F-22 RIP
In the end to vote to finish the sorry life of the F-22 wasn't even close--58-40. President Obama's threat of a veto was taken seriously and the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) lost their first battle in what will be a long war.
At $361 Million per plane, the existing 187 F-22's have cost the country $67 Billion to build plus the fact that the Office of the Secretary of Defense says the plane requires 34 hours of maintenance per single hour of flight. Here's the kicker. The F-22 has never been used in actual combat!
When are the American people going to wake up to the fact that they are being stolen blind by the MIC and that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist", just as President Eisenhower warned? What Ike said in 1953 is even more important today as California and other states close schools and clinics and layoff teachers and nurses.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
56 years later, have we learned anything?
"56 years later, have we learned anything?"
Considering Obama's increase of the already disgustingly bloated Bush defense budget, I'd say no.
This peanuts 2 billion savings is good P.R. though. It makes his half trillion dollar annual defense budget seem frugal.
July 22, 2009 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just one nitpick: person-hours of maintenance per hour of flight isn't really a great indicator of anything. Sure, you'd like to get that number down, but any finicky high-end object is going to require that. More important are the reports that even after all those hours of maintenance a significant fraction of the things just don't work.
July 22, 2009 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I disagree. In combat you want equipment that requires a minimum of maintenance. That 34 hours on the ground for every flight hour means that whenever an F-22 is flying there are 34 people standing around not able to fight, and one fighting. Those people have to be fed, housed, and combat resources have to be diverted to protect them. Plus if it ever went into combat it would require AWACs support and other control systems that would have to be diverted from more productive use. The cost of those diversions is much harder to account for and show that they are needed specifically to fly the F-22, but they are there.
That drawback becomes an even higher cost in a counterinsurgency environment when those ground personnel become lucrative and difficult to defend targets for what these days are called terrorists.
If there were some net benefit in sharply increased combat efficiency from that very expensive and difficult to operate aircraft, there is a possibility that it would be worth the cost. But the damned thing adds nothing to the combat offensive power that cannot be obtained from any number of other much less expensive and less vulnerable weapon systems. It's a rube Goldberg tinkertoy that displaces at least a platoon of well trained Rangers or Marines with vehicle and helicopter support.
As President Obama pointed out - the budget is a zero sum game. There is a ceiling set on spending, and everything that is spent after that is taken from other expenditures. Money is a useful measuring tool, but it's not the real cost of that aircraft. The alternative expenditures that were sacrificed to get it are the real cost.
Have you wondered why the Pentagon has fought two wars for the last six or so years while it had this system in its back pocket and never used it? It's an impractical waste of resources the Pentagon keeps around only to satisfy a few Air Force pilots and a few Congress-persons on budget committees, and the Congress-persons force it on the Pentagon to collect their military-industrial lobbyist funding for their personal reelection. As a retired service member and a taxpayer I consider that a criminal waste of defense resources and taxpayer money.
34 hours on the ground for one in the air is a very high ratio. It makes what should be a combat system useless.
July 22, 2009 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. 30 hours of maintainance for an hour in the air sounds more like a very expensive science project than a useful weapon.
July 22, 2009 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your conclusions don't actually match reality ... on several levels. You are assuming that 34 individuals are required to service each aircraft, which is silly. It is also silly to think that an aircraft mechanic would be available to "fight" when not working on an aircraft. You also assume that these individuals wouldn't be otherwise occupied when the craft was in flight (or fully maintained ready for flight) which is equally silly.
Also, you don't have to literally ground the thing every hour for 34 hours of maintenance. Without seeing the actual checklists, it's sort of a meaningless number. It is likely due to the fact that F22s are currently only being flown for limited testing and training but still require specific maintenance tasks be conducted on a cycle. In other words, if the plane isn't flown and the checklist calls for X tasks to be performed every 30 days, and Y inspections to also occur weekly to maintain flight readiness; it takes Z hours total maintenance per cycle regardless of the number of hours in the air. There is also a strong likelihood that additional checklist items exist for engineering information gathering purposes that would not apply when the craft is deployed in combat. It is impossible to legitimately draw the conclusion you do from the information provided.
You also assume that the craft would be used in a battle situation that did not otherwise employ recon (AWACS) support. Do really think we'd deploy *any* aircraft without using our tactical recon capabilities? And the observation about the need for ground support deployed in the theater of combat that become targets is simply inaccurate (unless the aircraft are deployed from occupied territory - which their range makes unnecessary).
The reason it has not been deployed in the current theater is simple; that's not the threat is was designed to counter. If you wait until a potential threat becomes actionable to begin to design and build weapons systems - you get your ass kicked.
