One factor the Rand study highlights is that war is a dynamic process where quite often some or even most of one's assumptions turn out to be wrong and often fatally wrong.

 

The assumption that 183 F-22s, meaning around 140 combat coded, provides enough redundant capability, given unknown attrition, aircraft usage rates, enemy direct, enemy indirect, and other myriad other factors is not supportable.  When one does not have enough of something to maintain a useful reserve then in military terms one simply does not have enough.

 

It's not prudent to bet the future of 300 million free people on the ability of 183 F-22 to not suffer undue attrition, not be overused reducing life cycle (as if the military has enough of every other capability), not be afflicted by any serious fatigue or design problem lowering life cycle, not to fight an enemy that might seek to target them on the ground via various conventional and non conventional means, and not to fight an a dynamic enemy with any capabilities air to air that might lessen our dominance.  Not to mention a hundred other possible factors.

 

Somehow the nation requires thousands of F-35s and only 183 F-22s because Gates does not feel that mid term there is a high probability of the US having to fight a near peer competitor?

 

New flash WWII began with a surprise attack.  Korea was a total surprise. Vietnam was not the war the US was preparing for the decade prior.  The fighting in the 1973 Arab Israeli war came as huge shock to the world in terms of capabilities and led to everyone seriously upgrading military doctrine, planning, and TO&E.  The US was not prepared to rescue it's citizens in the 1970s and failed when it attempted to do so.  The US was not prepared to deploy troops to Lebanon in the early 1980s and got hundreds killed.  The US was not prepared to invade the small nation of Grenada and doing so exposed myriad problems.  The US was not prepared for a couple UH-60s getting shot down by a native force it the 1993.  The attack on the US in 2001 was another surprise attack.  The US was not prepared for the aftermath of invading Iraq.

 

It's a tad beyond obvious that you don't always get to pick your enemy and he gets a large say in it's outcome and the interaction of both parties is not exactly predictable.  War is a dynamic process.  The US has a bad history of preparing to re-fight the last war and not being prepared for the next.  History constantly repeats itself.

 

Your assertion is no good any more.

 

Herald

This addresses the fanboy accusations about the F-35 and I already covered THAT. Your cotation is NOT on POINT about the numeric odds and the base bvulnerability which the report doid address and your interpretation of the p[ress release om THAT  is incompetent. This is what I mean by your words, tour assertions and your intepretations (fantasies)  as no good poster. You don't even understand what I discussed or how I discussed it; so how the hell can you comment intelligently??

Answer that basing vulnerability and odds question which we hgave insuffiicient air dominance assets to cover or be silent.

 

Herald

OK, again, If you want to behave like a complete A-hole that's on you. A bit of advice would be to use a spell checker because of course if you intend to be vitriolic prick, then you should at least deal with this most simple to catch flaw. Moreover, this report has been discredited over and over so many times I'm frankly amazed you would use it. That report does nothing to show how many of what assets the DoD could bring to bear. Where is the USN and RoCAF in all of this? Why are there only 6! YES 6, F-22's providing air cover for ALL OF TAIWAN? Does that not strike you as a little odd? It should. How exactly are the Chinese coordinating x number of Flanker Regiments? What are the conditions that gave rise to the conflict in the first place? You do realize that all of the claims about Russian Missile, Radar and aircraft performance in this are all taken from Russian Manufacturer materials. Why was this report written by the Rand East Coast office rather than the West Coast Office where the subject matter experts with proper access work? If you are going to publish an objective report, why invite the controversy associated with the APA? Herald, this thread and the source document you provided fall woefully short as any kind of justification for more F-22s. About the only thing of value here is that the PACRIM is huge, basing near the RoC battlespace is limited and because of those limits getting appropriate numbers of any platform and supporting tanking aircraft would be a challenge. In short, being based 10 times closer to the battlespace is a PRC advantage. NO SHIT SHIRLOCK. Thanks for informing us all.

