Today, the funds for additional F-22s and parts failed to get into the defense bill. Even though I am a supporter of a strong military, I am not a supporter of the military on steroids. The F-22 is far superior than any fighter anywhere in the world, but we already have other fighters that are far better than any fighter anywhere in the world. The F-22 makes our military far stronger than what we need right now, and I agree with Congress and the administration that we should not buy more F-22s at this point. However, the savings should be used cut the deficit (not spend it on something else).
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One of our best friends, Jim Dabakis, had his letter to the editor recognized in the Salt Lake Tribune as the Letter of the Week. It is entitled, Fight the Fighter.
Here it is:
President Barack Obama hates them. President George W. Bush said they should never have been built. The Defense Department and the Air Force say they are unnecessary and a waste. John McCain says we just don't need them. Yet, despite a Pentagon report saying that the average time between critical failures sufficient to jeopardize an F-22 mission is 1.7 hours, Sens. Orin Hatch and Bob Bennett support building more F-22 planes, which cost $250 million each and $49,808 an hour to operate. These planes are a costly political favor waiting for a mission; they have never been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
How is it that Utah's senators join Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry in supporting this ugly duck and may vote to override a threatened Obama veto?
Simple: bootie and bacon. The plane's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, put subcontractors in most states (including Utah) and contributed to political cronies in both parties. Voilà! The good of the nation flies away for a cheap payoff.
Bennett and Hatch should live up to their deficit-fighting rhetoric by voting against further funding this boondoggle-ridden, unneeded fighter plane. Otherwise, all of their tirades about the deficit will just be more of the same Washington blah, blah.
End.
Today on the the radio I heard Rob Bishop, my congressman, defending the further funding of these planes because, guess what, Hill AFB is in his district. He claims that we need them to defend America.
I am not so much against the F-22 Raptor as I am against the cost overruns associated with it. I can see that there could be a need for such an agile plane. Mr. Obama has decided to lean more on the F-35 than the F-22. Both are next generation aircraft with radar evading "stealth" technology. The difference is the mission each are designed for. While the F-22 is more of an air-to-air fighter the F-35 is designed to replace the A-10 for air-to-ground support. While both are great airplanes the F-22 is already developed and has entire squadron wings deployed and fuctioning. The F-35 does not. As of January '09 only six have been built. So the cost over runs are yet to be realized. The F-35 is likely to cost between $65-120 million each. This is before cost overruns as I understand it. A newer engine has already been requested to power it and this has been rejected by the president.
We may not need any more F-22's, since we have a fleet of them already, building more may be overkill. Of course if we can build them, sell them and make a profit, why kill the program?
As to Jim Dabakis' comment "these planes are a political favor waiting for a mission". Of course they are. Kind of a stupid comment if I have ever heard one. What military project isn't? Let's just hope the mission is never needed.
For that matter the political landscape is dotted with "political favors waiting for a mission" in all areas, environmental spending, healthcare spending, FEMA spending etc. etc etc.
The Air Force's current fleet of F-15 and F-16's is thinning out drastically due to the service life of the airframes. They need to be replaced with something. If we don't stay that step ahead in technology, we might find ourselves lacking the "muscle" we need to fight future battles. Though, I don't like the cost over runs...I do support the new series of fighters. Freedom never was free and moreover, freedom never was or ever will be cheap.
The F-18s are great planes an are fairly new. No nation has anything as good. The F-22 may likely be one of the last manned fighters. The military aviation technology is swiftly moving toward unmanned drones and fighters.
Also, why can't we follow the example of the B-52s, which have been upgraded uncountable times. It would be cheaper and easily as effective because other nations are far behind the US in military aviation technology. Like I say, big muscles look great, but the extra bulge is unnecessary for practical purposes.
I am doing some research on this and finding some interesting facts. Alan's claim that no one has a plane as good as the F-18 may not hold up.
Just a few snippits from my research...
The Typhoon's combat performance, compared to the new F-22 Raptor and the upcoming F-35 Lightning II[92] fighters being developed in the United States and the Dassault Rafale developed in France, has been the subject of much discussion.
1) In March 2005, United States Air Force Chief of Staff General John P. Jumper, then the only person to have flown both the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Raptor, talked to Air Force Print News about these two aircraft. He said,
“ The Eurofighter is both agile and sophisticated, but is still difficult to compare to the F/A-22 Raptor. They are different kinds of airplanes to start with; it's like asking us to compare a NASCAR car with a Formula One car. They are both exciting in different ways, but they are designed for different levels of performance."
2) The Eurofighter has a larger sustained subsonic turn rate, sustained supersonic turn rate, and faster acceleration at Mach 0.9 at 20,000 feet (6,100 m) than the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, Mirage 2000, Rafale, the Su-27, and the MiG-29.
