That and if there's anything we learned from Dr Strangelove, it's that aircraft shouldn't need to have any external communications once they're dispatched to a target
But seriously, the F22 isn't needed right now for anything I can think of. And it's not like we don't have a history of expensive and disaster prone aircraft projects.
On the other, R&D on the F22 is spent and once production stops, it cannot be restarted.
Really? Why not? Just the cost of tooling the factories and such?
It's so widely distributed everywhere that the cost of stopping/restarting production is almost prohibitive. This is obviously by design to make it more difficult to muster the will to cancel it.
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Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
That's a serious threat to ships parked off the coast, there is no weapon system that is a serious threat to ships at sea, as even finding them is a near impossibility. Satellites don't have the turnover time to accomplish it, the only real way is to send other ships and aircraft out there to find it.
In before millenium challenge: they essentially just had their ships parked off the coast, which is not something that actually occurs in a real war. That thing wasn't setup as a wargame, it was set up as a masturbation session.
The F-22 is not required, and is too expensive. Cheaper weapon systems can do the job good enough. The US military has air and sea dominance to such an absurd degree that no other nation poses a realistic threat to it. If such a crazy war ever happened the fragility of the F-22 will make it a liability not an asset, compared to the tried and proven F-15, F-16, and F-18. Having the best air superiority fighter is virtually meaningless in this day and age, especially against an opponent who will be hitting your airbases with massive salvos of cruise missiles. Planes aren't worth much with nowhere to land them.
Then again I want the US to cut its military budget by 50% or more (not all at once, obviously, that would be catastrophic economically), so I'm one of them crazy people you shouldn't listen to
That's a serious threat to ships parked off the coast, there is no weapon system that is a serious threat to ships at sea, as even finding them is a near impossibility. Satellites don't have the turnover time to accomplish it, the only real way is to send other ships and aircraft out there to find it.
In before millenium challenge: they essentially just had their ships parked off the coast, which is not something that actually occurs in a real war. That thing wasn't setup as a wargame, it was set up as a masturbation session.
The F-22 is not required, and is too expensive. Cheaper weapon systems can do the job good enough. The US military has air and sea dominance to such an absurd degree that no other nation poses a realistic threat to it. If such a crazy war ever happened the fragility of the F-22 will make it a liability not an asset, compared to the tried and proven F-15, F-16, and F-18. Having the best air superiority fighter is virtually meaningless in this day and age, especially against an opponent who will be hitting your airbases with massive salvos of cruise missiles. Planes aren't worth much with nowhere to land them.
Then again I want the US to cut its military budget by 50% or more (not all at once, obviously, that would be catastrophic economically), so I'm one of them crazy people you shouldn't listen to
A cut like that is not only uncrazy, it is absolutely necessary.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Since the collapse of the USSR as a cohesive unit, there isn't a country on the planet outside the US that has either a.) enough of an airforce (in terms of numbers of planes) or b.) advanced enough planes (although the SU-47 is damn cool, Russia didn't order too many and the Sukhoi PAK and MiG 1.44 experimentals are years from production) to warrant a large scale production of a dedicated ASF.
The Fulcrum is a pretty goddamn badass plane, radar aside, and was produced for export to our lovely Iranian friends (among others.)
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No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
See what gets to me is that this 1. won't help us in either war we're involved in and 2. an ASF isn't really necessary in these times. Even then the US still has the best equipment so on the pragmatic front this is a no brainer.
The fact that the components were being manufactured in 47 states sounds like nothing more than a contrived bullshit to make the bill unassailable without getting complaints from disingenuous cock muppets ranting about job losses.
The United States' top fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-22, has recently required more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces, confidential Pentagon test results show.
The aircraft's radar-absorbing metallic skin is the principal cause of its maintenance troubles, with unexpected shortcomings -- such as vulnerability to rain and other abrasion -- challenging Air Force and contractor technicians since the mid-1990s, according to Pentagon officials, internal documents and a former engineer.
While most aircraft fleets become easier and less costly to repair as they mature, key maintenance trends for the F-22 have been negative in recent years, and on average from October last year to this May, just 55 percent of the deployed F-22 fleet has been available to fulfill missions guarding U.S. airspace, the Defense Department acknowledged this week. The F-22 has never been flown over Iraq or Afghanistan.
Sensitive information about troubles with the nation's foremost air-defense fighter is emerging in the midst of a fight between the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress over whether the program should be halted next year at 187 planes, far short of what the Air Force and the F-22's contractors around the country had anticipated.
"It is a disgrace that you can fly a plane [an average of] only 1.7 hours before it gets a critical failure" that jeopardizes success of the aircraft's mission, said a Defense Department critic of the plane who is not authorized to speak on the record. Other skeptics inside the Pentagon note that the planes, designed 30 years ago to combat a Cold War adversary, have cost an average of $350 million apiece and say they are not a priority in the age of small wars and terrorist threats.
But other defense officials -- reflecting sharp divisions inside the Pentagon about the wisdom of ending one of the largest arms programs in U.S. history -- emphasize the plane's unsurpassed flying abilities, express renewed optimism that the troubles will abate and say the plane is worth the unexpected costs.
