Congress and the Pentagon are locked in a tug-of-war over the future of the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. The likely outcome is the termination of the F-22 line... and the end of 56 years of "air dominance," during which not a single U.S. soldier has been killed in an enemy air attack. That is, if you believe the alarms being sounded by the Air Force Association, the air service's major lobbying group. "The demise of the F-22 explains the weakening of USAF’s grip on air dominance," an AFA editorial claims.
Legislators want the military to spend $140 million on parts for 20 more Raptors, to be completed after Barack Obama takes office in January. But the Pentagon said it would spend only $50 million, enough to start building another four Raptors, and let the new Administration decide whether it wants any more Raptors after that.
But with Bob Gates tapped to continue leading the Pentagon under Obama, the F-22's chances are pretty slim. Gates and his deputies long have favored the smaller, cheaper F-35 over the faster, stealthier F-22 -- and, more broadly, ground forces over air forces. "Any bets on the F-22 outcome?" the AFA asks rhetorically.
The impending end of the F-22 line means the Air Force "is in danger of losing its ability to guarantee air dominance," analyst Rebecca Grant writes in the AFA's monthly magazine. Why? Because the F-35 really is a ground-attack plane, not an air-to-air fighter, and the air service refuses to consider buying more, non-stealthy F-16s or F-15s to fight enemy planes.
It was a "bold decision," Grant writes, considering how well "aluminum" F-16s, F-15s and F-111s performed over Iraq in 1991.
The F-15E fighter-bomber, in particular, "was still in production, and it would have been easy indeed for the Air Force to make a case for a big new buy based on combat results."
The Air Force banked everything on the F-22, instead, hoping to buy as many as 750 of the elusive jets. But the stealth fighter's high pricetag -- up to $300 million apiece, depending on how you parse it -- made it a tempting target for cuts. The planned total steadily dropped from 750 to the current 190. With the Air Force dead set against buying anything but F-22s and, later, F-35s, "by 2024, the
USAF would be short of its requirement of 2,250 fighters by some 800 aircraft" due to old aluminum fighters being retired.
And at that point, the Air Force no longer can guarantee control of the skies, the AFA contends.
But the Pentagon, under Gates, long has insisted that the F-35 has adequate air-to-air capability.
And besides, new versions of the F-15 and F-16 are still in production for foreign customers. There's no reason the Air Force can't reverse its "F-22-or-nothing" policy. After all, the Navy did the same thing when it abandoned the new DDG-1000 stealth destroyer for older DDG-51s.
[Photo: USAF]
