Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Congratulations, your the new Secretary of Defense! Should F-22 production continue and scaled up to a higher rate? (wasn't 48 airframes a year planned?) How long should we continue production for sir?

I'm just trying to get an idea of where most people stand on how many Raptors should have been built. Should a major "F-22C" upgrade been introduced at some point? What about the once-planned two-seater F-22B?

Basically your in charge, so where would you have taken F-22 production and development?

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381 sounds like a good number.

Pecker the question wasn't why the F-22 was cancelled but rather what you think the program should have given us.

Nothing wrong with recycling a topic as changing events give them new perspective and relevance. The Navy's recent decision to extend gen 4.5 jet buys (Super Hornets) to maintain force levels in light of F-35 delays, for example, could be paralleled by an Air Force move to extend gen 4.5 whoops gen 5 jet production to do the same thing.

IMHO, although a little different from OP's original question, the idea keeps Lampshade's topic smelling fresher, than, say, F-35 bashing, etc.

And my opinion as a civilian, for whatever it's worth: if I were SecDef, 187 is just not a viable number if current trends to extend airframe life on legacy platforms beyond original design specs hold. When that B-2 crashed in Guam all I could think was that we lost 5% of the nation's first-strike strategic bomber force in one go. 250 or 381 seems much better to cover continental defense + 1 major front / forward deployment + a couple of reserve squadrons + training (my idea of what the F-22 force should be capable of at any given moment). We can do that now with 187 but not with any significant attrition 15 to 30 years in the future, notwithstanding F-35 reaching FOC by that time.

My general response to this answer would be to produce an equal amount of F-22s as there were F-15s in service. 630 Raptors would seem a little excessive. On the other hand, you can retire the entire F-15 fleet in USAF hands and replace it with F-22s. Talk about a force to be reckoned with!

Start with force structure. If the USAF is serious long term about 10 AEW and thus requires at least 10 air superiority fighter sqdn's then at 24 per that's 240 aircraft plus the ballpark extra 50% for training, maintenance, etc. or 360. That's the ballpark minimum the USAF should have purchased.

My answer: 187

Reason: Because more are not required "right now"

Conditions:
1) Tooling has to be retained (check)
2) Further devlopment and refinement needs to progress (check)
3) Strategies need to be worked out so that war time production of the F-22 can be resumed "quickly" if required (hmmm)

munny wrote:

My answer: 187

Reason: Because more are not required "right now"

I love Raptors, but I agree.

Half the air superiority sqdn's in the 10 USAF AEW's are F-15C's. So half the time when a wing deploys the tip of the spear is the F-15C and this will remain true for many years. If the F-15C is still good enough then we seemed to have thrown a lot of money away on F-22's. If the F-15C is not good enough then we should have replaced them in half the AEW sqdn's with F-22's.

The choice on how many to buy was political not force structure based. The result is we fly the F-15C in the air superiority mission with the few remaining (Golden) Eagles we hope can take enough hours and then retire them without proper replacement- the F-35 not being optimized for air superiority. Again if it can do air superiority great then why did we spend money on F-22?

Weapon systems should not be purchased to support what we think is needed "right now". How many SSN's do we need right now? We need to identify the long term force structure requirements for the nation and budget and plan long term to support that structure. Trying to buy enough for right now is often very expensive as the result is instead of moderate purchases of equipment every year we often buy zero number of given systems and then find we have to spend large sums all at once to replace very old systems right now. 120 or so combat coded F-22's in 5 sqdn's is half the air superiority force structure in the 10 USAF AEW's. This was said to be enough for myriad reasons most of which turned out to be entirely false.

Right now we probably don't need any F-22's. If/when we need air superiority aircraft one certainly hopes we have enough- will we in twenty years? Because that's what we buy aircraft today for- twenty years from now.

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Half the air superiority sqdn's in the 10 USAF AEW's are F-15C's. So half the time when a wing deploys the tip of the spear is the F-15C and this will remain true for many years. If the F-15C is still good enough then we seemed to have thrown a lot of money away on F-22's. If the F-15C is not good enough then we should have replaced them in half the AEW sqdn's with F-22's.

Golden Eagle is good, doesn’t have significant advantage over new air superiority fighters like the Typhoon or the Last Flanker.
It would be great to have 380 Raptors, but this is this would also be very expensive. Do you see any threat requiring such capable and expensive force?
Raptor/Golden Eagle combo is also extremely capable force and very cos-effective.
Eagle -> sensor/mini AWACS / datalinks sensor data to Raptors / draws attention away from Raptors
Raptor -> flying silently (and quickly)/ killing enemy fighter /

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The choice on how many to buy was political not force structure based. The result is we fly the F-15C in the air superiority mission with the few remaining (Golden) Eagles

The target is to have 176 Golden Eagles and 186 Raptors.

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the F-35 not being optimized for air superiority. Again if it can do air superiority great then why did we spend money on F-22?

I still think that we may see air-superiority optimized version in some future.
Why did you spend money on the F-22? Mainly because the F-22 was designed and introduced well before the F-35 and because it was designed to be air superiority fighter and can do some things the F-35 can’t.

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Weapon systems should not be purchased to support what we think is needed "right now".

Sure, you need to know what will be needed now and in foreseeable future. And in the time when Raptor entered production it was clear that in the next ~20 years we’re not going to see any equally capable adversary. PAK-FA and maybe Chinese J-XX will reach FOC ~15 years from now. In that time first Raptors will be quite old and US-AF/Navy will be developing/introducing new, 6gen fighter. Do you need a lot of Raptors now, when there’s no need to have such force?

BTW: Now you need something else to save the US (from bankruptcy) and buying more expensive toys which are not necessarily needed isn’t going to help.

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Right now we probably don't need any F-22's. If/when we need air superiority aircraft one certainly hopes we have enough- will we in twenty years? Because that's what we buy aircraft today for- twenty years from now.

In 20 years you will be looking for Raptor/Golden Eagle replacement.

People shouldn't forget about the backgrounds of these aircraft. At the time the ATF was launched, JSF didn't exist at all. The Cold War was still running and no one could have predicted that it would soon be over. The USAF rightfully feared that its main fighter F-15 and F-16 wouldn't offer the level of superiority over the new Soviet designs and subsequently required something new and better. In the end the programme exploded in terms of costs and suffered delays, but the F-22 materialised and become what the USAF hoped for the ultimate air dominance fighter. From the current point of view the F-22 is more or less useless as there aren't well equipped enemies with sufficient numbers, except for China maybe. So a smaller quantity of F-22s is likely to be sufficient. Without the F-22, the F-35 would have been even more expensive than it already is and the manufacturer and operator would have to learn a lot of lessons, they have already learned with the F-22.

Nevertheless, with the ability to dominate in an air battle, wouldn't more F-22s get this done faster? I'm thinking along the lines that if a conflict were to arise, the air war would probably be won in 1/3 of the time as it would in a conventional war if a large force of Raptors are used.

Basically yes they could, but it depends on the scenario. The likelyhood that there will be a war against another major threat is relative minor. In most cases the current number will already be an overmatch. So do you want to purchase a much larger number just because a low probability? If that case never happens you would have wasted money, if it happens you might need a bit longer, but will still reach the goal at lower cost. An F-22 wouldn't win the war alone anyway.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

How many F-22s should have been built?