Votes by the House and Senate armed services committees last month to spend $369 million to $1.75 billion more to keep the F-22 production line open were propelled by mixed messages from the Air Force -- including a quiet campaign for the plane that includes snazzy new Lockheed videos for key lawmakers -- and intense political support from states where the F-22's components are made. The full House ratified the vote on June 25, and the Senate is scheduled to begin consideration of F-22 spending Monday.
After deciding to cancel the program, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called the $65 billion fleet a "niche silver-bullet solution" to a major aerial war threat that remains distant. He described the House's decision as "a big problem" and has promised to urge President Obama to veto the military spending bill if the full Senate retains F-22 funding.
The administration's position is supported by military reform groups that have long criticized what they consider to be poor procurement practices surrounding the F-22, and by former senior Pentagon officials such as Thomas Christie, the top weapons testing expert from 2001 to 2005. Christie says that because of the plane's huge costs, the Air Force lacks money to modernize its other forces adequately and has "embarked on what we used to call unilateral disarmament."
David G. Ahern, a senior Pentagon procurement official who helps oversee the F-22 program, said in an interview that "I think we've executed very well," and attributed its troubles mostly to the challenge of meeting ambitious goals with unstable funding.
A spokeswoman for Lockheed added that the F-22 has "unmatched capabilities, sustainability and affordability" and that any problems are being resolved in close coordination with the Air Force.
'Cancellation-Proof'
Designed during the early 1980s to ensure long-term American military dominance of the skies, the F-22 was conceived to win dogfights with advanced Soviet fighters that Russia is still trying to develop.
Lt. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, director of the Air National Guard, said in a letter this week to Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) that he likes the F-22 because its speed and electronics enable it to handle "a full spectrum of threats" that current defensive aircraft "are not capable of addressing."
"There is really no comparison to the F-22," said Air Force Maj. David Skalicky, a 32-year-old former F-15 pilot who now shows off the F-22's impressive maneuverability at air shows. Citing the critical help provided by its computers in flying radical angles of attack and tight turns, he said "it is one of the easiest planes to fly, from the pilot's perspective."
Its troubles have been detailed in dozens of Government Accountability Office reports and Pentagon audits. But Pierre Sprey, a key designer in the 1970s and 1980s of the F-16 and A-10 warplanes, said that from the beginning, the Air Force designed it to be "too big to fail, that is, to be cancellation-proof."
Lockheed farmed out more than 1,000 subcontracts to vendors in more than 40 states, and Sprey -- now a prominent critic of the plane -- said that by the time skeptics "could point out the failed tests, the combat flaws, and the exploding costs, most congressmen were already defending their subcontractors' " revenues.
John Hamre, the Pentagon's comptroller from 1993 to 1997, says the department approved the plane with a budget it knew was too low because projecting the real costs would have been politically unpalatable on Capitol Hill.
"We knew that the F-22 was going to cost more than the Air Force thought it was going to cost and we budgeted the lower number, and I was there," Hamre told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April. "I'm not proud of it," Hamre added in a recent interview.
When limited production began in 2001, the plane was "substantially behind its plan to achieve reliability goals," the GAO said in a report the following year. Structural problems that turned up in subsequent testing forced retrofits to the frame and changes in the fuel flow. Computer flaws, combined with defective software diagnostics, forced the frequent retesting of millions of lines of code, said two Defense officials with access to internal reports.
Skin problems -- often requiring re-gluing small surfaces that can take more than a day to dry -- helped force more frequent and time-consuming repairs, according to the confidential data drawn from tests conducted by the Pentagon's independent Office of Operational Test and Evaluation between 2004 and 2008.
Over the four-year period, the F-22's average maintenance time per hour of flight grew from 20 hours to 34, with skin repairs accounting for more than half of that time -- and more than half the hourly flying costs -- last year, according to the test and evaluation office.
The Air Force says the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008; the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808. The F-15, the F-22's predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.
'Compromises'
Darrol Olsen, a specialist in stealth coatings who worked at Lockheed's testing laboratory in Marietta, Ga., from 1995 to 1999, said the current troubles are unsurprising. In a lawsuit filed under seal in 2007, he charged the company with violating the False Claims Act for ordering and using coatings that it knew were defective while hiding the failings from the Air Force.
He has cited a July 1998 report that said test results "yield the same problems as documented previously" in the skin's quality and durability, and another in December that year saying, "Baseline coatings failed." A Lockheed briefing that September assured the Air Force that the effort was "meeting requirements with optimized products."
"When I got into this thing . . . I could not believe the compromises" made by Lockheed to meet the Air Force's request for quick results, said Olsen, who had a top-secret clearance. "I suggested we go to the Air Force and tell them we had some difficulties . . . and they would not do that. I was squashed. I knew from the get-go that this material was bad, that this correcting it in the field was never going to work."
