70% of Russian MiG-29s Out of Service

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DarthAmerica 2/9/2009 5:51:47 PM

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DarthAmerica 2/9/2009 5:52:21 PM

The effect is often jarring, in Washington, when someone inside the Beltway utters an uncomfortable truth. That's what Defense Secretary Robert Gates did at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, putting a damper on pressure from his own Air Force for Congress to buy more F-22 fighters. Gates believes the 183 F-22s currently planned are sufficient. "I know that the Air Force is up here and around talking about 350 or something on that order," the Secretary said. But buying more of the costly F-22 will come at the expense of the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is about half the price.

"The reality is we are fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theater," Gates said. That's the kind of statement that sends generals up the wall — not only because it's true, but because it's the Secretary of Defense who's saying it. And the generals know that the next time some eager-beaver congressional budget-cutters want to trim Pentagon spending, they're going to roll out that quote.

Gates made clear he believes there is a need for the F-22. "It is principally for use against a near-peer in a conflict, and I think we all know who that is," he said coyly. He's referring to China, which today represents the only hope for both the U.S. Air Force and the Navy to justify spending billions of dollars on weapons initially designed to battle the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War, the phrase "near-peer" has increasingly crept into Pentagon documents meaning a potential foe that could almost match the U.S. on the battlefield.

Well, do we need more F-22 to battle Beijing? Once again, Gates depressed the generals with his unassuming tone and logic. "Looking at what I regard as the level of risk of conflict with one of those near-peers over the next four or five years until the Joint Strike Fighter comes along," he said, "I think that something along the lines of 183 is a reasonable buy."

Deep in the Pentagon, Air Force generals know that the Bush Administration's decision to close down the F-22 assembly line won't come into effect until 2010. That gives them time to convince a new Administration that additional F-22s are vital to U.S. security. That's because what Gates finds reasonable, some Air Force generals will treat as treasonable.

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Nichevo 2/9/2009 11:20:18 PM

Okeh, let's try it the other way...

For some reason, when you stop producing copies of a fighter or other high tech weapon, the tech tree shrivels up and dies. Let's grant that right this minute, we don't need any more F-22s, in fact, since nobody is offering USAF any air combat, we don't need any F-22s, or any fighter planes at all.

The problem is, taking the classic 2020 Enter the Dragon scenario, we may need a good chunk of F-22 procurement sometime after 2010 and before Dec. 31, 2019, or somewhat after. Given unit costs and potential efficiencies, it certainly seems that at SOME point in the future we would want more F-22s, or F-22 derivatives, given the alternatives.

So...additional F-22 procurement is seen partially as a good in itself, partially as a way of animating the tech tree, keeping the production lines open/available, not letting LM junk the tooling.

Quaere:

How long end to end does an F-22 take to produce?

How long to restart the production lines?

How can we preserve the F-22 tech tree and viability of future a/c production at minimal cost?

What is cost of low rate ongoing production to keep the lines open as per the status quo?

Why are we so afraid of having more airplanes than we need?

Let's take some of the condom stimulus and the vote-fraud stimulus and go ahead and stimulate the aerospace industry. Or if this is totally impossible, let's take some kind of steps to preserve the viability of the program. You need to believe how sorry we will be when we learn it's impossible to make any more of these birds.

Do you know the Apollo rocket's tech tree was destroyed as soon as NASA got a whiff of STS (Shuttle)? We built machines that could go to the Moon and back, we had the plans, we had a full working copy or two sitting on the lawn somewhere, and it was all trashed. Now there's talk (or there was talk) of going BACK to the Moon, as well there should be; and can we whip out the blueprints and call up Grumman, et al, to throw another command service module on the barbie? No, sir, we cannot, but we'll be happy to go back to 1957 and start all over again.

TYVM somebody.

NOT!!!

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Softwar 2/10/2009 8:41:26 AM

First, the thread is about the MiG-29 woes - an airplane that was designed to face the F-16 not F-22.

Secondly, the MiG-29 problems will effect India and whether to buy the uprated MiG-35 version.

Third, we already have 3 threads going on the F-22 debate - with Darth (our resident expert on the F-22) leading the charge to end production.

Finally, this - on the F-22 post (out of subject) by Darth:

F-22 Design Shows More Than Expected
Aviation Week & Space Technology Feb 09 , 2009

The F-22?s newly revealed areas of overperformance include a radar cross section that officials will only characterize as ?better? than what was asked for. Pentagon officials have said privately that the desired signature from certain critical angles was -40 dBsm., the equivalent radar reflection of a steel ?marble.? By comparison, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has a signature of -30 dBsm., about the size of a golfball.