-DA 

 

Firstly, having read your citation below I don't anything that you presented that supports your statement below that Rand issues any "apology" or "redaction" much less admitted admitted some of it contributors "were less than objective and not credible".  Moreover, I regard the notion that Rand would make this statement when it's credibility is it's main currency as ludicrous at best.  If you have any evidence whatsoever supporting your assertion that Rand stated any contributors to it's report were either "less than objective" or "not credible" than I would lover to see that otherwise one is left thinking the only one not credible in their statements would be yourself.

 

That aside you've already stated your opinion that the remaining few F-15Cs can fill the shortfall in air superiority fighters if there are not enough F-22s.  Everyone in this discussion hopefully already understands that the US is not dependent upon purpose built air superiority fighter planes to establish air dominance over a future battlefield.

 

However, one can not diminish the importance of the premiere platform in the fight for air superiority either.  It is simply not credible to just point to other systems and state the short fall can be made up.  It's also not credible to say the F-35 is any substitute for the F-22 in the air superiority role.

 

There are myriad ways to kill a tank but there are few substitutes for MBT in modern combat.  There are many ways to kill a submarine but damn few platforms superior to a submarine in many mission areas.  One could list dozens of ways to call accurate fire down upon a target over a hill and yet if the weapon had to be organic and man portable over a tough terrain than you're pretty much limited to a mortar.

 

Finally the mistake you seem to make is to discount the fact that air superiority is the pre requisite that allows the rest of the US military to function.  Air superiority is not a mission like any other but the premiere mission of most importance to the USA (you want to argue it's nuclear strike or deterrence fine then limit this to conventional warfighting).  If there was one area you want a robust, redundant, and world class force it's your air superiority fighter force.

 

Numbers matter.  183 means around 140 combat coded.  So some years go by and we've lost 25 and have 120 combat coded.  How many do we have to lose in a conflict before there's just not enough to get the job done and we have to rely on far less capable fighters?  How can any reasonable threat analysis not include a reserve and a healthy reserve in this super critical mission area?

 

This is not analagous to saying don't worry that much over TOW since we've got Javelin, tank guns, 30mm, Maverick, JDAM, Hellfire, LGB, etc but rather saying don't worry if we don't have enough MBTs as we have plenty of TOW, Javelin, Bradley's, etc.  There are simply many circumstances when an MBT, or purpose built air superiority fighter, has no subsitute.

 

The F-22 is the best fighter in the world for a variety of reasons and would still be so even if an enemy made a breakthrough in specific areas like stealth or flight performance.  It's the best insurance we have.  It's sustained speed and altitude alone mean, all things being equal, it can always have a longer engagement range.  The F-35 is a purpose built strike aircraft that relies heavily on stealth.  

 

In any case the F-35 is barely into it's test program.  Nobody can say what the results of that will indicate nor how much one is finally going to cost.  Saying we must buy thousands of question marks instead of a known world beating without peer competitor air dominance fighter because they are too expensive compared to a question mark is at best irrational and rather dangerous.

 

OSD aside the Congress of the United States seems to support the above stated view.  Mysteriously enough so does the leadership of the USAF when you catch them away from OSD.

 

Finally it's worth nothing the US Army peaked in the Cold War with 20 divisions and now has 10.  The USN had 15 carriers and around 100 SSNs and now has 10 and around 50.  We had around 700 F-15A/B/C/s and 500 or so F-14 air superiority fighters.  Somehow the nation used to have 700 or so air superiority fighters in the USAF and now it can manage with 183?  1960 designed F-15's somehow still flying in 20 years do not impress me as proper fighters to deal with best our foes might have then.  Leaving aside the oft ignored reality that the USN no longer has an air superiority fighter on it's carrier decks- the F/A-18E/F being a great strike fighter but still no modern F-15 much less F-22.  Those few USAF Raptors are more important than commonly appreciated.

 

The mistake most F-22 proponents make is that that future of America rest on any single platform. That Rand study is flawed on several levels and in fact Rand itself IIRC issued an apology or redaction and cited that some of the contributors were less than objective and not credible.