Olsen, who said Lockheed fired him over a medical leave, heard from colleagues as recently as 2005 that problems persisted with coatings and radar absorbing materials in the plane's skin, including what one described as vulnerability to rain. Invited to join his lawsuit, the Justice Department filed a court notice last month saying it was not doing so "at this time" -- a term that means it is still investigating the matter, according to a department spokesman.
Ahern said the Pentagon could not comment on the allegations. Lockheed spokeswoman Mary Jo Polidore said that "the issues raised in the complaint are at least 10 years old," and that the plane meets or exceeds requirements established by the Air Force. "We deny Mr. Olsen's allegations and will vigorously defend this matter."
There have been other legal complications. In late 2005, Boeing learned of defects in titanium booms connecting the wings to the plane, which the company, in a subsequent lawsuit against its supplier, said posed the risk of "catastrophic loss of the aircraft." But rather than shut down the production line -- an act that would have incurred large Air Force penalties -- Boeing reached an accord with the Air Force to resolve the problem through increased inspections over the life of the fleet, with expenses to be mostly paid by the Air Force.
Sprey said engineers who worked on it told him that because of Lockheed's use of hundreds of subcontractors, quality control was so poor that workers had to create a "shim line" at the Georgia plant where they retooled badly designed or poorly manufactured components. "Each plane wound up with all these hand-fitted parts that caused huge fits in maintenance," he said. "They were not interchangeable."
Polidore confirmed that some early parts required modifications but denied that such a shim line existed and said "our supplier base is the best in the industry."
The plane's million-dollar radar-absorbing canopy has also caused problems, with a stuck hatch imprisoning a pilot for hours in 2006 and engineers unable to extend the canopy's lifespan beyond about 18 months of flying time. It delaminates, "loses its strength and finish," said an official privy to Air Force data.
In the interview, Ahern and Air Force Gen. C.D. Moore confirmed that canopy visibility has been declining more rapidly than expected, with brown spots and peeling forcing $120,000 refurbishments at 331 hours of flying time, on average, instead of the stipulated 800 hours.
There has been some gradual progress. At the plane's first operational flight test in September 2004, it fully met two of 22 key requirements and had a total of 351 deficiencies; in 2006, it fully met five; in 2008, when squadrons were deployed at six U.S. bases, it fully met seven.
"It flunked on suitability measures -- availability, reliability, and maintenance," said Christie about the first of those tests. "There was no consequence. It did not faze anybody who was in the decision loop" for approving the plane's full production. This outcome was hardly unique, Christie adds. During his tenure in the job from 2001 to 2005, "16 or 17 major weapons systems flunked" during initial operational tests, and "not one was stopped as a result."
"I don't accept that this is still early in the program," Christie said, explaining that he does not recall a plane with such a low capability to fulfill its mission due to maintenance problems at this point in its tenure as the F-22. The Pentagon said 64 percent of the fleet is currently "mission capable." After four years of rigorous testing and operations, "the trends are not good," he added.
Pentagon officials respond that measuring hourly flying costs for aircraft fleets that have not reached 100,000 flying hours is problematic, because sorties become more frequent after that point; Ahern also said some improvements have been made since the 2008 testing, and added: "We're going to get better." He said the F-22s are on track to meet all of what the Air Force calls its KPP -- key performance parameters -- by next year.
But last Nov. 20, John J. Young Jr., who was then undersecretary of defense and Ahern's boss, said that officials continue to struggle with the F-22's skin. "There's clearly work that needs to be done there to make that airplane both capable and affordable to operate," he said.
When Gates decided this spring to spend $785 million on four more planes and then end production of the F-22, he also kept alive an $8 billion improvement effort. It will, among other things, give F-22 pilots the ability to communicate with other types of warplanes; it currently is the only such warplane to lack that capability.
The cancellation decision got public support from the Air Force's top two civilian and military leaders, who said the F-22 was not a top priority in a constrained budget. But the leaders' message was muddied in a June 9 letter from Air Combat Cmdr. John D.W. Corley to Chambliss that said halting production would put "execution of our current national military strategy at high risk in the near to mid-term." The right size for the fleet, he said, is 381.
Fatal Test Flight
One of the last four planes Gates supported buying is meant to replace an F-22 that crashed during a test flight north of Los Angeles on March 25, during his review of the program. The Air Force has declined to discuss the cause, but a classified internal accident report completed the following month states that the plane flew into the ground after poorly executing a high-speed run with its weapons-bay doors open, according to three government officials familiar with its contents. The Lockheed test pilot died.
Several sources said the flight was part of a bid to make the F-22 relevant to current conflicts by giving it a capability to conduct precision bombing raids, not just aerial dogfights. The Air Force is still probing who should be held accountable for the accident.
Or just read Metal Gear Solid 2 Demo's summary of it, that works too.
That's quite an interesting read, I'm surprised at the maintenance hours required. More modern jets have typically required less maintenance time than their older brethren (think better more reliable jet engines, materials that don't wear as much over time etc). I remember there being a little thing on tv a while back about how much less maintenance the Eurofighter Typhoon requires in comparison to its older brethren the Tornado.