Supercruise is at Mach 1.78 rather than Mach 1.5. Acceleration—although company officials would not say from what speed or at what altitude—is 3.05 sec. faster than the requirement of 54 sec. In nonafterburning, full military power, the Raptor can operate at slightly above 50,000 ft. However, it is known that the F-22 opened its aerial battles at about 65,000 ft. during its first joint exercise in Alaska, apparently using afterburner. There is also a mysterious admission that the range of the Raptor?s Northrop Grumman/Raytheon active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar has a range 5% greater than expected. That means a cushion of an additional 5-6 mi. of detection range against enemy aircraft and missiles.

Ranges of the new lines of AESA radars are classified. But they are estimated at about 90 mi. for the smallest (aimed at the F-16 radar-upgrade market). The F/A-18E/F and F-35 (with radar ranges of 100 mi.) are followed by the F-22 (110-115-mi.). The largest is carried by the upgraded F-15Cs and Es (125 mi.). By comparison, the range for a mechanically scanned, F-15C radar is 56 mi. according to Russian air force intelligence. U.S. aerospace officials agree that an AESA radar ?at least doubles? the range over standard military radars.

When coupled with the electronic techniques generator in an aircraft, the radar can project jamming, false targets and other false information into enemy sensors. Ranges for electronic attack equal the AESA radar plus that of the enemy radar. That could allow electronic attack at ranges of 150 mi. or more. The ability to pick out small targets at a long distance also lets AESA-equipped aircraft find and attack cruise missiles, stealth aircraft and small UAVs.

Lockheed Martin also makes an economic argument for continuing Raptor production. The F-22 unit cost in a USAF multiyear purchase is $142.6 million (average unit flyaway cost). Initial unit cost of the F-35 will be around $200 million and then start dropping as production continues. In Japan, the decision to indigenously build small numbers of F-15Js and F-2s (a larger F-16 design) drove their cost to roughly $100 million each. The Eurofighter Typhoon would likely cost even more in a small production run.

?If the [U.S.] wants to do a foreign military sale or sustain those [high-tech F-22 production] jobs longer or wanted to keep its [stealth fighter] insurance policy in place longer, it would have an option? if it continued production until 2014, says Lawson. ?We?re hoping for a positive decision to keep production going and allow the [U.S.] administration the time it needs to study the problem further to make a decision about what the ultimate quantity is. If you build more, they cost less.?

The operational arguments focus on combat effectiveness against top foreign fighter aircraft such as the Russian Su-27 and MiG-29. Lockheed Martin and USAF analysts put the loss-exchange ratio at 30-1 for the F-22, 3-1 for the F-35 and 1-1 or less for the F-15, F/A-18 and F-16.

Another element of the formula is that 183 Raptors—with production ending in 2011—provide the U.S. with only 126 combat-coded (capable) aircraft, says Lawson. Of those, only about 100 would be operationally available. A fleet of 183 F-22s would require the Air Force to continue using 177 F-15s through 2025 for air superiority roles, and the end of production would kill any chance for a foreign military sale, he says.

However, if production were extended by three years to 2014, when planners hope the U.S. economy will be stronger, company analysts say the number of operational F-22s would grow to 180, says Lawson. They would be supplemented by the first 68 F-35s, and foreign military sales of the F-22 would become feasible, he adds. While Australia has definitely dropped out of the chase for F-22s, Japanese and Israeli officials say even a single squadron would provide a large boost in deterrence to other military forces.

Russian opinions of the F-22?s capabilities vary from awestruck to dismissive, according to a Jan. 26 article in Pravda (english.pravda.ru/world/americas/107010-raptor-0).

The stealthy fighter poses a ?great danger to any modern missile defense system,? says Konstantin Sivkov, vice president of the Academy for Geopolitical Sciences, with a ?wide range of opportunities to defeat [air defenses]. Enormous speed . . . maneuverability and its airborne equipment . . . make it a very powerful and dangerous aircraft.? However, the Raptor ?should not be overestimated,? says Alexander Khramchikhin, a specialist with the Institute of Military and Political Analysis. ?It is radar-detectable and it is destructible.? The Pravda article says the U.S. considers Russia and China as its ?first and foremost threats [and] that the two countries may have ?fifth-generation fighters during the upcoming 5-10 years.?

Advanced air defense systems—called SA-20 and SA-21 by NATO and S-300 and S-400 by the Russians who export them—can only be penetrated by stealthy aircraft, say U.S. experts. The Russians note that their missiles are purely defensive (although that would be a tough argument to make in the Middle East) and that the S-300 is exported to a only few countries. In addition, the S-400 cannot be found outside Russia, and it equips only two divisions within the country, they assert. However, exports of such high-threat, ?double-digit? surface-to-air missiles have been made to China, Vietnam and Syria, and are on order for Iran.

