U.S. fighter aircraft (F-22 Raptor)

Great Debates
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Notes: 1) My schedule leaves little time for in-depth debates. Once the work week starts, I’ll have limited posting opportunities. 2) My thoughts are not set in stone. I’m hoping to gain a better understanding of the issue by reading posts by others. 3) I’ve been out of flight test for over a dozen years, and aircraft flight test for longer than that.

This article was posted today in another thread: Premier U.S. Fighter Jet Has Major Shortcomings. In a nutshell: The F-22 Raptor has some serious maintenance issues, and costs about one-third more to operate than the F-15 Eagles it is meant to replace. So the question is this: Does the U.S. ‘need’ the F-22; should it be cancelled?

The F-22 is an awesome airplane. Personally, I thought the Northrop design was sexier; but it didn’t win the competition. You can’t get by on looks alone. When you’re in a war, you want to have a weapons platform that is as far ahead of your opponent’s as it can be. But the F-22 was designed in the '80s to counter the Soviet threat. The Russians are still working on advanced aircraft, but the threat now is not what it was then. Previous-generation fighters are still more than a match for our adversaries, especially given the high degree of training U.S. pilots receive. Previous-generation fighters are less costly than the F-22, less costly to fly and maintain, easier to maintain, and more reliable. Given that, the F-22 project should be cancelled.

But there are other issues. The U.S. reduced its military after WWI. This proved costly when our pilots faced better designs in the early days of WWII. Who is to say that Russia will never be a threat as it was during the Cold War? It’s better to have advanced aircraft like the F-22 and not need it, than it is to need it and not have it.

Lockheed has subcontracted to suppliers in 40 states. Cancellation of the F-22 would cost a lot of jobs over a large part of the country. With the economy as it is, jobs are one thing we can’t afford to lose. Does this make the F-22 a boondoggle? Maybe. But those ‘wasted’ dollars are paying mortgages, buying food, putting money into the coffers of the makers of consumer items (who employ people, who have mortgages, buy food, etc.).

Airplanes wear out. They have to be replaced eventually. But is the F-22 the right replacement? Are we throwing good money after bad? Or will, as quoted in the article, the F-22 eventually hit its stride and all of the issues will be corrected? Should it continue to be developed? Or should the Air Force put out bids for a better design, canceling the Raptor and continuing to rely on Eagles (which will remain in service for years and years in any case) until a better, more reliable replacement is found?

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I’m only vaguely familiar with the plane (ie, I’ve heard the name Raptor, and I know it’s a cool name), so, two questions for you I did not see in the linked article:

(1) What can the F-22 Raptor do that the jet(s) it’s replacing cannot do?

(2 What do the jet(s) that are being replaced do better than the Raptor*, if anything?

*I’m assuming a normal working airplane.

3

This is purely anecdotal but…

I went to school at Southern Polytechnic State University which is across the street from one of Lockheed’s aeronautic facilities in Marietta, GA.

A few years ago at orientation, I sat next to a man in his early 30’s. Really personable, family guy who was trying to finish his degree. Long story short, he was originally from California and worked at the Palmdale facility developing and building the original F-22’s. Turns out, he and many other Lockheed employees were transferred here to help keep F-22 production rolling and running. Apparently, the early engine problems weren’t so much a problem of fault hardware/engineering as they were of faulty assembly.

I didn’t really pry beyond that but he basically described incompetence and inexperience on behalf of the assembly staff as the main reasons behind early problems with the F-22 line, specifically at the Marietta, GA installation.

Whether or not that is still the case, I do not know, but this is what he relayed to me in early 2006.

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I don’t like the name. There are a lot of raptors up here, but I can’t tell them apart (except for the bald eagles, of course). But if I say that I saw a raptor, people think I’m saying I saw a velociraptor.

Primarily, it’s stealthy. Since it was meant to counter the Soviet Sukhoi Su-22 ‘Flanker’, I assume it’s more maneurverable than the F-15; but I don’t know for sure.

F-15s are cheaper to buy, cheaper to fly, easier to maintain, are more reliable, and don’t have the issues with the low-observability coatings that the F-22 does.

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From page 3 of the article:

A Lockheed spokesman said that the ‘shim line’ never existed. He says it’s true that early parts did need modification, but says that that is not the case now.

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A 50% higher operating cost isn’t that big a problem if you only need 70% as many F-22s. From what I’ve heard, the F-22 is a lot more effective than its predecessors.