I guess stealth is a bitch, I definitely remember hearing about the B2 requiring special air-conditioned hangers or something. And the whole rain water negates its stealth thing.
Not that a lot of that matters these days, modern day air to air missiles are ridiculously fast, manoeuvrable and long ranged. For all the money spent on super fast and super agile fighters it looks like missiles rule. At least until they get that whole laser thing sorted anyway.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
Since the collapse of the USSR as a cohesive unit, there isn't a country on the planet outside the US that has either a.) enough of an airforce (in terms of numbers of planes) or b.) advanced enough planes (although the SU-47 is damn cool, Russia didn't order too many and the Sukhoi PAK and MiG 1.44 experimentals are years from production) to warrant a large scale production of a dedicated ASF.
The Fulcrum is a pretty goddamn badass plane, radar aside, and was produced for export to our lovely Iranian friends (among others.)
Yes, but at maximum (I've never seen a solid figure on it or the export to Syria) Iran has maybe 250-300 Fulcrums, based on a nearly 15 year old respec of the original MiG-29.
I'm not exactly quaking in my boots, considering that even at it's best it was only the equal, but not the superior, of the F-15 and F-16 Falcon D.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
The only enemies with even a prayer of going toe to toe with the USAF cannot be warred with. Like we realistically cannot go to war with Europe or China. Nukes will fly. Bad things will happen.
The economies of the entire industrialized world will shutter and collapse if any major power went to war with any other major power, and everyone at the top knows this.
The only enemies with even a prayer of going toe to toe with the USAF cannot be warred with. Like we realistically cannot go to war with Europe or China. Nukes will fly. Bad things will happen.
Cats and dogs living together?
The economies of the entire industrialized world will shutter and collapse if any major power went to war with any other major power, and everyone at the top knows this.
Anyway, it hasn't been about the plane for a long time. It's all about who has the best, longest range missile.
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The only enemies with even a prayer of going toe to toe with the USAF cannot be warred with. Like we realistically cannot go to war with Europe or China. Nukes will fly. Bad things will happen.
Cats and dogs living together?
The economies of the entire industrialized world will shutter and collapse if any major power went to war with any other major power, and everyone at the top knows this.
Anyway, it hasn't been about the plane for a long time. It's all about who has the best, longest range missile.
Planes are important, but the initial air defense of an area will be flattened by cruise missiles before you send the bombers in. It's not the 1950s where b-29s had to have wings of fighters protecting them because that was how we projected power.
Today, if there's an air threat, the bombers can fly a few thousand miles and release a cruise missile and fly back, long before they ever get anywhere close to a radar net.
The next evolution (at least in China's thinking) is ballistic conventional weapons, which cannot be used in warfare because when launched they are indistinguishable from nuclear missiles and will provoke a response that is good for nobody.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
The next evolution (at least in China's thinking) is ballistic conventional weapons, which cannot be used in warfare because when launched they are indistinguishable from nuclear missiles and will provoke a response that you don't want to get.
I'd be more worried about them using ballistic missiles to shoot down our satellites than any sort of actual head-to-head warfare.
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No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
Yammering about air superiority when most of your likely enemies would be flying 15 year old tech is rather silly
Even then, the only countries which would necessitate all of our airforce's demands would be nuclear capable in the first place. The nature of current warfare has changed so drastically that there's really no point in researching certain technologies.
Example - Mig-21's first flight was in 1955 and it entered service in 1959.
F-4 Phantom first flight was 1958, the others, F-15, 16 and 18 were all 1970's... it's insane to think the F-22 process started in 1981.
To be fair, defence spending during the cold war was ridiculously high. Which helps explain how a lot of stuff got delivered in the time frames they did. In Europe (and to a lesser degree in the USA) when the cold war ended governments took axes to defence spending. There was a name coined for the money essentially regained to the public purse to be spent on other things.. unfortunately I can't remember it it was "cold war.." something. (like investment or reward.. damn I wish I could remember that damn word)
An example, just like the F-22. The Eurofighter Typhoon was expected to be ready by the 90's, but because of budget cuts it got massively delayed and has only in the last few years come into service.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
The next evolution (at least in China's thinking) is ballistic conventional weapons, which cannot be used in warfare because when launched they are indistinguishable from nuclear missiles and will provoke a response that you don't want to get.
I'd be more worried about them using ballistic missiles to shoot down our satellites than any sort of actual head-to-head warfare.
Has there ever been a succesful test of such a system, as a legitimate weapons threat?
I know China knocked an obsolete weather satellite out of orbit back in '07 and the US deep-sixed a spy sat in decaying orbit, but neither was cost effective.
IIRC it cost the US nearly $100 million to track, move ships into oppropriate locations, modify the software controls and fire SM3 that took down the failed spy satellite. Hardly a cost effective or viable weapon in the near future.
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The next evolution (at least in China's thinking) is ballistic conventional weapons, which cannot be used in warfare because when launched they are indistinguishable from nuclear missiles and will provoke a response that you don't want to get.
