Or they could just steal the design, which they’ve done in the past. We should get royalty checks for stuff like the W-88 warhead.
That’s self-serving BS, quite frankly. First, the flyaway cost of a Typhoon is 60-65 million US. The overall average flyaway cost of the F-22 is about 140m. Due to improvements in the production line, new aircraft would have a flyaway cost of about 116m.
So the cost is actually more like 50%, in terms of flyaway cost. It may be more favorable if you factor in maintenance cost.
As far as “80% of the raptor” - that’s hard to define. If you’re talking about concrete stats - 80% of the engine thrust, 80% of the range, 80% of the payload - that’s easy. But how would you quantify a nebulous concept like overall capability?
I’m not aware of any wargames between the typhoon and raptor, but since the raptor can kill the best F-15s and F-16s at a greater than 30:1 ratio - against the best pilots in the world (aggressor force at red flag), and the Typhoon isn’t an especially good fighter platform, being more of a multirole aircraft, and its radar is far inferior to the F-15’s, I’m guessing the raptor could achieve at least a 20:1 kill ratio against them, even more. 80% of the performance? Ha. Not as a fighter.
I don’t think people appreciate what a generational leap the F-22 is. It’s so much better than current aircraft that the gap is probably greater than any other aircraft has enjoyed in the history of warfare. I can’t think of any aircraft that was more ahead of its competition.
No, of course they can’t last that long, which is exactly why the F-35 has been under development since the mid 1990s and will replace all F-16s, F/A-18s, and AV-8s over the next two decades or so. If one reads your comments a certain way, one could believe that the F-22 is the only replacement out there for the current fighter fleet, which would be in error.
To add to that, the Secretary of Defense has proposed not buying any more than that. Congress might not go along, and add money to keep building them.
This reminds me of the episode of King of the Hill in which Dale catches his teenage son smoking. He admonishes him to get the truth about cigarettes and his health… not from some government bureaucrat, but from the people who really know tobacco: the National Association of Tobacco Growers!
http://www.alternet.org/action/140906/tell_your_senators_f-22's_are_a_waste_of_our_money/
This article claims the military does not want it. Those that were for it, already have the amount they wanted. It also claims it is not good for air to surface combat. That is the type wars we are in now and will likely deal with in the future. We do not dogfight with Iraqi or Afghani jet fighters very often.
Having a passing obsession with warbirds, it seems to me the F-22 ought to be built and tweaked using today’s dollars to get the most value from them as we phase out the 15/16’s while dev’ing and building the next, biggest and baddest.
That is until someone makes a giant version of a UAV.
The F-22 is one of the best (if not THE best) air-superiority fighters in the world today. It was very expensive to design. The cost is high because of its relatively limited production run. The cost per unit went up when the number of units ordered was reduced, which made an expensive machine look even more expensive.
On the other side, you have the more versatile F-35. My impression of it is that it’s a solid multi-role fighter that has a much lower cost point per unit. But there are a couple of caveats that I’m aware of.
First, R&D costs were spread across several countries.
Second, it benefited from a number of technological leaps made during the Raptor development, so they didn’t have to re-invent the wheel.
Finally, it’s a multi-role fighter. While I’m sure it can perform the air-superiority mission, the F-22 has a much greater envelope in speed, range and maneuverability.
So, the question is really do we still have a need for a air-superiority fighter? I think the answer is yes. China and Russia are both developing 5th generation fighters, partially in response to the threat that the f-22 and f-35 represent. Both countries know that American air power is a massive threat that must be countered. Air superiority must be maintained. Are we going to go to war with either of them? Probably not. But you don’t start preparing for war in a few weeks, and planes like these take years to develop, even assuming contractors like Lockheed don’t over bill and under deliver.
Standard disclaimer: The above are my impressions that I’ve taken from reading about the development cycle of both planes. It’s possible I’m misinformed, confused, or flat out wrong.
FWIW, Sen. John McCain supports the Obama Administration’s spending proposals on the F-22 Raptor: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/13/mccain-backs-obama-opposition-to-funding-more-f-22-jets/
You always have serious labor skill issues when you place your production facilities based on congressional districting.
Soup up the predators, get a 12 year old kid and watch them light up the sky.
Any spending = jobs.
Keynes was only trying to make a point when he talked about paying people to dig ditches and then paying other people to fill them up. Its better to do stuff that is going top create value.
Give me a football team with half the number of players as your team and if your team’s players are 80% of the size, speed, skill, endurance and strength of my players, I will probably wipe the field with you.
Obama threatens veto if F-22 funded
That’s $250 million per plane.
I see what you mean - I haven’t seen the Broken Window Fallacy in that application.
On the one hand, the F-22 is a considerable improvement over 20-30 year old F-15s, on the other, if the Pentagon doesn’t want more, what’s the point of building them?
I was confused by the notion of building any F-22s being a “broken window” and the notion of building extra F-22s being a “broken window.” Thanks for the helpful explanation. 
I don’t have an explanation for that - maybe some sort of pork attached to the bill? Every source I’ve seen put the marginal cost of the plane from ~115-160 million, depending on when it was produced.
Maybe there are riders in the bill to procure more parts for the existing fleet?
What I meant was… it’s not useful to say “we can’t cut F-22 production, so many people will be out of jobs!” is in itself a useless statement because wherever the money got allocated elsewhere would also lead to people having jobs.
Fair enough. Something is screwy here though.
With regard to ‘creating jobs’, didn’t Michael Steele just tell us that the Federal government has never created a single job?
The $250 million figure doubtlessly includes things like training equipment and spare parts (which it apparently needs a lot of). It may also include long-lead items in case they want to build even more F-22s next year.
Oh yes, I agree with you there completely as well.
But not all jobs are equivalent. The ones involved in high tech employ highly educated, highly paid (but not highly enough) people, and create more of a multiplier effect in the economy. You could argue (and some do) that releasing them into other industries will allow technological development that is being hampered by lack of talent today, but it’s hard to find examples.
The Japanese are heavily lobbying to be allowed to buy some F-22’s themselves, but that won’t make much difference in the program in the long run. DoD’s prime concern seems to be timing the end of the F-22 and the beginning of F-35 production to keep the Lockheed workforce stabilized, and minimize problems with F-35 ramp-up that learning curve issues could otherwise cause.
After looking up the F-35on WIKI I discovered it used technology purchased from the Russian aircraft company YAK. Interesting.
The F-15 is not hopelessly dated, but it there is now considerable competition for it. Nothing currently touches the F-22 and nobody has anything on the drawing board that can keep one or two squadrons from establishing and maintaining complete air supremacy in a theater of war. Air supremacy is very useful for all of the ground troops, navies, helicopters and warthogs to dominating on land.
There is no substitute for air supremacy.
I’ve never really been very interested in the issue of military hardware, and i certainly hadn’t followed any of the debates over the F-22. But i subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly, and found this article in a recent edition to be very interesting reading: