Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Shortly after the news broke that the F-22 had been deployed to the Middle East, Iran's retoric dropped off and oil prices dropped. This could be coincidence, or as I think, it is at least partially a direct relationship.

The news broke on Aviation Week on April 26, 2012, on April 27, 2012 Crude price on the NYME closed at $104.93. The next week (5/4/12) the price was $98.49. and it has countinued to fall until last Friday (6/8/12) when it "leveled" at $84.10. So in 6 weeks the price dropped $20 and is at the low since early last October.

Ok now if we assume that this is not coincidence and assume a partial relationship:
If we contribute 30% of the drop to the F-22 presence in the region, and assume the US oil consumption rate is 19.0 million barrels a day, then it could be said that over the last 6 weeks (56 days) the F-22 has saved the US approzimately $6.4 Billion.

That is roughly 10% of the entire F-22 program, or the cost of around 40 more F-22's in terms of a $150 million fly away cost. Did the F-22 just pay for 10% of it's cost by being present in the region?

Just wondering other peoples thoughts, and wanting a sanity check.

Sufa Viper

F-16.net Sponsor

Haha I like your calculations.

I'm not sure though that Iran has such prominence within OPEC.

That may be true, but war in the Middle East drives the price of oil up and with the rhetoric coming out of Iran lately they are almost daring the US and/or Israel to attack.
Sufa Viper

I'm not so sure that you can really make that calculation, but the sum total of all US military power enables an incalculably large amount trade to take place all over the world. As a whole, it surely more than pays for itself, but giving dollar amounts for various portions of it....

count to 10-

While I agree that the US military does enable trade around the world, F-18, F-16, F-15, Global Hawk, U-2, among others have been based within range of Iran for a while, but it seemed to me once it was known that F-22's were nearby Iran calmed down. But, as I have said, I may be reading too much into it.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Sufa Viper

I am not at all happy with the ideas of looking at our military assets the same way a mugger looks at a pistol or knife.

delvo wrote:

I am not at all happy with the ideas of looking at our military assets the same way a mugger looks at a pistol or knife.

Well, in this case, the weapon isn't in the mugger's hand -- it's in the cop's hand.
This isn't about extorting goods out of people, it's about reassuring them that they won't be extorted.

Except that The US doesn't really rely on oil from Mid East these days, so I guess the F-22s have done other countries a huge favor, if this presumption stands

batu731 wrote:

Except that The US doesn't really rely on oil from Mid East these days, so I guess the F-22s have done other countries a huge favor, if this presumption stands

Oil is fungible: it moves around freely, such that the status of suppliers you never use can still affect the price you have to pay to your regular suppliers.

Interesting take sufa, but clearly you are stretching on a coincidence. The price of crude, along with all raw material asset classes went down at the same time. Iran does have a small yet notable portion of the world's known oil reserves, but not all those other materials. The banking / debt contagion in Europe and the reported slowing of the Chinese economy drove the prices down, not the deployment of a few fighter planes.

batu731 wrote:

Except that The US doesn't really rely on oil from Mid East these days, so I guess the F-22s have done other countries a huge favor, if this presumption stands

Ehhh...Actually Saudi is our #2 largest supplier.

Top 4 in order:

Canada
Saudi Arabia
Mexico
Venezuela

It seem to me that every time a hawk in DC mentions actions against Iran the oil price spikes. That real action caused Iran to seemingly back off a little is interesting. It is a known fact that higher oil prices will hurt the re-election chances of Obama, so I am curious how this newfound knowledge will be used by either party as we move closer to election day.

checksixx wrote:

Ehhh...Actually Saudi is our #2 largest supplier.

Top 4 in order:

Canada
Saudi Arabia
Mexico
Venezuela

Venezuela isn't so much our #4 supplier, as we're their only supplier. We supply them with refining services able to handle their extremely low-grade crude. Nobody else has built refineries that can handle it.

The point is, oil is oil the world over. No matter who makes it, or who refines it, it affects global supply, and therefore global price. Even if we can trace every molecule used in our country to "not-Iran," Iranian production affects us.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Can the F-22 "pay for itself"?