I'd be more worried about them using ballistic missiles to shoot down our satellites than any sort of actual head-to-head warfare.
Has there ever been a succesful test of such a system, as a legitimate weapons threat?
I know China knocked an obsolete weather satellite out of orbit back in '07 and the US deep-sixed a spy sat in decaying orbit, but neither was cost effective.
IIRC it cost the US nearly $100 million to track, move ships into oppropriate locations, modify the software controls and fire SM3 that took down the failed spy satellite. Hardly a cost effective or viable weapon in the near future.
The USA, Russia etc. Have been able to take down satellites for years, the problem is taking them out without taking out other satellites by big explosions (exo-atmospheric nuke will fry the electronics on a satellite from the emp) or from the impact breaking it up into lots of pieces that will hit other satellites.
You don't need a ship with an SM3, fire off an ICBM at a satellite. That'll take it out good, smash a rocket into it etc. This whole anti-satellite program is essentially not trying to figure out how to take out a satellite (anyone can do that with a powerful enough rocket) it's how to take out a satellite without taking out other satellites in the process. That's the hard bit.
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No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
The Air Force argument is of course that the F35 is also their next generation CAS plane, which is why they need thousands. In fact, in our previous thread on this issue I posted top brass stating on record that they could replace 2 or 3 A-10 for every 1 F35 they get.
Ridiculous, but that's how it's being spun.
Will it take a hit in the cockpit by a 23mm cannon and still allow the pilot to come home without having to be removed from the cockpit with a sieve? If the answer is "no", then...
The F-35 is being produced for both Air Force and Navy, which is why they need thousands. It's not nearly as good at air-superiority as the F-22.
They're gonna spend 83MM and get something that's a bit better than an F-16 (20MM). Explain that to me. Say it patiently like I've never seen an warplane before and like I don't understand accounting.
does the f-22 have the same vulnerabilities that allowed a coupla guys in the desert with a map, some radar emplacements, an AA gun and some luck to take down a f117a?
Yammering about air superiority when most of your likely enemies would be flying 15 year old tech is rather silly
More like 40 - 50 year old tech.
The planes we all know and love? From the 70s (F15, F16, F18). A lot of what other countries fly are of even older design.
Our 70s stuff has some new bits inside, though. And, I understand why they want air superiority... it won a World War, and frankly no one has the will for a ground war where tens of thousands are lost. Hell, the US didn't even lose but 5% of the men deployed in WW2, and they still don't have the stomach for another Omaha Beach (nor should they). Iraq (both wars) would have been a bloodbath w/o total air control and all of the pre-invasion sorties.
That's a serious threat to ships parked off the coast, there is no weapon system that is a serious threat to ships at sea, as even finding them is a near impossibility. Satellites don't have the turnover time to accomplish it, the only real way is to send other ships and aircraft out there to find it.
In before millenium challenge: they essentially just had their ships parked off the coast, which is not something that actually occurs in a real war. That thing wasn't setup as a wargame, it was set up as a masturbation session.
The F-22 is not required, and is too expensive. Cheaper weapon systems can do the job good enough. The US military has air and sea dominance to such an absurd degree that no other nation poses a realistic threat to it. If such a crazy war ever happened the fragility of the F-22 will make it a liability not an asset, compared to the tried and proven F-15, F-16, and F-18. Having the best air superiority fighter is virtually meaningless in this day and age, especially against an opponent who will be hitting your airbases with massive salvos of cruise missiles. Planes aren't worth much with nowhere to land them.
Then again I want the US to cut its military budget by 50% or more (not all at once, obviously, that would be catastrophic economically), so I'm one of them crazy people you shouldn't listen to
A cut like that is not only uncrazy, it is absolutely necessary.
about 1/5th of the military budget is in Peronnel, and when combined with maintenance and operations the cost is still about over 50% of the spending.
The military doesn't just need to cut 50% of spending, it needs to cut the stupid spending. The Future Combat Systems, the F-22, things like that. Military spending needs review and an overhaul to make sense, not just "cut by 50%"
Quite frankly, and partially biased because again, I'm on the verge of auditioning for military musician positions, I don't think the personnel costs are outrageous, for instance, starting salary in the enlisted service is something like 20k/year assuming at least 2 years of college upon enlisting, which is not too outrageous. And there should be a sizeable amount of money going into maintenance, though I'm sure there's some bloat there.
Saying "We should cut 50% of spending" is taking a really simplistic view of it. The military should cut out the stupid spending.
Yeah just cutting the "stupid spending" would easily be 10-25% of our military costs
We can still research stuff but put some limits of budgeting and stop the more ridiculous money wasting practices(like the aforementioned 47 state F-22 manufacturing setup).
Demand reasonable budgets and deadlines on large contracts and kill programs that simply aren't moving.
Example - Mig-21's first flight was in 1955 and it entered service in 1959.
F-4 Phantom first flight was 1958, the others, F-15, 16 and 18 were all 1970's... it's insane to think the F-22 process started in 1981.