3) During the exercise "Typhoon Meet" held in 2008, Eurofighters flew against F/A-18 Hornets, Mirage F1s, Harriers and F-16s in a mock combat exercise. It is claimed that the Eurofighters won all engagements (even outnumbered 8 vs 27) without suffering losses.
Brian may be right about which aircraft is best, but no one really knows. At any rate, will the US planes be fighting against Eurofighters? I doubt it, unless the Eurofighter is sold to 3rd world countries. Also, the move should be toward large numbers of inexpensive drones and unmanned fighter aircraft. We already have the technology for the pilot to sit in the safety of a US base and fly combat missions by sending commands to a drone fighter/bomber. There really is no need to spend piles of money on the F-22 when cheap unmanned fighters can be built right now. The pilot cannot be harmed and even if his craft gets shot down, he can take command another cheap aircraft and be away.
I love this conversation, but it begs a bigger question and that question is based in what seems to be an unrefuted assumption.
That assumption is that we are in danger of attack in the future, and by that I mean a conventional military attack. (The so called War on Terror can clearly not be won via conventional methods.) (Missile defense/deterrence expansion is another question worthy of our time but doesn't relate in the same way to military expenditures as our discussion of the F-22, read on for some of my reasoning.)
The question: Are we in danger of such an attack in the world as we know it? I believe that we are not.
Further questions: Does the military that we maintain suffice for the defense of our homeland in a world with whatever threats do exist? My answer to that is yes and then some.
So what is the purpose of the size of our military?
Now that is a conversation that is no longer being attempted much these days. To defend our interests beyond our borders? And what are those interests? General mundane commerce? Religious? American tourists traveling wherever and however unwisely? Big business, oil companies for example?
Defense and propagation of {our} ideologies? Posturing against or the attacking of ideologies that oppose our ideologies? Policing the world against genocides?
We talk about our national debt, yearly deficits, our freedom being expensive (although oddly enough much more expensive for us that for any other country in the world), and yet, we rarely look at the cost of our world wide military presence with the same horror that conservatives are pinning on the cost of ... health care!
I rambled but these issues fascinate me, and even more than the questions themselves, why people believe what they believe in giving their answers to these questions.
Drones, robots, remote controls...this is how they play football in the Jetson's. Not how we should fly planes and protect our country. The human interaction is necessary or we will become immune to what war is.
The term "national interest" is such a vague term. It can be interpreted to mean just about anything. However, for me, "national interest" means the defense of democracy - democracies anywhere. Our military is certainly strong enough to defend our borders, but the defense of other democracies lies within our national interest. For me, as some of you have probably already guessed, the main issue is "can we afford it." Taxes used to be my big issue, but that has been supplanted by the problem of deficit spending. It is becoming the cancer that will eat us from within. The biggest danger to our country right now is not terrorism, dictators, or communists, it is overspending. As much as I think health care is important, the sad fact of the matter is that we can't afford the price tag put on it by the WH and the CBO. If we can cut spending elsewhere, great, but I really doubt the government can do anything that is 'revenue neutral.' That is fantasy-land thinking. I have ideas on how the government could raise gobs of revenue, but that is another topic.
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In relation to Brian's comment: Yes, a manned presence will always be necessary, but there are many parts of our economy that have been turned over to automation to the benefit of all. I am not saying that we should automate war, but there are more efficient ways to defend our country without spending piles and piles of money.
Hi, this is your computerized Captain. Today's flight is pilotless. The plane is completely run by computers. Don't worry though, we assure you that nothing will go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong.......
Yes. It is unfortunate that malfunctions occur on rare occasion, and we all know that humans never makes mistakes. Hmm. "Autopilot," where have I heard that term before?
Our infrastructure is already run by computers almost everywhere. Here is an non-exhaustive list:
Elevators (we don't have bellboy in every elevator)
Traffic lights (we don't man every intersection)
Surveillance cameras
Urinals
Internet shopping (some products are not even touched by a human until it is placed on the doormat by the UPS driver.)
Some F-18s have computer-aided landing capability for carrier landings.
Air and sea navigation.
Electric grid management.
Self parking cars.
Cars that pull over to the side of the rode when the driver is detected to be incapacitated or asleep.
Operating room equipment.
Laser vision operations.
Fully automated assembly lines.
Most of the Space shuttle operations are entirely computer controlled.
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Oh. sorry...the automated voice typing device failed me and was to the right by one letter on my keyboard...my bad. Hope you understood.
I would hate to think that Brian would loose his job due to a totally automated pilot...and I would hate to fly on a plane that just had an automated pilot...reminds me of the Autopilot on the movie "Airplane".
As for me. I am a firm believer in continuing the development of advanced technology...and using it. Yes, it might be expensive but EVERYTHING government does is expensive and has overruns on costs. INCLUDING NATIONAL HEALTHCARE, AND EVEN WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT PAGES AS WE DISCUSSED EARLIER!
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