Schwartz, in Memoir, Says F-22 was Traded for B-21 Bomber

XC,

I would also add, since the Democrats have great influence in our news media; If the GOP (Bush 43, or even the 2008 candidates) would have been in favor of more -22s or whatever. I could just have heard it now, the Dem control news media (CBS, NBC, ABC, NYT, WP, MSNBC, CNN, ...) would have said (circa mid 2008):

"Bush or candidate X is in favor of more gold plated overtly expensive jets that are not needed while people are losing their homes (to foreclosure), the stock market is in near free-fall, and people are losing their jobs. Hence, the GOP is out of touch and doesn't understand the middle class or the problems facing working families."


Fast forward to post Jan 20, 2009. It really doesn't matter if Gates or whomever want more -22's. Obama would never been if favor of it. And he wasn't. For 2 years his party controlled everything. That type of military procurement was never on his (Obama) and their (the Dem controlled House and Senate) radar.

2009 was a weird time. Had they chosen to keep the F-22s going, they could have gotten away with it. But they didn't and here we are. It really falls on Gates as he actually served both Presidents as I recall.

My point was simply that with the benefit of hindsight:

A. We should have bought more F-22s because yes they cost big bucks, but we were also going to spend a trillion bucks and have very little tangible things to show for it 5 years later, let alone 10.

B. The Stimulus was an expensive failure


c. The story about cutting F-22s to trade for a hypothetical Strategic bomber 10-20 years in the future is total horseshit, and like hindsight it seems like they are trying to tell us retroactively that was some brilliant forward thinking plan. In other words "Uhh We meant to do that!"

Right!

Lke I said, it's a hoax story...

XC,

I would also add, since the Democrats have great influence in our news media; If the GOP (Bush 43, or even the 2008 candidates) would have been in favor of more -22s or whatever. I could just have heard it now, the Dem control news media (CBS, NBC, ABC, NYT, WP, MSNBC, CNN, ...) would have said (circa mid 2008):

"Bush or candidate X is in favor of more gold plated overtly expensive jets that are not needed while people are losing their homes (to foreclosure), the stock market is in near free-fall, and people are losing their jobs. Hence, the GOP is out of touch and doesn't understand the middle class or the problems facing working families."


Fast forward to post Jan 20, 2009. It really doesn't matter if Gates or whomever want more -22's. Obama would never been if favor of it. And he wasn't. For 2 years his party controlled everything. That type of military procurement was never on his (Obama) and their (the Dem controlled House and Senate) radar.

2009 was a weird time. Had they chosen to keep the F-22s going, they could have gotten away with it. But they didn't and here we are. It really falls on Gates as he actually served both Presidents as I recall.

My point was simply that with the benefit of hindsight:

A. We should have bought more F-22s because yes they cost big bucks, but we were also going to spend a trillion bucks and have very little tangible things to show for it 5 years later, let alone 10.

B. The Stimulus was an expensive failure


c. The story about cutting F-22s to trade for a hypothetical Strategic bomber 10-20 years in the future is total horseshit, and like hindsight it seems like they are trying to tell us retroactively that was some brilliant forward thinking plan. In other words "Uhh We meant to do that!"

Hello everyone. I am a long time stalker. I just signed up and this is my first post

I think cutting the f-22 production line was very prudent at the time. The Chinese were decades from producing a 5th generation jet until they hacked Lockheed Martin servers. We were knee deep in two simultaneous wars in the middle east that required more immediate equipment, such as more drones and armored vehicles. The f-22 was irrelevant to what we were doing. The jet was amazing for its time, however, there were already huge flaws that were apparent at the time. It is a hangar queen which requires too much maintenance, especially to it's Ram coatings. The software and processors have quickly becoming outdated due to the exponential increase in technology since it's inception. Obama had already wanted to shift our interest to ASIA, where the range of the f-22 was in question. We are currently planning a 6th generation fighter. It will have better range, baked in stealth coatings and should be on an order of magnitude better due to what we have learned from the f-22 and f-35.

Who is the only SECDEF in US History to pass from one political party's WH to another?

Who was recruited by CIA after writing his doctoral thesis on Soviet-Sino relations as a student in 1966, then joined the USAF as a 2nd Lt the next year?

Who, in that role working for the CIA, provided strategic intelligence products to the USAF ICBM community?

Who was investigated for his role in Iran-Contra, but determined by investigators that "...no prosecutor would ever take this case."

Whose own intelligence analyst colleagues said this about him:

"In my 24 years at the CIA, there was never the kind of toxic atmosphere that existed when Gates served as deputy director for intelligence, deputy director of CIA, and finally director of CIA."

Who took the charge of the Obama WH to forcibly integrate homosexuals into the US Military, including promotions favoring protected classes over more qualified officers for command positions?

Who formed a "formidable relationship" with Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, meeting with her weekly as she circumvented all levels of State Department security protocols, helped Putin acquire Uranium One (with Mueller running enriched samples to the Russians), and ran an intentional electronic security leak of TS SCI classified information?

Who did a 180˚ strategic policy shift from his Reagan-era assessments and gross overestimations of Soviet capabilities (in the face of numerous raw reports of systemic Soviet economic and infrastructure crises), to "turning the gusher off"?

Who told the Rumsfeld-era military, "Military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny. The gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time."

Who helped mastermind the Iranian nuke deal?

Who led the assault on the Boy Scouts of America from within, from the top?

The fact that Barrack Hussein kept Gates as SECDEF is the most damning condemnation a person at that level can carry. We have Hussein on open mike colluding with Medvedev, while doing everything in his Presidency to harm the US as an enemy within.

