Rachel Maddow on the death of the F-22 zombie spending suck! Hoorah for sanity

[ProfessorPlum]

Run time: 06:13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ_nPqaw0F4   Posted on YouTube: October 29, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 29, 2009 By DU Member: ProfessorPlum Views on DU: 1052

 

[AtheistCrusader]

1. Couple thoughts.

This is largely accurate, but some misconceptions tucked in. For one, this aircraft was not 'designed' in the 80's. It's specifications were settled on in the 80's, which amounts to pretty much a christmas wish list of all the 'stuff' you want it to be able to do. I don't think they could have even manufactured the canopy in the 80's.

But it was intended for a threat that largely doesn't exist.

On the other hand, had Bush dragged us to war with Russia over the Georgia/Russia South Ossetia conflict, we would probably have needed these, since we've decommissioned all the F-14's in the fleet, and Russia does have newer generation aircraft.

Also, on the 'export' issue, we 'dumb down' newer systems that we export. Russia does it too. Remember when all the military gear heads were yucking it up about how easily we rolled over all the Russian built tanks in Iraq? Well, we've never actually had to fight a fully equipped, armed and armored Russian MBT, so we really don't know how we would fare. From a specifications standpoint, the actual tanks Russia uses, itself, are no joke.

[liberation]

2. The YF-22 first flight was in Sept 1990...

... I am sure it took them more than 9 months of design and manufacturing to reach that milestone.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. The YF prototype is a long ways off from what is rolling off the production lines today.

For instance, the YF couldn't achieve supercruise, or supersonic flight without use of afterburners.
The cockpit isn't even in the same place, isn't the same shape in the F-22 production model.

I guess my point is more, the avionics, weapons, radar, all components in the aircraft are cutting edge. This isn't like an aircraft that fell out of a time machine from the 80's, it's thouroughly modern.

[liberation]

4. You claimed it wasn't designed in the 80s, it was. At least the important airframe systems were.

PS> I worked in the control system for this guy, so...

[AtheistCrusader]

5. Not at all, I appreciate the correction/clarification

but I believe the point stands, the F-22 we have today, bears little mechanical resemblance to the prototypes of the early 90's. The design is not the same. The aircraft is significantly different, not just in a hair-splitting technical way.

[liberation]

6. Well... you know more than I do. After all, I "only" worked on it. ;-P

[AtheistCrusader]

8. I too, have worked with Lockheed

On several products.

[caraher]

7. The F-22 needed to be cut, but the snark/fact ratio is way too high here

We've bought more F-22s than we'll likely ever need so ending the program makes sense, but calling the plane itself a failure the way Rachel does is over the top. Every new plane has teething pains, and back in the '70s when the teen-series fighters were coming out critics made exactly the same kinds of points about things like the rate of failures, the ratio of maintenance to flight hours, etc. Obviously we managed to prevail over Iraq twice flying F-15s and F-16s instead of decades-older F-4s despite the "common sense" proof that the Phantom was a more effective weapon because of superior readiness.

The bit about an alleged inability to communicate with other planes is mystifying. In exercises in Alaska deployed F-22s routinely work with F-15s as the USAF works out how best to use a mixed force of a few F-22s with older-generation fighters. And the folks who fly against F-22s in exercises report that the Raptor "kills" them in drives every time - it's no contest. I also thought the "rain degrades stealth" issue was mostly a B-2 problem, though clearly it in principle could affect the radar absorption properties of any plane.

It's certainly true that it's useless for what we've been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I doubt it's got tissue-paper durability; rather, it's just plain smart not to throw a high-cost, high-value weapon into a situation where a foe can get lucky and knock a good fraction of a billion dollars worth of weaponry out of the sky when more modest weapons systems are better suited to the task at hand. That scarcely implies that the high-tech plane is a failure.

So yes, the tale of the F-22 is about wasteful practices to build political support for weapons programs, and it did need to end. But it's ridiculous to paint the single most advanced air superiority fighter in existence as a fragile, barely-airworthy failure. There's not a fighter pilot on this planet that would choose to fly the alternatives over the F-22 if the task is fighter combat. The question is how much it is appropriate to invest in supremacy in that narrow piece of the military picture, and the answer is, a lot less than it would have cost to buy the USAF as many F-22s as it wanted.

[izquierdista]

9. Not enough snark

If we cut defense spending 80%, we would STILL be spending more than any other nation on weapons programs.

[The Night Owl]

10. 30 hours of maintenence for every hour of flight seems like a lot but...

...I'm guessing that those hours are divided between the number of people working on it, which may be a high number.