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FlyingDutchman 2/10/2009 2:54:21 PM

Okeh, let's try it the other way...

...

1) How long end to end does an F-22 take to produce?

2) How long to restart the production lines?

3) How can we preserve the F-22 tech tree and viability of future a/c production at minimal cost?

4) What is cost of low rate ongoing production to keep the lines open as per the status quo?

5) Why are we so afraid of having more airplanes than we need?

6)Let's take some of the condom stimulus and the vote-fraud stimulus and go ahead and stimulate the aerospace industry. Or if this is totally impossible, let's take some kind of steps to preserve the viability of the program. You need to believe how sorry we will be when we learn it's impossible to make any more of these birds.

1) No idea. Is that even possible to estimate?

Especially if you include the subcontractors, who all also have their own tooling etc.

2) Depends on how much of the production tooling etc is kept.

3) You can't have your cake and eat it.

Low rate production wouldn't lower the prices of the F-22's any more I'd reason. Keeping the tooling around would only relatively make the current built numbers only more expensive.

You also can't keep the tooling and jigs around without spending enormous amounts of money.

IIRC the jigs of 70% of the most important/difficult parts of the B-1B were kept around on the own initiative of Rockwell, which constituted 80%ish of the cost of all the tools and jigs. Less then 70% of the tooling constituted nearly a 100 000 seperate tools!!!

As far as I know the B-1B is an exception in keeping the tooling.

see here for more information: see page 16

5) Because with a DoD which has to cut it's budget drastically the next few years, any more buys of anything (including F-22's and Superhornets) could endanger F-35 buys and even it's existence.

If the US cuts back it's proposed numbers of F-35's even more, the plane will fast become unaffordable for the smaller NATO countries which all need a replacement for the F-16. (Denmark, Netherlands, Norway etc)

6) True.

But it'll also be a very sad day when there are no more then a few hundred F-35's around.

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warpig 2/10/2009 3:30:31 PM

You know, I see this idea get tossed around a lot on discussion boards, but here's a question I'd like help with.

Has any U.S. military aircraft production line **ever** been restored and restarted after being completely turned off... say, more than one year after the last aircraft was accepted by DoD and flown away and the line was torn down and tooling put in storage? If so, when is the last time that's happened? And I don't mean some sort of pre-production run or prototype, so I don't count building a couple B-1As and then building B-1Bs however much later, for example. I mean a no-kidding production run followed after a break by a second no-kidding production run.

Here's my guess, without doing any amount of research: No.

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Nichevo 2/10/2009 10:02:43 PM

Remember WWII? Remember how the Sovs got stomped early on in 1941, the Nazis running wild over hundreds and thousands of miles of their terrain? Remember how UNDER FIRE, the commies relocated tooling, plants, whole industries way east over the Ural Mountains, so that they could continue to produce and thus survive even if Moscow were destroyed?

But we can't shrinkwrap a lousy plane factory and mothball it in a readily transportable condition, warehoused in Arizona, Nevada, Kansas, or someplace dry, warm, remote and safe?

We can't computerize all the plans and designs and shop drawings, capture plant best procedures, and work out how to recapitulate the process on standard CNC equipment?

We can't conduct video interviews and days-in-the-life-of plant workers, capturing lessons learned, tacit knowledge, to learn what the next, e.g., 63-Bravo does to turn out his piece of the pie? So when the current guy is retired, or has been nuked, union databases can be mined to requisition 72X, 110Y, 4Z, 554PDQ, etc., skilled workers from BCD trades with T+ seniority/skill/exp index, to come and be matched up with stored or requisitioned lathe R, mill G, and a couple of EE or FF class welding robots, at surviving site L, to turn out say wings or cockpits?

Production is now so distributed - 95000 workers in no doubt as close to 50 states as possible - that it almost reminds one of the war effort in Imperial Japan.

I see no reason why such a program of production capability capture, or production reconstitution capability, should not be a part of all current and future procurement.

How much to buy all existent F-22 production capability, drench it in cosmoline or dessicants, and boneyard it? $100M? $1B?

I don't think it would be too much to have drills once a year! OK, Boeing-Renton, road trip! OK Palmdale, pack it up, we're going to take a left turn at Albequerque! And once we get there (or the eqpt. gets there and is uncrated by qualified personnel working from your Operations and Procedures Books), we're (they're) going to turn out five shiny new a/c sections, like every other team, and then reunite them at some airport hangar and bolt 'em together!

Then the CEOs of Boeing, LM, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Atomics are all going on some hopefully uneventful backseat checkrides.

How is this not standard equipment on every procurement ever, let alone going forward?

