Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

1. You can tell how smart this woman is when she used the word armamentarium instead of armament, armamentarium is "he medicines, equipment, and techniques available to a medical practitioner."
2. Lockheed Martin determined what sub-contractors built the components, not the government or the military.
3. The "rain vulnerability" and the like have been discussed elsewhere on this forum. See http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-12877.html
4. No planes are "armored" and small arms fire can penetrate any plane made by anyone.

As for the assertion that the F-22 was killed to fund the F-35, it's not the reason, but kind of factors in. In Obama and Gates campaign to kill the F-22 they did say that the money would be used to fund the F-35.

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kagiannoulis wrote:

To be more specific I heard about the cancellation of F-22 when I watch this video. I post it below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaoYz90g ... re=related

Please write your comments. Thank you.

- says it all about the media really!!

Wow - so take a newsreader woman that had probably never heard of the F-22 before that day, give her an autocue - then get someone who either knows less about the F-22 than she does (if that's possible), or has an agenda to slate it - to write the script!

The purpose of this broadcast is only to pick out negative and mostly unfounded aspects of the initial deployment of the jet, blow them out of proportion (lie) - and then broadcast it to an audience who also know F all about it - so they think its true. These misguided muppets then post it on You tube - and voila.......

Not entirely your fault - most people take the word of the press no matter how untrue and believe it without question.

kagiannoulis wrote:

To be more specific I heard about the cancellation of F-22 when I watch this video. I post it below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaoYz90g ... re=related

Please write your comments. Thank you.

Why you can't trust the media on defense matters 101. Especially the left.

Bodizzle wrote:

4. No planes are "armored" and small arms fire can penetrate any plane made by anyone.

With the possible exception of the A-10! (But I understand what you mean.)
Smile

fisk

lampshade111 wrote:

kagiannoulis wrote:

To be more specific I heard about the cancellation of F-22 when I watch this video. I post it below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaoYz90g ... re=related

Please write your comments. Thank you.

Why you can't trust the media on defense matters 101. Especially the left.

Except for the statement that it can't communicate with other aircraft being completely false, the maintenance stats she quotes are pretty accurate. The thing is a piece of s**t. I will give you that she knows nothing of what she talks about and most of what she says is complete garbage, but some of it is true. It was engineered to be "to big to fail." It's a maintenance NIGHTMARE! DoD did not learn their lesson though, same thing is happening with the F-35. But that's being rushed into service before testing is complete, so from a maintainers stand point anyway, it's going to be even more of a nightmare than the raptor.

I make a search about Mrs Rachel Anne Maddow and she seems an important person for US media. So I think that some parts or all parts of the story seems to be true. I think F-22 its design to be the best and maybe is the best in a one to one dogfight or BVR or etc., but if the cost is 360 million, Russia (actually I don't believe is a threat) can build 7 Su-35BM with this price and for an F-22 is impossible to beat 7 Su-35BM in a dogfight or BVR or etc.

You might want to check those numbers again....

According to:
http://rt.com/Business/2008-07-08/Sukho ... ghter.html

A new Su-35BM costs $65 mil (US). For that you can get 2.5 Su-35BMs for an F-22. The F-22 costs (2009 Complete Weapon System Cost (WSC)) about $150mil. If you averaged that over the whole program, it goes to $193. To get anywhere $300 you would have to add in all the development costs.

So what was the complete development cost of the entire Su-35 program divided by airframes and added to the complete weapon system cost?

Doesn't look too expensive now does it?

Last edited by kagiannoulis on Jun 17, 2010 - 09:48 AM; edited 1 time in total

Even the real cost $65 mil (I don't think that the Russian buy in this price but I agree with you the export version may has this price), 360 $ mil for F-22 is 5.5 Su-35BMs. And this price in my personal opinion is expensive. But if the real cost of F-22 is $190 mil and does what is design to do, I think is not expensive. In the other hand if this fighter is not expensive why the cancel it?