It is a fallacy to believe that counterinsurgency in occupied territory is representative of all future combat scenarios. Ideally, if Obama follows through with his promises, this will cease to be the case. So you really need to look at the weapons systems in light of their real purpose: facing the air power of China and Russia - and not in light of what *should* be an anomaly in the use of American military power.
All this said, the decision to halt production was the correct one. The R&D is complete and there is a flight-ready capacity to deploy the aircraft immediately if needed. The production knowledge and tooling is in place to make more if the security needs of America call for this weapons system to become actively engaged. The F22 program should shift to gathering data based on real-time usage and engineering analysis that can either be applied to improved versions in future production (like was done with the F16) or used in the design of more advanced systems.
July 22, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I oversimplified for those not familiar with the language. But if the plane flies 8 to 12 hours a day, there are 34 other people on average providing maintenance for 8 to 12 hours per day. If one guy had enough skills, he or she could get the plane back up 34 days later. Operationally, though, an average of 34 people on the ground are needed to keep the plane in the air each hour.
one thing you can be assured of. Those technicians are useless in a combat environment even for much self-defense. They have to be defended or otherwise protected.
No doubt in an urgent situation a lot of the maintenance can be skimped on. It adds up, and after a while the aircraft will have to be removed from service and sent back for overhaul. Any piece of equipment that the engineers have documented needs 34 hour of maintenance for every one hour of operation is going to have a short cycle time if checklists are skimped. You can shift the time and place of the maintenance, but you don't get something for nothing.
One more point. That 34 to 1 ratio is not something established by a design engineer and unchanged forever after, quickly becoming a fiction. Aircraft have complete logs religiously maintained, and the repair to operation ratio is constantly updated. Early it the life cycle of the model you expect the repair time to drop. As the equipment ages, it goes back up.
As for concern that some other (currently unknown and unanticipated) threat will develop and field aviation assets that threaten our technical superiority and spring it on us is extremely unlikely. Even if it did happen, we currently have 187 F-22's in operational status. We don't need six more any time soon, particularly at the ridiculously high cost for each aircraft. If such a threat were to materialize, it would grow slowly enough for us to build up to meet it easily, and with later and better technology. Being locked into a fielded technology would actually restrict out ability to adapt to such and (unlikely) threat.
The only reason for building those additional aircraft is to protect jobs and Lockheed's profits, and Lockheed itself is not overwhelmingly excited about keeping that aircraft in production. By now the only remaining need for more F-22's is protection for a few political careers. The funds to protect the status quo are being robbed from current military requirements. It's not like the Pentagon is going to give the funds back to the treasury. They have real and immediate needs to fill instead of a fictional imaginary possible enemy in the far and unknown future.
Seems a little funny to me. In this case it is the despised and allegedly rigid bureaucracy of the Pentagon that is acting flexibly and changing quickly to meet current needs, while it is the allegedly flexible and nimble private enterprise that is unwilling to change as the demands of the actual market change.
July 23, 2009 9:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is another way of looking at that 34:1 ratio. Assuming that a typical flight profile for an F-22 Rapture squadron consumes about two to three hours, that same squadron would not be prepared to conduct another sortie for three to five days. That means the typical Rapture squadron is capable of flying ONE SORTIE per week. Sortie rates like that are what totally scuttled the French Air Force in the spring 1940 campaign against the Luftwaffe, when the Germans were flying four or five sorties per day while the French were lucky to be able to fly one. To maintain parity, we'd need to buy five or six times the number of aircraft being considered possible, which would totally bankrupt the nation. The USAF has finally reached nirvana, they own the total military budget.
July 23, 2009 1:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Barney Frank on Madow's show last night made the astute point that Republicans believe that the government can create jobs when it spends money on military programs, but somehow is incapable of doing when it comes to domestic programs. The military has always been a stimulus package for Repubs and Dems alike. Maybe we can eventually get to people agreeing that if its okay to 67 billion on jet, it would be better to spend that amount on upgrading our infrastructure, etc.
July 22, 2009 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am reminded of the scene in The Aviator when Howard Hughes is defending himself for all the planes and products that the wartime government bought from Hughes that were never used. But at some point, someone has to pull the plug on bad projects.
July 22, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't the term "military industrial complex" used by the conspiracy kooks? You know, the ones that brought us black helicopters?
Also, the 34 maintenance hours statistic that you cite is completely unhelpful to your readers in the absence of the corresponding statistic for other warplanes with similar capabilities. Presumably you have this statistic for other planes; so why not share it with us?