Meanwhile give the Chinese one copy of a working F-22 (OK, and the secret sauce for its engines' hot sections) and they'll reengineer and produce it at half price. I dare you! I double dare you! But somehow we can't do it!

Bless those guys at Rockwell. What genius, what vision. Who cares what it cost? And with CAD/CAM it should be easier now, not harder.

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sentinel28a 2/11/2009 3:53:46 AM

You know, I see this idea get tossed around a lot on discussion boards, but here's a question I'd like help with.

Here's my guess, without doing any amount of research: No.

The only one I can think of is the RA-5C Vigilante--36 more were produced about 5 years after the production line had been shut down, to replace losses in Vietnam. Even then, however, I think the production line had been kept open just in case.

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warpig 2/11/2009 9:26:57 AM

Sounds like a winner. I was thinking that maybe the A-6 line did that, but I think that was a case of keeping the line open by buying single digits as attrition replacements each year for many years. Like I said the thought just struck me and I'm too lazy to dig into it for myself. Hey, I know there must be someone out there who already knows the answer, so why not ask them?

And Nichevo, I agree that of course it is possible. I do think that there is an awful lot of history that seems in general (at least to me) to say it hasn't been particularly needed in the past. This tends to suggest that it won't particularly be needed in the future. Maybe this is a case where an insurance policy is worth it. Personally, I don't think so, but then I think we have enough F-22 provided we do fulfill the entire planned buy of F-35. I consider the added risk we incur over the next several to ten years as we wait for the F-35 to fully come on line in large numbers to be acceptable. I can see how others may not, and it certainly would not break my heart to see another 100 or more F-22 added to our force.

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DarthAmerica Warpig Reply... 2/11/2009 4:02:38 PM

I agree. I think that what we get from more F-22's in those numbers are as follows.

a. less wear and tear over time

b. ability to deal with multiple neer peer scenarios separated by geography with the F-22's unique capability rather than having to choose one over the other as the main effort with regard to F-22 deployment.

However, as you mentioned with regard to risk to national security, I think the need to get the ground component some relief and cutting spending on defense are higher priorities.

-DA

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rmancassman 5/20/2009 11:58:47 AM

You know, I see this idea get tossed around a lot on discussion boards, but here's a question I'd like help with.

Here's my guess, without doing any amount of research: No.

I hate to be a grave digger on posts but I thought I'd take a jab at this one. What about the C-5 Galaxy? If memory serves me correct production of the A model lasted from like 69 to 73 and the B model from 86 to 89. If that is correct that's a 13 year difference right there. However someone more in the know may want to take a stab at this one.

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warpig 5/20/2009 5:11:19 PM

That sounds like a good answer, thanks! I know the C-5B was structurally different, being able to handle much bigger loads. Still, by outward appearance at least, it appears the C-5A and C-5B share some substantial parts. It definitely seems to be a good candidate for possibly reusing old tooling. And didn't I just read something about maybe producing some new C-5s again?

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mabie 5/21/2009 4:59:43 AM

The problem is not just the tooling and other assembly facilities at LMA.. what about the hundreds if not thousands of suppliers of components. With no firm orders, they'll go on to making other things.. it will be impractical to come back years later and expect them to suply raptor components..

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Aussiegunneragain Relax Dudes 5/24/2009 7:43:34 AM

Does anybody see the irony in all the hand wringing about the US "only" having 183 F-22's on this thread? The only country that is going to be arming this "near peer" power can't even keep its own airforce in the air. It isn't going to be building something to challenge 183 F-22's any time in the next 15 to 20 years and to be frank the F-35 would probably wipe the floor with anything likely to come out of Russia or anywhere else during that time. Keeping the F-22 in production "just in case" would be nuts, the USAF would be better off directing money into long term RnD for the next generation of aircraft while the threat remains low. Other than that right now the US Government would be better served by paying down debt, because the "near peer" power's most effective weapon against the US right now is that they finance so much of its economy.

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Herald12345 Settoing aside the comedy. 5/24/2009 10:20:22 AM

-You need to keep a generation of aviation engineers busy.

-The ORCs plan on building the junk they have (numbers matter)

-The idiot in Washington has no intention of funding R&D. In fact he cuts it for "community programs".

-As for Gates, I hold him in about as much contempt as I hold McNamara and Rimsfeld.

-Our resident F-22 expert isn't. He can't even figure out a roll period, so why should I take his opinion for anything?

As for the R&D for basic science and technology? All for it. Where is it for propulsion, shipbuilding, poweerplants, materials science, basic physics, and basic chemistry? WHY is our money going OVERSEAS to do this?

Why don't we do that science at HOME? Well?

Herald

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