The F-22 does not cost $360 to buy. In 2009, the last year that the USAF bought F-22s, they only cost $150 mil each!

@Kagiannoulis,
you are comparing apples and oranges here. The 65 mln $ figure for the Su-35 is supposed to be fly-away or in other words for the naked aircraft. As Spudman said the equivalent price for the F-22 is ~150 mln $ these days. If you want to compare the costs you have to do it like with like, but it is even more difficult as the Su-35 development should include the costs for earlier Flanker variants, because without them the Su-35 wouldn't have been developed that way at all.

The only thing that nobody gives me a straight answer is why they cancel it.. For me there are 2 possible reason, a reason maybe that the F-22 was extreme expensive (but as you told me this is not actually true $150 mil per unit is a logical cost), and the other reason (personal opinion) is maybe that the F-22 is not the fighter that promise US air superiority in the future.. For me there is no way to cancel a successful project if all going well. Its like to have a well margin and growth company with a lot of incomes and one day I decided to close it and fire all the employees without any reason. Its insane. For me this move not making any sense.

I like to compare investments in weapons systems to insurance.. you pay for the specific type of coverage and the amount that you feel comfortable with. In the case of the F-22, the powers-that-be who control the money thought they had enough insurance to cover future risks.

kagiannoulis wrote:

The only thing that nobody gives me a straight answer is why they cancel it.. For me there are 2 possible reason, a reason maybe that the F-22 was extreme expensive (but as you told me this is not actually true $150 mil per unit is a logical cost), and the other reason (personal opinion) is maybe that the F-22 is not the fighter that promise US air superiority in the future.. For me there is no way to cancel a successful project if all going well. Its like to have a well margin and growth company with a lot of incomes and one day I decided to close it and fire all the employees without any reason. Its insane. For me this move not making any sense.

F-22 was not cancelled. There will be 180 F-22...they just decided that 180 is the final number and they will not buy more. There are about 100+ F-22 in service today... so it is far from cancelled...

kagiannoulis wrote:

The only thing that nobody gives me a straight answer is why they cancel it.. For me there are 2 possible reason, a reason maybe that the F-22 was extreme expensive (but as you told me this is not actually true $150 mil per unit is a logical cost), and the other reason (personal opinion) is maybe that the F-22 is not the fighter that promise US air superiority in the future.. For me there is no way to cancel a successful project if all going well. Its like to have a well margin and growth company with a lot of incomes and one day I decided to close it and fire all the employees without any reason. Its insane. For me this move not making any sense.

There are a number of reasons that it was cancelled, but none of them had to do with the F-22 not performing well. One of the reasons was that since the Cold War was over, it was hard to find a threat large enough to justify large numbers of primarily Air to Air fighters, especially when they cost ~$140-150 million each. Most of the missions that are typically flown are by multi-role fighters(i.e. F-16, F-18, etc...), and there are large numbers of those aircraft that need to be replaced, as they'll be retiring. The F-35 will be filling that role, as well as picking up slack in Air to Air roles.

If you do even a little bit of reading, you'll see that the F-22 offers amazing capabilities(such that it would make short work of even Su-35s).

As for it being insane to stop at 187, there are many of us here that wouldn't argue with that. The USAF wanted 381 Raptors, so that each of its 10 expeditionary wings could have a full squadron(of Block 35), plus training/spares/attrition birds.

kagiannoulis wrote:

I make a search about Mrs Rachel Anne Maddow and she seems an important person for US media. So I think that some parts or all parts of the story seems to be true. I think F-22 its design to be the best and maybe is the best in a one to one dogfight or BVR or etc., but if the cost is 360 million, Russia (actually I don't believe is a threat) can build 7 Su-35BM with this price and for an F-22 is impossible to beat 7 Su-35BM in a dogfight or BVR or etc.

Rachel Maddow is hardly an important person in the US media. She's a quack on the least viewed cable news network.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

F-22 Cancellation