All current and proposed military structures are reliant upon American domination of the air. Failure to maintain total air dominance in the future will gravely threaten the survivability of all air, sea, and ground assets of the US military. Exacerbating this problem is that advanced technologies are becoming more available worldwide to threaten our existing assets especially high tech anti-air and anti-ship missiles. We must do what is necessary to counter this growing threat.
At the same time, we need to address a wide variety of air modernization issues. Our fighter force is aging rapidly but so are rotorcraft assets, aerial refueling assets, air transport systems, and heavy bombers. Most reformers make the claim that because of these additional needs, the F-22 is a luxury that we cannot afford. The reality is that little is to be gained by eliminating the F-22 at this point. We have already invested roughly $20 billion in the F-22 and this is money that we can never get back. That having been said, the remaining costs of the F-22 program are not much greater, and under some circumstances less than, maintaining the current F-15 fleet. A far greater amount of money is available through changes to the JSF program.
Enough funding is tied up in the JSF program to adequately address nearly all of our air modernization needs. This does not mean ending the F-35, only radically changing the program. In short, continuing with F-22 production and limiting JSF would allow us to purchase the following within current budgeted costs:
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500 F-22s |
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1400 F-16s |
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480 F-18s |
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480 F-35s (VTOL version) |
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100 C-17s |
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600 CH-53Es |
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200 KC-33As (military 747) |
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1000 MH-60s |
This plan would include enough rotorcraft to eliminate the V-22 program and use those funds for further modernization efforts. I am including in these cost estimates additional funds to address modernization of current designs. In stark contrast, under any realistic scenario cutting the F-22 would at best provide a savings of about $15 billion over 20 years in purchasing costs, much of which would end up as maintenance costs so we would actually save less. For that savings, we would lose stealth, supercruise, thrust vectoring, sensor fusion, and a variety of potential capabilities.
Consequently we have virtually nothing to gain by cutting the F-22 at this point. Five to eight years ago, a case could have been made but no longer – we’ve already paid for most of the costs. If we want to adequately address our air modernization needs, the funding needs to come from reductions in the JSF program, not the F-22 program.
Additional Articles:
Should We Wait For the Next Generation?
Is Stealth the Future?
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