To be fair, defence spending during the cold war was ridiculously high. Which helps explain how a lot of stuff got delivered in the time frames they did. In Europe (and to a lesser degree in the USA) when the cold war ended governments took axes to defence spending. There was a name coined for the money essentially regained to the public purse to be spent on other things.. unfortunately I can't remember it it was "cold war.." something. (like investment or reward.. damn I wish I could remember that damn word)
An example, just like the F-22. The Eurofighter Typhoon was expected to be ready by the 90's, but because of budget cuts it got massively delayed and has only in the last few years come into service.
That's a serious threat to ships parked off the coast, there is no weapon system that is a serious threat to ships at sea, as even finding them is a near impossibility. Satellites don't have the turnover time to accomplish it, the only real way is to send other ships and aircraft out there to find it.
In before millenium challenge: they essentially just had their ships parked off the coast, which is not something that actually occurs in a real war. That thing wasn't setup as a wargame, it was set up as a masturbation session.
The F-22 is not required, and is too expensive. Cheaper weapon systems can do the job good enough. The US military has air and sea dominance to such an absurd degree that no other nation poses a realistic threat to it. If such a crazy war ever happened the fragility of the F-22 will make it a liability not an asset, compared to the tried and proven F-15, F-16, and F-18. Having the best air superiority fighter is virtually meaningless in this day and age, especially against an opponent who will be hitting your airbases with massive salvos of cruise missiles. Planes aren't worth much with nowhere to land them.
Then again I want the US to cut its military budget by 50% or more (not all at once, obviously, that would be catastrophic economically), so I'm one of them crazy people you shouldn't listen to
A cut like that is not only uncrazy, it is absolutely necessary.
about 1/5th of the military budget is in Peronnel, and when combined with maintenance and operations the cost is still about over 50% of the spending.
The military doesn't just need to cut 50% of spending, it needs to cut the stupid spending. The Future Combat Systems, the F-22, things like that. Military spending needs review and an overhaul to make sense, not just "cut by 50%"
Quite frankly, and partially biased because again, I'm on the verge of auditioning for military musician positions, I don't think the personnel costs are outrageous, for instance, starting salary in the enlisted service is something like 20k/year assuming at least 2 years of college upon enlisting, which is not too outrageous. And there should be a sizeable amount of money going into maintenance, though I'm sure there's some bloat there.
Saying "We should cut 50% of spending" is taking a really simplistic view of it. The military should cut out the stupid spending.
Some parts need bigger cuts than others. The actual amount paid to average enlisted military personnel is far from extravagant (my dad left the military as an E-7 and enjoyed roughly a 100% increase in pay once he entered the private workforce).
However, the entire force is too large and way too built towards fighting fighting a conventional war with someone like Russia, which is both ridiculous and wasteful. If the US wishes to continue being the world police then I suppose that the size is necessary for the task, but do we really want to pay for all of that? Can still easily maintain US hegemony over the rest of the world without such a bloated force. When all of your shit is leaps and bounds beyond what your enemies could field wouldn't it logically mean that you don't need such a big force?
Do we really need twelve active aircraft carriers?
Or to maintain roughly 5,500 nuclear weapons?
Or to pay for ridiculous boondoggles like the F-22 program which costs far more than other next gen aircraft (like the F-35) while simultaneously being less versatile and totally unreliable?
Or any of the other gigantic wastes of funds that are omnipresent throughout the military?
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
However, the entire force is too large and way too built towards fighting fighting a conventional war with someone like Russia, which is both ridiculous and wasteful. If the US wishes to continue being the world police then I suppose that the size is necessary for the task, but do we really want to pay for all of that? Can still easily maintain US hegemony over the rest of the world without such a bloated force. When all of your shit is leaps and bounds beyond what your enemies could field wouldn't it logically mean that you don't need such a big force?
Do we really need twelve active aircraft carriers?
Or to maintain roughly 5,500 nuclear weapons?
Or to pay for ridiculous boondoggles like the F-22 program which costs far more than other next gen aircraft (like the F-35) while simultaneously being less versatile and totally unreliable?
Or any of the other gigantic wastes of funds that are omnipresent throughout the military?
The first part I disagree with. If Iraq/Afghanistan/Balkans/Vietnam have taught us anything its that boots can't be replaced with gadgets. Force multiplying does not work for peacekeeping. Until and unless we stop being cops of the world we need bodies.
And the carriers are again the US's primary way to project force throughout the world.
We don't need the nukes obviously. And boondoggles by definition aren't needed, but identifying whats a boondoggle, whats just inefficient, whats useless, and what's useful isn't quite that easy.
Any reduction in our nuclear arsenal is money well saved. Fusion bombs need constant upkeep and replacement. You can't just make 5,500 of the things and leave them in silos for a decade. You have to replace the tritium constantly (not cheap), the delivery systems require constant maintenance and replacement (rocket fuel isn't exasctly stable, submarine crews etc...)
Keeping the nuclear arsenal at a constant level still requires a hell of a lot of money. I would be thrilled if they cut it down to less than 1000.
