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Home Front: WoT
Pentagon OKs funds to preserve F-22 line
2008-11-13
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon released on Wednesday $50 million in an effort to keep Lockheed Martin Corp's F-22 fighter production line humming until President-elect Barack Obama can decide the fate of the top-of-the-line U.S. warplane.

"These funds provide a bridge to a January decision by the next administration," John Young, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, said in clearing the Air Force to buy parts that must be ordered well in advance for four more F-22s.

Congress provided $140 million in the fiscal 2009 defense budget for "long lead" parts for up to 20 F-22s to keep the line open pending a decision by Obama, who will be sworn in as president on January 20. In releasing only about a third of the congressionally approved funding for advance procurement of such things as titanium bulkheads, Young left it to the next administration to use the rest of the $140 million as it saw fit. "Industry has indicated that four aircraft of Advance Procurement now, and additional Advance Procurement in January, will bridge the F-22 line with little or no additional cost to the taxpayer if additional F-22s are purchased," he said through Chris Isleib, his spokesman.
Posted by:Steve White

#12   Thing From Snowy Mountain said "I suspect that if all is said and done, $ 240 million dollars worth of F-35's are more effective fighters than $ 240 million worth of F-22's."

I have to disagree strongly with your abominableness and so does the air force.

While I'm no expert myself, I talked to an F22 test pilot about 5 years ago about the F22 vs the F35. (The test pilot is a friend of a friend.) I asked him specifically if it wouldn't be a good idea to buy more F35s instead of F22s. While he gave away no secrets, he was unequivocal that the F22 would be significantly superior to the F35 in air-to-air. The F22 is faster, far more agile, longer-ranged, has a better LPI radar for air-to-air, carries twice as many missiles and has superb situational awareness due to it's complex data linkages. The test pilot loved the F22. Best thing since sliced bread.

The advantages of the F35 all lay in economy of production and much wider surface strike capabilities.

If the game is air-to-air, the F22 wins hands down.
Posted by: Some guy   2008-11-13 23:16  

#11  Doesn't matter. Zero, Pelosi and Reid are gonna gut defense spending. We'll be lucky if they don't institute pay cuts to the soldiers.
Posted by: Hellfish   2008-11-13 21:45  

#10  Air superiority fighters being used for ground attack runs? You're sure you want to get behind that?

Because you could always put horses into stables somewhere & issue the troopers tin pots and Enfields & send them into the trenches; it just wasn't considered a proper use of the investment represented by a cavalry regiment's worth of equipment & training.
Posted by: Mitch H.   2008-11-13 16:01  

#9  either way the jet drops bombs in space we do own and should keep owning. the WW1 era horses just dropped shit
Posted by: chris   2008-11-13 12:32  

#8  JFM: so where are these sixth-generation stealth Zeros and Messerschmitts which are going to clean our clocks?

Personally, I expect the aerial battlespace to be dominated by UAV swarms run out of boxcar motherships before anybody other than the US gets second-generation stealth warcraft in the air, let alone air-supremacy stealth fighters.

I'm starting to wonder if the fighter airfleet isn't going to be the equivalent of the WWI-era cavalry corps - something to control space you already own, or to be held in reserve until the battle's already over. And meanwhile, the horses keep eating their heads off & the coronets sit around playing canasta while the other branches do the bleeding.
Posted by: Mitch H.   2008-11-13 12:19  

#7  A bigger secret: they really _don't_ want to know what the incremental cost of one more airplane is.

--------------

Although I do think Gates has a point; I suspect that if all is said and done, $ 240 million dollars worth of F-35's are more effective fighters than $ 240 million worth of F-22's.

It can carry 4 A-A missiles each as is, can probably carry 6 internally without major modifications, has a panoramic IRST system built in (that doesn't cause drag the way the systems on a F-16 does), has relatively lower fuel consumption and greater fuel fraction (meaning it can stay on station longer or at a longer distance)....

And it has a large, flat, aerodynamically clean fuselage that will contribute much more to maneuverability than the fuselages on older aircraft.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2008-11-13 12:19  

#6  Glenmore,

One of the extremely Dirty Little Secrets of the defense industry (and DoD, for that matter) is that NO ONE - not the auditors, not DoD, not LockMart - really know what the damned airplane costs. Don't forget, this project has been underway since the mid-1980s - its been stretched out, delayed, and rescheduled so many times that it's impossible to know exactly how much a given aircraft costs.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2008-11-13 10:52  

#5  What's the actual unit production cost - excluding all the sunk R&D costs and all the bribes & kickbacks? What do the parts and labor go for, even at inflated government contract prices?
Posted by: Glenmore   2008-11-13 08:40  

#4  I'm with JFM, they are bitching about how much it is costing too maintain opur troops in iraq an afghanistan but then they are bailing out private companies too the tune of 100's of billions and they are still lining up for more. What's another $140,000,000 especially for something you will actually get use of
Posted by: chris   2008-11-13 07:54  

#3  Hey, they have to do something to protect their phoney-baloney jobs!
Posted by: gorb   2008-11-13 06:34  

#2  A 140 million dolllars is not even peanuts it is crumbles of peanuts compared to 700 fricking billions. Today, the USAF, USMC and USN are mostly flying outdated planes. Remember hen American pilots on P40s Wildacts and Buuflaos had their clocks cleaned by the Zeros and Messerchmitts?
Posted by: JFM   2008-11-13 05:09  

#1  A-hundred-and-forty-two-million-phucking-dollars is a lot of bread.

I'm kind of with Gates on this one. Let's add them to the fleet in small numbers.
Posted by: Mike N.   2008-11-13 00:52  

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