This is the Broken Window fallacy. Those “wasted” dollars would otherwise be spent somewhere else, and would then still pay mortgages, buy food, and so on.

Given what I know, I do not support cancelling the F-22 project. Making changes late in a project is a sure way of wasting money and driving up the cost per unit.

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Well I’m glad to finally know the guy wasn’t just blowing smoke up my ass. Thanks for relaying that piece of information!

8

If my car did this, I would buy a different car.
That new car would certainly NOT be the same type as my old piece of shit, even if some car company had spent billions of dollars and decades of time developing it.

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I’m not saying that it should be cancelled. The purpose of this thread is so that I can hear both sides of the argument. Right now, I don’t think we ‘need’ the F-22, and that there are some major issues with it even after nearly two decades since the first flight of the YF-22, a dozen years after the first flight of the F-22, and over half a decade since the first delivery of a production model. But I also recognise that if we ever do need it, we won’t be able to develop it ‘on the spot’. In that case it’s better to continue so that when the crunch comes we’ll already have it.

And I was on the B-1B test team. We could have saved a lot of money if the B-1A hadn’t been canceled. So I can see both sides of the issue. I just want to see more of both sides.

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Of course if 50% of that 70% is grounded at any given time, as the article claims is the case with the F-22, then it becomes a problem again. One wonders if it wouldn’t be a better plan to put the money we were going to spend on getting more Raptors and putting it into trying to make the ones we’ve already purchased more reliable.

I never really understood why were were developing the F-22 and the F-35 at the same time. Developing two super-expensive fighters at the same time, both of which outmatch any other existing fighters, seems like an obvious pork project.

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Wow, I didn’t realize that the F-22’s problems were this profound. I’d already heard about the assembly issues and whatnot, and figured that it would sort itself out.

Surely the best and brightest can be brought to bear to resolve the “skin” issues with the warplane. If it isn’t stealthy, then it isn’t effective.

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This is a fact. We don’t need the F-22 and its spectacular capabilities, which are far beyond any other fighter aircraft right now. However, why should we try to reinvent the wheel later when they are needed? The time to design and build an airplane is not after half your air force is shot down. A case can be made that the stagnation of aircraft design pre-WWII prolonged the war. I don’t see any need to repeat that debacle.

The F-22 and F-35 are being built for one reason and one reason only: to replace aging planes that are reaching the point of unsustainability while simultaneously telling potential enemies that they don’t have a chance in hell. The Russians, diminished as they are, still haven’t given up. Nor have the Chinese, the Europeans, et al.

That said, I will say this: contracting is way out of hand. These guys ask for the moon, don’t deliver as promised, and then extort more money to fix what they broke (I’m looking at you, Lockheed). If the DOD wants to save a boatload of money they will fix the acquisition process. Unfortunately, politics intrudes as usual.

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That’s pretty much said that in the OP. :wink:

I think that might be the biggest issue I have.

Coincidentally, a show is just now starting on The Military Channel on the F-22 Raptor (and the Fokker Eindecker).

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But it’s not like someone’s going to sneak up on us all of a sudden with some sort of super-duper fighter. It took decades and billions to make the F-22, presumably it would take China and Russia a similar amount of time, and if they do begin building a fighter, I’m sure we can whip up one of our own before they do. There is some middle ground between building more advanced fighters now or waiting until China has occupied Florida.

Of course, if we need to replace our current fleet of fighters now, we mind as well replace them with the bestest and fastest, but even then, do we really need two completely separate designs.

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Airman, my Dad is a retired Army MG and was the Deputy Chief of the Army Corps of Engineers until 1999. He often would describe to me the difficulties contracting to civilian corporations presents, as the Engineers subcontracted a LOT of work out, especially in their peacetime missions like digging reservoirs, building bridges, maintaining waterways, etc.

I think you’ve hit the proverbial nail. It sounds like to me that the issue is oversight in the wake of so many billions of dollars flowing through these programs, and if you let out too much of your work to too many sub-groups that it becomes a logistical nightmare to inspect and ensure quality throughout the development and manufacturing process.

That said, other than trying to reduce the amount of different component makers, etc down to a fewer number, and possibly having a tighter inspection process, I’m not really sure what the solution is.

