The USAF won't get the first couple numbers of Raptors they originally wanted, and then tried to settle for. It will be a reduced number, but the Raptor is here to stay.

It is the best and worst of times for the Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptor fighter. Last year, the fighter emerged from a long and arduous development programme with a successful initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) programme, which demonstrated that the F/A-22 represents a vast increase in survivability and lethality over any other fighter. The aircraft was proceeding towards full-rate production at a unit cost which, although high, was at least stable. Avionics problems which had crippled flight testing in 2001-02 had been largely solved and the aircraft was well on its way to approval for full-rate production, which was attained in April.

At the end of the year, however, a leaked memorandum - Program Budget Decision (PBD) 753 - from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) threw the programme's entire future into jeopardy, by planning to terminate production in Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08), after the delivery of 178 aircraft. Before that, the programme had been working with a fixed total cost cap and a flexible production number; OSD budgeteers expected to see 279 aircraft produced, while the USAF hoped for more. The lower number has several implications, all of them negative.

Ironically, though, one of the biggest impediments in the path of efforts to save the programme is the security regime that was established to protect it. One consistent theme through the life of the F/A-22 project is that the fighter's classified capabilities are beyond what they are generally understood to be.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics president Ralph Heath remarked at the Paris Air Show in June 2005 that USAF pilots flying the F/A-22 are "discovering and inventing" new ways to use the fighter in combat, "things we never imagined before", says Heath. "The word back is, 'Holy smokes, this thing is very, very different,'" he adds. Programme officials predict even more innovations once the aircraft is in service and the 422nd Test & Evaluation Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base (AFB) can focus on developing new tactics.

An aircraft carrier would be retired, the F/A-22 stealth fighter program would be cut by one-third, fewer destroyers and submarines would be built, V-22 tilt-rotors and C-130J cargo plane programs would be curtailed.

What ‘Cuts’ Means

--snip--

For example, there are no significant reductions to the F/A-22 until 2009.

Sweetman must have taken a Quaalude awhile back. Since he first entered his purple haze, Reagan got re-elected, the Original Dream Team kicked the $hit out of the entire world, Clinton got impeached, and we went to war with Iraq twice.

In Polish magazine I read about 180