$233 millions each ?!

Do you include Gold or Platinum in your RAM paint ?

 

Cheers .

Its a start, can't say that I'm surprised. Probably want to keep the line open to assess actual requirements and evaluate the tactical aircraft situation as a whole. Darth, this is NOT an I told you so but I am extremely pleased with this decision as I'm sure other posters here are as well.

Mustang, I don't know if you remember, but I said I didn't have an issue if CONGRESS provided additional funding for more planes and that I have no objection to a few more planes up to the 250 number so long as that does not affect ANY other defense program. I don't think the sky will fall if we leave it at 187 but it could if we take funding from other programs for more.

And I don't take your post as an I told you so. We treat each other far better than that even in disagreement. We've discussed this many times and the consensus was that only congress could provide more. I'm happy for the USAF. 

-DA 

FYI - RECAP

 

 

The most expensive version of Rafale comes at $72 million .

 

Cheers .

BW,

This is why people give you such a hard time here. It's common knowledge among aviation enthusiast that an F-22 is a very expensive airplane. It is far more advanced than any 4th Gen fighter and cost more in general. Having said that, why are you posting about the Rafale here? And why are you making mention of the F-22's cost? Both points are off topic and irrelevant to the discussion and will only invite other trolls and flamers here. Please, stop.

Thanks

DA 

Exactly.  I'll gladly take either gold or platinum in my RAM paint along with all the rest that $233million (or however much it actually ends up being) per aircraft for another 12 F-22 to bring the total up to 199 jets, rather than what you're getting for $72million a piece.

DA :

and it permits the Defense Department to consider building a less capable version of the F-22 for sale overseas.

good grief, more of this nonsense that the loonies in APA etc are now going to  run with.

How the ferk is LM going to run an export model when there is a criticality of core components availability for the existing  fleet?  The cost to get around this supply issue means developing a new core development - and that means heading towards a COTS solution to reduce the costs.  MOTS is the very reason why this platform is under the microscope and why any talk of an export version is a nonsense.  Redeveloping with COTS would take away some of the current embuggerances - and that would make it more attractive - but that is also a significant spiral development which would effect everything electronic and attached to its harness.

Apart from the issue that an export F-22 would no longer represent the overall capability which makes it lethal, why would anyone even contemplate going in this direction.

 

The professionals are in the driver seat and borrowing tactics from the "clown club".

 

News. 

 

A top Air Force general says President Obama's plan to end production of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet puts U.S. military strategy at "high risk."

Gen. John D.W. Corley, the four-star chief of Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va., wrote a letter to Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., about the impact of Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' decision to limit the number of F-22s in the U.S. inventory to 187.

"In my opinion, a fleet of 187 F-22s puts execution of our current national military strategy at high risk in the near to mid term," Corley wrote in the June 9 correspondence. "To my knowledge, there are no studies that demonstrate that 187 F-22s are adequate to support our national military strategy."

Corley's command organizes, trains and equips the Air Force's squadrons. His letter represents the clearest rebuke yet from within the military of the administration's decision to end production of the F-22 and could give some in Congress pause about ratifying one of the highest-profile proposals in Obama's first defense budget request. There are growing signs that some pivotal lawmakers may be leaning that way.

Gates has argued that 187 F-22s and other combat aircraft in the U.S. inventory, including the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and older models, provide the U.S. military with enough firepower to fight China and engage secondary threats.

Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff Norton A. Schwartz have supported Gates' decision. In an April 13 Washington Post op-ed, the two Air Force leaders wrote of the F-22, "The time has come to close out production."

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Wednesday, "We are confident that everybody understands how strongly we feel about ending the F-22 program at 187, as recommended by the president."

But Corley said 381 F-22s would be the ideal inventory, while about 250 would put U.S. strategy at "moderate risk."

In recent congressional testimony, Schwartz acknowledged that the official requirement for F-22s is 243, assuming the U.S. military would need to fight two major conventional wars at the same time. But that assumption is changing, he said, adding that procuring more than 187 F-22s would be unaffordable.

With Air Force leaders saluting Gates' F-22 proposal, private firms working on the program have been slow to fight back. Even Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the F-22, has shied away from advocating additional F-22s, defense industry executives have said.

Corley's views could change the equation on Capitol Hill.

