It's kind of like when we were doing any and every thing to stop the IED related casualties and they flooded us with every kind of armored contraption imaginable. In some cases the extra protection worked great! When it worked. There were some issues re: M1117 and M1151 for instance that just simply killed readiness! A lot of that had to do with the newness of the equipment and not having experienced maintainers so I can definitely feel the Raptors pain there. Some of it was logistics related. Yet those issues that were inherent to the design posed very significant challenges to operations and to this day I am amazed that we were able to make it work! 

But it is definitely not a situation I'd want to be in against a modern opponent capable of sustained 24/7 operations. Against a modern Army that would have had serious consequences as I'm sure you know AE since you have also seen the motorpools. And that is one of the problems I have with the F-22. When it flies, it will do great! But when it's broken, there will be operational problems. And it's not just that or about numbers. No matter how many we buy, these things are hideously expensive. That will place real limits on the support assets we need for other roles. Buying 300 Raptors but then having a bottleneck imposed on how many can deploy due to Tankers poor readiness because enough emphasis wasn't placed on getting the tanker fleet recapitalized is just as bad as not enough F-22's!

So the DoD must balance. Not only that, but no career path or one mission should ever be sacrosanct. The DoD must be a living flexible organization appropriately tailored for the missions it will conduct. We are looking at 5 to 10 years more of OEF. The worlds has no less than 5 powder kegs brewing right now that could quickly draw the USA into more conflict and none of them are particularly challenging from the air to air point of view.

-DA 

If I read your response properly, you were once a navy flyer.   Out of curiosity, what was the maintenance overhead for the F14 like?  Thanks!

 

Mea culpa on a number of different levels.  I actually pulled the Yeager book from my storage this weekend and after having reviewed it was unable to locate the position articulated.  I was shooting from the hip and now must suffer the ricochet effects.  Still, at 40 and an avid reader of AWST then, I'm old enough to recall what leading pilots had to say back in 80's regarding F-15 reliability and they were not confident the aircraft and its systems would hold up during combat.  Note for interest that my chosen flying platform, A-6, was continually suffering material failures up until the day it was retired.  The point is that F-22 is a world-beater when properly maintained and flown, but it is experiencing significant maintenance issues and the costs appear greater than acknowledged going in.  I concur with your conclusion that 300 F-22 is a luxury we cannot afford.

v^2

Thanks for the heads up, I'm a relative newbie around here so I'm not familiar with everyone's CV.  Bummer to hear about your eye but thumbs on your language skills, always useful for reading foreign military publications.

 

I used to enjoy playing the old Harpoon naval simulation that wasn't very realistic as all one had to do was to keep regenerating F14 sorties to keep the Badgers and Blinders at bay before sinking all the red boats.  But as the saying goes, amateurs study tactics and professionals study logistics.  Obviously, any discussion of F22 numbers has to take into consideration sortie rates and other logistics such as basing, tankers, EW support, and other supporting cast members.    It is certainly thought provoking, lots of scenarios to think about.

 

Nope but almost.  As posted in an introductory thread here, I studied Russian language for four years under Sergei Shishkoff, Kruschev's former translator, despite my technical discipline (EE/CS) not requiring such, to improve my fleet assignment but ultimately garnered an initial refusal after I couldn't pass my eye exam.  I was told to come back in six months but by then my vision only had deteriorated.  Now one eye is legally blind (20/600); good catch Navy.  Since there was a glut of aviation wannabees then, I simply repayed my stipend after pressure to consider submariner OCS tru quartermaster OCS and have never served.  I hale from West Michigan and my nextdoor neighbor, Mary R., was among the first class of women to be admitted to USMA and the track captain before I served as captain, Tim Z., went to USNA and served as officer in charge of Widbey.  I was a prima donna of sorts, you see, what with having always gotten what I had wanted until my eyes failed me.  Do I regret my attitude when I was younger.  Yeah.  Fortunately I've built very useful capabilities for those who did serve.

v^2

 

FYI, I think I pulled F-20 v. F-16 from the Boyd book not the Yeager.  Either way it was the lightweight, lowcost fighter to fill out the fighter force when it was realized the F-15 was too expensive.  Kind of like the F-22 and F-35.  I wish I could pull up debates about those two and see how much has changed, likely little.