-DA 

It has been said many times that 183 Raptors is whittled down to 126 combat coded planes. Even if the mission capable rate was 70% that works out to be 88 planes available at any one time. No study has ever been documented or released that this is sufficient and anyone who thinks so is not being realistic.

Mustang,

If the F-22 MC rate is 70%, then the issue is not about numbers of Raptors, it's about why the manufacturer isn't able to meet its mission capability rate requirements. Saying I can only be available 70% of the time is no different from sayin 30% of the time, I cannot accomplish my missions. In short the F-22 is combat ineffective before the shooting starts. That isn't a good argument for buying more IMHO.

-DA 

 

The RAND report was completely misrepresented by not only its promoters (APA) but by the fact that they didn't understand that it was based on Falconview and not on Brawler.  When morons start quoting pointy combat effectiveness based on a complete misunderstanding and comprehension of the systems used - then what can you say.  All of them, Kopp, Goon, Chris Miles, Jensen, Palmer all carried on like pubescent trolls about the revelation of RAND - and yet not one of them were able to comprehend that the basis of their excited claims were based on junk military science.  RAND had nothing to do with pointy platform effectiveness.

Apart from the fact that it as unsolicited and was never an official RAND entry.  For supposed and self proclaimed experts, the fact that they couldn't determine that a Falconview vignette was irrelevant - and that it was not a Brawler vignette was telling.

These clowns are still trotting it out as proof of life of their own biases,  and yet it's been demonstrated time and time again that they're technology and systems luddites.

 

Darth,

 

The F-15 in late 70's also had a mission capable rate of between 60-70%, it goes without saying any platform in its infancy stages will not have the desired readiness rate. I'm surprised you would post such a response knowing that other aircraft have had similar concerns throughout their lifecycles. Are you suggesting that the F-35 will have an acceptable readiness rate far exceeding that of the F-22? Below are 2 more examples of  extremely capable of aircraft with less than desired readiness rates.

Mustang,

I think you misunderstood what I said, again, IF THE F-22 HAS A MC RATE OF 70%, then the issue isn't total numbers at all but rather maintenance and the manufacturer meeting requirements. If as you suggest the F-22 MC rate is going to improve over time as is reasonable, then it kind of brings into question why you are using that as a basis for needing more since by the 2016-2020 timeframe of this analysis, historical data from other programs shows that F-22 availability should be considerably better and thus negating the assertion that our of 126 combat coded aircraft only ~88 would be MC. Can't have it both ways...;)

-DA 

I have no use for you since I frankly regard you as little better than that French poster who trolls the boards, and for exactly the same enumerated reasons.

 

You can't argue on the technical merits because you don't have the math or physics, you prevaricate^1 by assertion, and flat out fantasy, way too much; and you don't even understand what is being discussed or why I discuss it half the time.

 

The Rand study covered base vulnerability and fighter COVERAGE. It says so in the damned title. What is so hard for your "brain" to grasp about that concept?

 

It uses Kadena as the example, but it could just as easily be Andersen, you Ruben!

 

All day long......nothing but (fill un the blanks).

 

Answer the !@#$%^*&*)() questions posed or be silent as you have nothing worth saying otherwise..

Herald 

 

Nice cheap shot by the way. I suppose you don't mind if I continue to prove what you are as oppose to what you claim^1?

 

^1 assertion=lie.

   

 

 

Herald,

The premise of your thread has been completely negated. You posted a flawed analysis in support of your case. The POTUS, OSD, USAF CoS, USAF Sec and most other Def Professionals that matter agree that 180 something will do, so go on ahead and get indignant and yet again fill another thread with a flurry of personal nonsense. All it shows is that 

a. you didn't do your homework

b. you are incapable of being objective

c. you are incapable of admitting error

d. you do not have the professionalism, composure or common sense to debate this as may others here do

I'll leave you to stew on that. See ya sucker.

-DA