"General Corley's statement is one of the first clear-cut pronouncements from a senior Air Force official regarding the risk inherent with Secretary Gates' decision to limit F-22 acquisition to 187," said Douglas A. Birkey, director of Government Relations for the Air Force Association. "This type of insight from a uniformed commander certainly has the potential to change the political dynamics surrounding the F-22. Members of Congress tend to listen to uniformed leaders when they go on record regarding national-security shortfalls."

Congressional Momentum Indeed, reports of the F-22's demise may be premature.

Early Wednesday morning, the House Armed Services Committee shifted $369 million within the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill to authorize the procurement of F-22 parts, enough money to keep the production line alive, according to Rob Bishop, R-Utah, the author of the amendment.

Meanwhile, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii, the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said at a June 4 hearing that terminating the F-22 and other programs "may send the wrong signal to our friends and our potential aggressors that we are reducing our capability. It also may have a long-term impact on our defense industrial base. It may diminish our capacity to provide deterrents and reduce our strength that we provide to our allies."

Corley's letter was a reply to a letter from Chambliss, a member of the Armed Services Committee who has been a dogged defender of the F-22 program. Although the F-22 is assembled in his state, the senator has said that any defense of the F-22 program first must be made on the basis of national security concerns, not parochial ones, and has added that the jobs his state could lose with the fighter's cancellation likely would be made up by other military programs.

Obama's decision to end production of F-22s was not a sharp departure from his predecessor. President Bush did not seek to expand the F-22 inventory, but neither did he shut down the line. Instead, Bush deferred the decision on the fate of the fighter to Obama. Under Obama's plan, the last four F-22s would be appropriated by the pending supplemental spending bill (HR 2346), which contains $600 million for those planes. The report accompanying the final measure would prohibit use of any of the funds to shut down the line.

 

Herald.

 

 

 

Another version of the story here.

 

I just love Gates' bald-faced lying about this stuff: "When he announced April 6 that he wanted to end F-22 production, Gates said, "For me, it was not a close call. ? The military advice that I got was that there is no military requirement for numbers of F-22s beyond the 187."  Even though Schwartz and others have made it completely clear that "the military requirements remains at 243 aircraft".

Either way, this is a good idea.

 

Oh and as far as the $233 million per ac canard, since they don't include a breakdown of what those costs include there is no point comparing it to any other aircraft.  The last flyaway cost numbers on the F-22 came out, I believe in the FY07 budget, was about $138 million.

Must grate on you, (you know who you are) to see the contradictions that negate your claims IN PRINT from the Air Force.

 

Backpedaling and saying that "Gates said so, so it must be so" again, now are we?

 

"One front war", Gates is so right?. In the tacit admission that the 183 crowd just made, only ONE WAR at a time will be the threat matrix for which he plans and which he calls an acceptable short term risk before the enemy force emerges in thew 2018-2020 tome frame. .

 

Contradiction alert. What happens when that threat emerges and we have neither the F-22 or the F-35 (CREF recent pressures to cut that program)? What do you do then? Build UCAVs. What UCAVs? what UCAV do we have NOW that is a fighter?  It takes at least ten years to prepare a manned aircraft and in the case if we look at Typhoon, the hapless Rafale, the well run Gripen, the Raptor, and even the Sparkie programs, well twenty years is more like it.    .

 

Scratch my head over that one. We will be okay. Gates said so.

 

Other half of the fairy tale spouted by the 183 crowd which they want to ignore..

 

When was the last we faced one threat "singular" and were this unprepared? Gates says that the short term risk is acceptable but has NOTHING in the pipeline to address the longterm risk except the two current programs, one which he wants to kill and the other which he wants to curtail, putting our entire CONSORTIUM  TREATY commitments at risk

 

Its called a multi-polar world for a reason. Oh the Russians aren't a threat, the PRC bandits aren't a threat, Iran and the DPRKs, aren't a threat, etc.......

 

SLATE 

 

They like each other far less than they like us, but they don't like us and their two stooges closely cooperate with each other.

 

That's TWO confirmed threats. One BIG one and one small one.. 

 

Coverage matters.

 

I so laugh over all of this, of course, because in plain English I just told you why the 183 crowd is full of bowel; gas and expectorates it when they assert.^1  .    

 

Herald

.

^1  An assertion is a claim not supported by any evidence. An opinion is evidence supported. (CREF above)