A machine like the F-22 has to have millions of small parts, many of which are manufactured by seperate companies, everything has to fight and work within very tight tolerances, etc. What a nightmare getting a new warplane off the ground must be!

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There are numerous high-performance designs in the works. My favorite is the SU-47 Berkut. While that might not be built in its present form, it is likely that its technology advances will be incorporated into other aircraft.

Like I said, they haven’t given up, they just don’t have the coin to pay for it. That may change in the future. If the price of oil goes up again they’ll be swimming in money.

17

In 1943 Lockheed was given 180 days to build a jet prototype to compete with the Me-262. They finished it 37 days early. Of course, things were simpler back then. :wink:

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I’ll take the Eindeker III. The Raptor’s radar will never find the wood/fabric construction of the E-III and the pilot will go nuts trying to find what to shoot. When the Raptor lands, the E-III can just crash into it, scratching the anti-radar skin and making it useless for future missions.

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This is hardly a new problem, though. From the Hughes ‘Spruce Goose’ to the F-111 to the B-1, aerospace contracting has always been a roll-of-the-dice proposition that sometimes goes way over-budget and over-schedule. And while it may seem like more oversight and prix fixe contracts are a solution, in fact by themselves these can just exacerbate the problem just as much as the hands off “management through requirements” process that led to the excesses of the 'Eighties. Oversight assumes that the overseers are both honest and competent, which are two qualities not often innate or rewarding on the government side of the acquisition process. And fix price contracts assume that the details of technical development and production engineering are well understood; where this turns out to be the case, a fixed price contract can cause work stoppages, contractual disputes, and corner-cutting where a cost-plus contract would (if properly overseen and ethically managed) would allow for an appropriate level of effort. Bob McNamara’s attempt to fix the acquisition process and develop a joint forces air superiority/tactical bomber aircraft out of the F-111 is instructive as a well-intended effort that ended up being a disappointment if not a complete failure.

Part of the problem is repeatedly letting contracts to companies who have a long history of consistent failure to deliver. Unfortunately, because of mass consolidations over the last twenty years in the aerospace and defense industry, there are typically only two or three companies who can even bid on a particular system, and all of them probably have some kind of past history of failure. The days when personalities ruled aerospace development with an iron fist and a sharpened slide rule have given way to bean-counting, golf-playing wheeler-dealers who are more interested in achieving contractual program milestones by hook or by crook than achieving technical success. And this is true of all the major players, although some (not to be named) are worse than others.

First of all, Russia already has designs (albeit, in prototype or limited production) that are superior to currently fielded American fighter aircraft. And one does not “whip up” a wholly new aircraft design like baking a cake from a recipe. It is rarely appreciated outside of the technical fields that much of what goes into a successful design–be it an aircraft, microprocessor, or automobile–is the man-millenia of prior experience and heritage at making every possible mistake so as to avoid making (the same) mistakes in the future. It is instructive to look at the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket as an example; Elon Musk assured investors that the engineering and production of rockets is a mature discipline, that a bunch of young engineers with enthusiasm and vim could overcome the sort of problems that have plagued rocket development efforts since Goddard, and that the “mountains of documentation, quality control measures, and requirements tracking,” were unneeded. The result was three sequential failures that resulted from neophyte mistakes and corner-cutting before achieving a successful launch. (Not to fault SpaceX too much–this is at the ugly end of typical for the development of a new rocket launch system–but Musk’s claims didn’t live up to this hype.) When you let a capability lapse and the engineering, technical, and production ‘brain trust’ and tools languish for years, you end up losing the capability to develop these systems effectively.

To the specific question of the o.p., do we need the F-22? We don’t have an immediate need, and there is no question that the United States military establishment is by far superior to any other nation in both technically and capability aspects. However, you don’t remain in this position by resting in laurels, and if the intent is to retain this stature (which is itself another debate over the values of military adventurism and power projections) then, yes, the United States needs the F-22. Furthermore, the bulk of the cost for development has already been expended; it would be foolish to complete dispense with the design, even given maintenance and operating costs. Perhaps the more pertinent question is to the future of manned fighter aircraft versus semi-autonomous unmanned and remotely controlled aircraft which can be smaller, lighter, more dynamic, and more capable than an aircraft required to support a pilot and EWO or observer.

Stranger

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Unless they are starting up the line again, the 22 is a dead program. I get the feeling that the gist of the argument in WaPo is for the next generation fighter sometime after Obama leaves office.

Declan