July 22, 2009 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
The term was used quite perceptibly by President, and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower in 1961. He wasn't a kook.
July 22, 2009 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the YouTube version of the "military industrial complex" part of the speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
Eisenhower saw the armaments industry as necessary, but clearly feared its undue influence:
"The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
"We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Get that? Only alert, knowlgedeable citizens can prevent the abuse of power. Don't count on politicians to do so.
The original draft of the 1961 speech read "military-industrial-congressional complex."
But even Ike hesitated to call out the real villains.
July 22, 2009 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
This was a breakthrough. Even McCain got mavericky for the vote.
I'm sure we will end up holding Obama and Congress' feet to the fire before the Pentagon budget sees any serious reduction. It will be even more difficult as long as we are still mired in two combat operations.
Meanwhile health care reform can help small business startups - which would help move the economy away from it's defense base and into more productive use of labor, minds that are innovative and capital.
What we learned after 56 years is that we should have paid attention not only to Ike, but the fact that DC and the complex just kept going down that road..
"Humanity hanging from a cross of iron"
Why didn't that become a classic?
July 22, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
A quick search reveals figures ranging from 20-80 maintenance hours per flight hour for other military aircraft, with numbers trending down over the decades. (There's also the distinction between direct maintenance hours, which are in the 3-10 range, and total hours, which are much higher because you have to do periodic inspections and replacements of lots of parts...)
July 22, 2009 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Google Smedley Butler's "war is a racket."
July 22, 2009 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the full text:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf
July 22, 2009 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
This also from Ike's speech:
Emphasis is mine. Maybe we've learned what a prophet Ike was. Find the whole speech at http://www.eisenhower.utexas.edu/All_About_Ike/Speeches/Farewell_Address.pdf
July 22, 2009 11:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The F-22 is undead. Hopefully, the House will make the Raptor extinct. In any case, Senate action marks the end of several eras:
President Obama has well and truly taken up the mantle of Lincoln. He is a republican in the tradition of Jefferson, as well:
(1) He relieved a general because it pleased him to get another one, the perogative of a real commander-in-chief, who does not have to prop up a handful of Neo-Confederates.
(2) He openly opposed a military-civilian claque against his "Secretary of War", who will, I hope, proceed now to relieve a brace of disgruntled senior officers and support the President's, not the Confederates' economic stimulus package.
(3) He openly supported a risky project, the F-35, that might keep the US competitive in rapid development of ordnance actually supporting our distinctive American doctrine of warfare. That would be the protection of commerce and national security by limited military means but projection of universal values by other and more economical means, not perpetuation of the British Empire at akk costs.
The F-35 Lightning is a hybrid, multi-role aircraft, much more radical technically, than the F-22 -- a kludge of three mutually incompatible technologies. The F-35 is a plane in the daring tradition of those amazing Constellation-class frigates.
(4) Finally, President Obama has, finally, ended the "strategic bombing" cult: It began in the 1920's and ended as a scheme to escort B-1 bombers with F-22 "twin-engine, long-range, all-weather" escort fighters on a pre-emptive nuclear war mission.
So, the USAF now has a doctrinal challenge: Come up with a modern American mission within our durable constitutional framework or give way to army and naval aviation.
Here's a hint: Study Lind, Boyd, Sprey, and Dilger, not Douhet and Mahan.
July 23, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
JRBehrman, we both know that the USAF can't give up the strategic bombing role because it instinctively knows it has no other raison d'etre for an independent existence. The development of nuclear weapons and the intercontinental bomber are what enabled the USAF to push for independence from the US Army at the end of WW2. Take that away, and one finds that USAF should just be eliminated. Corporate survival is at stake here.
Frankly, the US Navy has actually given the USAF an opening here because of the Navy's creation of carrier air groups operating independently of the command structure aboard the carrier strike groups. That was an innovative command structure and it certainly enabled the US to field many more naval aviation squadrons than Imperial Japanese Navy, whose carrier squadrons were part of an individual carrier's complement. It also means that the aviation portion of the deployment could easily be provided by an independent flight oriented service, namely the USAF, rather than the US Navy itself. Since the aircraft platforms being deployed are common across the various service, why aren't the crews flying them as well.
Finally, I believe that armed uncrewed aerial vehicles will replace them all anyway. Any platform which can turn at 3X the rate of a crewed aircraft will always be able to out-maneuver the crewed aircraft, assuring air dominance. The flyboys don't want to hear it, but that the final assessment.
July 23, 2009 8:21 PM | Reply | Permalink