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But seriously, the F22 isn't needed right now for anything I can think of. And it's not like we don't have a history of expensive and disaster prone aircraft projects.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god
Really? Why not? Just the cost of tooling the factories and such?
It's so widely distributed everywhere that the cost of stopping/restarting production is almost prohibitive. This is obviously by design to make it more difficult to muster the will to cancel it.
Can't we just do shit like park our ships a few miles off the coast and just start shooting fucking railguns until they all die?
That would take a lot of bullets... a lot.
Bad idea.
https://www.usni.org/forthemedia/ChineseKillWeapon.asp
It's funny that the Chinese word for "missile" is "kill weapon".
What I want to know is where is the funding for the Brother Eye/OMAC program?!
That's a serious threat to ships parked off the coast, there is no weapon system that is a serious threat to ships at sea, as even finding them is a near impossibility. Satellites don't have the turnover time to accomplish it, the only real way is to send other ships and aircraft out there to find it.
In before millenium challenge: they essentially just had their ships parked off the coast, which is not something that actually occurs in a real war. That thing wasn't setup as a wargame, it was set up as a masturbation session.
The F-22 is not required, and is too expensive. Cheaper weapon systems can do the job good enough. The US military has air and sea dominance to such an absurd degree that no other nation poses a realistic threat to it. If such a crazy war ever happened the fragility of the F-22 will make it a liability not an asset, compared to the tried and proven F-15, F-16, and F-18. Having the best air superiority fighter is virtually meaningless in this day and age, especially against an opponent who will be hitting your airbases with massive salvos of cruise missiles. Planes aren't worth much with nowhere to land them.
Then again I want the US to cut its military budget by 50% or more (not all at once, obviously, that would be catastrophic economically), so I'm one of them crazy people you shouldn't listen to
A cut like that is not only uncrazy, it is absolutely necessary.
The fact that the components were being manufactured in 47 states sounds like nothing more than a contrived bullshit to make the bill unassailable without getting complaints from disingenuous cock muppets ranting about job losses.
That's quite an interesting read, I'm surprised at the maintenance hours required. More modern jets have typically required less maintenance time than their older brethren (think better more reliable jet engines, materials that don't wear as much over time etc). I remember there being a little thing on tv a while back about how much less maintenance the Eurofighter Typhoon requires in comparison to its older brethren the Tornado.
I guess stealth is a bitch, I definitely remember hearing about the B2 requiring special air-conditioned hangers or something. And the whole rain water negates its stealth thing.
Not that a lot of that matters these days, modern day air to air missiles are ridiculously fast, manoeuvrable and long ranged. For all the money spent on super fast and super agile fighters it looks like missiles rule. At least until they get that whole laser thing sorted anyway.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Yes, but at maximum (I've never seen a solid figure on it or the export to Syria) Iran has maybe 250-300 Fulcrums, based on a nearly 15 year old respec of the original MiG-29.
I'm not exactly quaking in my boots, considering that even at it's best it was only the equal, but not the superior, of the F-15 and F-16 Falcon D.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
More like 40 - 50 year old tech.
The planes we all know and love? From the 70s (F15, F16, F18). A lot of what other countries fly are of even older design.
The economies of the entire industrialized world will shutter and collapse if any major power went to war with any other major power, and everyone at the top knows this.
Cats and dogs living together?
Anyway, it hasn't been about the plane for a long time. It's all about who has the best, longest range missile.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
F-4 Phantom first flight was 1958, the others, F-15, 16 and 18 were all 1970's... it's insane to think the F-22 process started in 1981.
Planes are important, but the initial air defense of an area will be flattened by cruise missiles before you send the bombers in. It's not the 1950s where b-29s had to have wings of fighters protecting them because that was how we projected power.
Today, if there's an air threat, the bombers can fly a few thousand miles and release a cruise missile and fly back, long before they ever get anywhere close to a radar net.
The next evolution (at least in China's thinking) is ballistic conventional weapons, which cannot be used in warfare because when launched they are indistinguishable from nuclear missiles and will provoke a response that is good for nobody.
I'd be more worried about them using ballistic missiles to shoot down our satellites than any sort of actual head-to-head warfare.
Even then, the only countries which would necessitate all of our airforce's demands would be nuclear capable in the first place. The nature of current warfare has changed so drastically that there's really no point in researching certain technologies.
Which we won't get to because it would destroy both countries even if nukes weren't involved
To be fair, defence spending during the cold war was ridiculously high. Which helps explain how a lot of stuff got delivered in the time frames they did. In Europe (and to a lesser degree in the USA) when the cold war ended governments took axes to defence spending. There was a name coined for the money essentially regained to the public purse to be spent on other things.. unfortunately I can't remember it it was "cold war.." something. (like investment or reward.. damn I wish I could remember that damn word)
An example, just like the F-22. The Eurofighter Typhoon was expected to be ready by the 90's, but because of budget cuts it got massively delayed and has only in the last few years come into service.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Has there ever been a succesful test of such a system, as a legitimate weapons threat?
I know China knocked an obsolete weather satellite out of orbit back in '07 and the US deep-sixed a spy sat in decaying orbit, but neither was cost effective.
