FURTHER F-22 PRODUCTION IS CRUCIAL TO WINNING FUTURE WARS.

FURTHER F-22 PRODUCTION IS CRUCIAL TO WINNING FUTURE WARS.
http://lexingtoninstitute.org/1294.shtml



FURTHER F-22 PRODUCTION IS CRUCIAL TO WINNING FUTURE WARS
Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.
Issue Brief
Jul 16, 2008


This summer marks the tenth anniversary of a powerful metaphor for the
decline of U.S. air power. Air Force Gen. David Deptula was piloting
his F-15C fighter (supposedly the best fighter in the world) over Iraq
in 1998 when all of the cockpit instruments suddenly went dead. He
feared he was going to die, but he managed to fly the crippled plane
back to its base, where mechanics discovered that insulation on aged
wiring had rotted away and caused a short circuit. Then Deptula
discovered he was flying the same F-15C he first flew as a junior
officer in the Pacific in 1978.



Ten years later that same plane is still flying in the Pacific, a
testament to how easily Pentagon policymakers can lose sight of what
really matters when they get distracted by big ideas and the concerns
of the moment. Rather than follow through on plans inherited from the
Clinton Administration to replace F-15s with the more agile and
survivable F-22 Raptor, the Bush Administration decided to embrace
military transformation and embark on a global war against
terrorists. To free up money for those initiatives, it repeatedly
sought to kill the F-22 before the Air Force got the 381 planes it
said it needed to sustain force rotations in a prolonged war.



Today, the Pentagon doesn't have a coherent plan for how it will
sustain global air dominance over the next 30 years without a
sufficient number of F-22s, because it has convinced itself that
unconventional warfare is the wave of the future. In other words, it
doesn't think U.S. air dominance will be challenged. Not
surprisingly, some potential adversaries like Russia see this as an
invitation to begin competing again for command of the skies. The
next administration needs to step back from all the trendy ideas of
the past eight years and focus on some basic facts about military
preparedness...



1. Air dominance -- the ability to control airspace -- is the most
important capability U.S. forces have. Without it, soldiers and
sailors on the surface are constantly in danger from hostile aircraft,
and friendly aircraft cannot safely accomplish missions like bombing
and airlift.



2. U.S. air dominance is at risk today around the world from new
surface-to-air missiles that can shoot down any plane that is not
stealthy or shielded from detection by electronic jamming. Additional
danger comes from new foreign fighters that match or surpass the F-15.



3. Even without these new threats, the current fleet of cold-war
fighters is so old that it cannot be counted on to provide air
dominance in the future. Many Air Force fighters operate on flight
restriction due to metal fatigue, corrosion and other age-related
maladies.



4. The F-22 is the only fighter the U.S. is building that was
designed mainly as an air dominance aircraft rather than as a tradeoff
of competing roles. It can conduct bombing, intelligence gathering
and information warfare, but these do not detract from the air
dominance mission.



5. Most of the money required to build 381 F-22s has already been
spent, and cannot be recovered -- including $24 billion spent by five
administrations to develop the plane. So the real question today is
whether warfighters will get a good return on that investment by
buying enough planes.