So why would an enemy within choose Robert Gates, especially a Republican Robert Gates?

Why did all the voting Democrat senators approve him under Bush, while 2 Republican Senators voted against him in 2006?

Why did a formerly-hawkish Gates all of a sudden advocate for asymmetric warfare approaches and systems as a focus, at the sacrifice of conventional systems and forces, rather than considering we need both? To use Afghanistan and Iraq as reasons to cut F-22 funding, from the mouth of a career CIA analyst and strategic military liaison intelligence officer, the logic begs the question.

What did he propose would be filling in the numbers of forward-deployed F-15C Fighter Wings tasked with air superiority and airspace defense, while maintaining enough training and ODT&E aircraft CONUS, with realistic considerations for availability rates? We're not taking about an ignoramus here.

Who is the only...

Your ARFCOM is showing, LRRP

Gates sucks. Traitor and guilty of gross negligence.

That is all...

I think cutting the f-22 production line was very prudent at the time. The Chinese were decades from producing a 5th generation jet until they hacked Lockheed Martin servers.

This is a false narrative. But even if it was true, the Chinese who literally flew a J-20 in front of Gates' eyes in 2011 might have been what we call a "clue" that the Chinese were further along than he thought. Seeing as the F-22 line was still running the last F-22 didn't leave the factory until Decemeber 2011, that might have been a great time for a "course correction" but it turns out that Gates was just as stubborn and pig headed as the man he replaced.

It still falls on Gates. All of it, only apologists who don't understand the truth and spin false narratives at this point are still clinging to the idea he made the proper call, even after a "wild J-20 appears!"

We were knee deep in two simultaneous wars in the middle east that required more immediate equipment, such as more drones and armored vehicles.

Iraq was effectively over by 2008. We were "surging" in Afghanistan, but by presidential decree, only temporarily. Simply put it wasn't going to be RPGs and IED forever and even you mention the shift to more important theaters, like ASIA:

Obama had already wanted to shift our interest to ASIA, where the range of the f-22 was in question. We are currently planning a 6th generation fighter. It will have better range, baked in stealth coatings and should be on an order of magnitude better due to what we have learned from the f-22 and f-35.

You have no clue what a 6th generation fighter will or won't have, including range. Moreover, a 6th generation fighter won't be used to replace the F-22, but instead to finally retire the F-15s that Gates and company failed to replace by cutting the F-22. It only be billions more and decades later though, and the Chinese decades ahead of schedule so thats nice.

Got me thinking,

If we had more Raptors, maybe we wouldn't be rushing to get to 6th gen as much. China has how many J-20s? Russia has around 12 Su-57.

I won't be surprised if by 2030 they would still have just around 100+ of either units going against 350 F-22s and some 700 F-35s. 6th gen can wait.

USAF has only 186 operational F-22's.

I think he was postulating IF the F-22 had continued production to the minimum 350.

This was a leadership issue, not a budget issue.

Leadership wanted F-22 killed for some reason.

The idea that it was sacrificed for another program doesn't hold water when you look at the budget, especially MRAPs and other things related to COIN.

Hussein, Gates, and Socialists in Congress wanted F-22 dead even before it was in full production. There was a big debate about whether to continue it already in 1999. The House Appropriations Committee actually looked at Kosovo as a factor in their decision, saying, "We already have F-15s. We don't need F-22s."

Everyone is now wondering why we didn't build the initial specified force structure that the USAF requested based on projected reemergence of Russia or another near-peer threat air force.

Along came Hussein, Gates, and those same dirtbags in Congress, and wham. Plug pulled.

6th gen can wait.

Why? More F-22 won't change how fast A2AD develop or how fast Russia and China make countermeasures. In the 2030s and 2040s the answer isn't going to be F-22.

6th gen can wait.

Why? More F-22 won't change how fast A2AD develop or how fast Russia and China make countermeasures. In the 2030s and 2040s the answer isn't going to be F-22.

F-22 programmable architecture and systems growth capacity will more than likely be highly capable in the 2030s.

2040 is about where whatever few airframes are left should be finished with their service life.

Russia might not even be a Federation anymore by then.

China's internal economic and political challenges will likely have gone through major escalation and collapse, just like every previous cycle in Chinese history, while being checked by a rising Japan and other Asian ring nations like Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the US Military Industrial Engineering and Innovation giant will be thinking about and preparing for the future, while 6th Gen and 5th Gen + assets continue to maintain a qualitative and quantitative edge over any other world power.

6th gen can wait.

Why? More F-22 won't change how fast A2AD develop or how fast Russia and China make countermeasures. In the 2030s and 2040s the answer isn't going to be F-22.

F-22 programmable architecture and systems growth capacity will more than likely be highly capable in the 2030s.

2040 is about where whatever few airframes are left should be finished with their service life.

Russia might not even be a Federation anymore by then.

China's internal economic and political challenges will likely have gone through major escalation and collapse, just like every previous cycle in Chinese history, while being checked by a rising Japan and other Asian ring nations like Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the US Military Industrial Engineering and Innovation giant will be thinking about and preparing for the future, while 6th Gen and 5th Gen + assets continue to maintain a qualitative and quantitative edge over any other world power.

The F-22 won't be close to being out of airframe life in 2040. It won't need a SLEP until 2060. It may well be retired before it runs out of airframe life, depending on when the next generation fighter starts entering service.

USAF has only 186 operational F-22's.

Thats why I said If we had more. IF they bought the original 350+ air-frames before Gates cut the line