IIRC it cost the US nearly $100 million to track, move ships into oppropriate locations, modify the software controls and fire SM3 that took down the failed spy satellite. Hardly a cost effective or viable weapon in the near future.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
The USA, Russia etc. Have been able to take down satellites for years, the problem is taking them out without taking out other satellites by big explosions (exo-atmospheric nuke will fry the electronics on a satellite from the emp) or from the impact breaking it up into lots of pieces that will hit other satellites.
You don't need a ship with an SM3, fire off an ICBM at a satellite. That'll take it out good, smash a rocket into it etc. This whole anti-satellite program is essentially not trying to figure out how to take out a satellite (anyone can do that with a powerful enough rocket) it's how to take out a satellite without taking out other satellites in the process. That's the hard bit.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Exactly.
Will it take a hit in the cockpit by a 23mm cannon and still allow the pilot to come home without having to be removed from the cockpit with a sieve? If the answer is "no", then...
They're gonna spend 83MM and get something that's a bit better than an F-16 (20MM). Explain that to me. Say it patiently like I've never seen an warplane before and like I don't understand accounting.
It flies much faster/higher than the F-117.
Our 70s stuff has some new bits inside, though. And, I understand why they want air superiority... it won a World War, and frankly no one has the will for a ground war where tens of thousands are lost. Hell, the US didn't even lose but 5% of the men deployed in WW2, and they still don't have the stomach for another Omaha Beach (nor should they). Iraq (both wars) would have been a bloodbath w/o total air control and all of the pre-invasion sorties.
A cut like that is not only uncrazy, it is absolutely necessary.
about 1/5th of the military budget is in Peronnel, and when combined with maintenance and operations the cost is still about over 50% of the spending.
The military doesn't just need to cut 50% of spending, it needs to cut the stupid spending. The Future Combat Systems, the F-22, things like that. Military spending needs review and an overhaul to make sense, not just "cut by 50%"
Quite frankly, and partially biased because again, I'm on the verge of auditioning for military musician positions, I don't think the personnel costs are outrageous, for instance, starting salary in the enlisted service is something like 20k/year assuming at least 2 years of college upon enlisting, which is not too outrageous. And there should be a sizeable amount of money going into maintenance, though I'm sure there's some bloat there.
Saying "We should cut 50% of spending" is taking a really simplistic view of it. The military should cut out the stupid spending.
We can still research stuff but put some limits of budgeting and stop the more ridiculous money wasting practices(like the aforementioned 47 state F-22 manufacturing setup).
Demand reasonable budgets and deadlines on large contracts and kill programs that simply aren't moving.
Aha, I remembered the term. Peace dividend.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
about 1/5th of the military budget is in Peronnel, and when combined with maintenance and operations the cost is still about over 50% of the spending.
The military doesn't just need to cut 50% of spending, it needs to cut the stupid spending. The Future Combat Systems, the F-22, things like that. Military spending needs review and an overhaul to make sense, not just "cut by 50%"
Quite frankly, and partially biased because again, I'm on the verge of auditioning for military musician positions, I don't think the personnel costs are outrageous, for instance, starting salary in the enlisted service is something like 20k/year assuming at least 2 years of college upon enlisting, which is not too outrageous. And there should be a sizeable amount of money going into maintenance, though I'm sure there's some bloat there.
Saying "We should cut 50% of spending" is taking a really simplistic view of it. The military should cut out the stupid spending.
Some parts need bigger cuts than others. The actual amount paid to average enlisted military personnel is far from extravagant (my dad left the military as an E-7 and enjoyed roughly a 100% increase in pay once he entered the private workforce).
However, the entire force is too large and way too built towards fighting fighting a conventional war with someone like Russia, which is both ridiculous and wasteful. If the US wishes to continue being the world police then I suppose that the size is necessary for the task, but do we really want to pay for all of that? Can still easily maintain US hegemony over the rest of the world without such a bloated force. When all of your shit is leaps and bounds beyond what your enemies could field wouldn't it logically mean that you don't need such a big force?
Do we really need twelve active aircraft carriers?
Or to maintain roughly 5,500 nuclear weapons?
Or to pay for ridiculous boondoggles like the F-22 program which costs far more than other next gen aircraft (like the F-35) while simultaneously being less versatile and totally unreliable?
Or any of the other gigantic wastes of funds that are omnipresent throughout the military?
Examples?
Just curious.
The first part I disagree with. If Iraq/Afghanistan/Balkans/Vietnam have taught us anything its that boots can't be replaced with gadgets. Force multiplying does not work for peacekeeping. Until and unless we stop being cops of the world we need bodies.
And the carriers are again the US's primary way to project force throughout the world.
We don't need the nukes obviously. And boondoggles by definition aren't needed, but identifying whats a boondoggle, whats just inefficient, whats useless, and what's useful isn't quite that easy.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Keeping the nuclear arsenal at a constant level still requires a hell of a lot of money. I would be thrilled if they cut it down to less than 1000.