Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

reinvent the engine bays for the F135 because its simpler

The B-1 is only going to hold out so long, its time for thinking interim solution that can be used for other roles. And the FB-22 idea is what I was alluding.

Theoretical financial question here. Raptors cost like 300 mil a piece due to entire R&D budget being sunk into 18x planes right? so after those 18x are built, wouldn't any further purchase cost a "mere" 100 mil or so for the plane itself, no R&D tagged on? Isn't that how SHornets have been purchased for 50 mil in the last batch? Initial buy has been met?

Two F135's? In that case you might as well classify the Raptor as a low-earth orbiter.

Hopefully the next president WILL at the very least keep the F-22 line open for a half dozen or so copies/year

The next one won't take office until January of 2013 or 2017, and the first fiscal year that that President could have any influence on begins another half-year later still. And the President doesn't control the budget; his/her influence would be limited to making some kind of deal over the budget with Congress, which will also take time and probably mean any big major changes won't happen until the President's second fiscal year, a year and a half into his/her Presidency. And that's still not accounting for how much of Congress will also turn over by then. We could even keep the current President until 2017 only to have him replaced by someone else just as anti-military or more so. And for the next several years, pressures to reduce the budget will only get more drastic than they are now, not less.

For an option of "keeping" the lines open that long to even exist, given the fact that the current order won't take that long to produce, the factory would need to be left just sitting there doing nothing after the current order is filled. That actually is possible, but would cost money, which won't be appropriated for it because those who would need to make that decision know that the only possible purpose is to be ready for hypothetical future F-22 orders, which are something that won't ever happen anyway. And since it would need to be decided on right about now, the current crop of politicians who didn't order any more Raptors after this one would need to be the ones deciding to do it. There's just no way. The line will certainly, beyond any doubt, be closed.

The only way the factory would be kept open so long is if there are orders to be filled, and new orders won't come from this country any time soon, so the only way that will happen is if they allow close allies to order some. Australia probably already has the paperwork drafted and waiting just-in-case, and I don't know of any way that that decision would go against the way our current President thinks. But if it were going to happen, it would have by now, because they've all known this was coming for a few years.

No, the only way another F-22 will ever come after this is going to be after the production line is shut down and a lot of parts of it are destroyed, then somebody decides to rebuild and restart. And that would cost a bunch of money, thus throwing away the price-per-unit advantage of a larger number of units, thus reducing the likelihood that it will happen. So the only way it could happen would be as a fallback/substitute for something else that's in even more trouble, like the Navy's hypothetical next airborne weapon system probably will be. Given how budgets are going lately, I think it's not hard to see that that thing will never be allowed to get off the ground, with government officials vulturing over the shoulders of all the engineers involved, finding ways to delay it until 2074 with a 4022.1% cost increase, until they complain about it and kill the whole thing. Then they'll look around for an older established program that can be revived with modifications like they did with Hornets once before, and remember that Raptors were originally supposed to also come in a naval version for which the planning data is presumably still around...

It's far out there, but it's the ONLY thing left for an F-22 fan to hope for at this point.

For an option of "keeping" the lines open that long to even exist, given the fact that the current order won't take that long to produce, the factory would need to be left just sitting there doing nothing after the current order is filled. That actually is possible, but would cost money, which won't be appropriated for it because those who would need to make that decision know that the only possible purpose is to be ready for hypothetical future F-22 orders, which are something that won't ever happen anyway. And since it would need to be decided on right about now, the current crop of politicians who didn't order any more Raptors after this one would need to be the ones deciding to do it. There's just no way. The line will certainly, beyond any doubt, be closed.

The only way the factory would be kept open so long is if there are orders to be filled, and new orders won't come from this country any time soon, so the only way that will happen is if they allow close allies to order some. Australia probably already has the paperwork drafted and waiting just-in-case, and I don't know of any way that that decision would go against the way our current President thinks. But if it were going to happen, it would have by now, because they've all known this was coming for a few years.

No, the only way another F-22 will ever come after this is going to be after the production line is shut down and a lot of parts of it are destroyed, then somebody decides to rebuild and restart. And that would cost a bunch of money, thus throwing away the price-per-unit advantage of a larger number of units, thus reducing the likelihood that it will happen. So the only way it could happen would be as a fallback/substitute for something else that's in even more trouble, like the Navy's hypothetical next airborne weapon system probably will be. Given how budgets are going lately, I think it's not hard to see that that thing will never be allowed to get off the ground, with government officials vulturing over the shoulders of all the engineers involved, finding ways to delay it until 2074 with a 4022.1% cost increase, until they complain about it and kill the whole thing. Then they'll look around for an older established program that can be revived with modifications like they did with Hornets once before, and remember that Raptors were originally supposed to also come in a naval version for which the planning data is presumably still around...

It's far out there, but it's the ONLY thing left for an F-22 fan to hope for at this point.

sewerrat
Hope the JSF lives up to its hype, otherwise. . . . Hope the T-50 and J-10 are failures.