[ohaideredevs]

"The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is one of the world’s premier fighter jets, thanks to its unique combination of stealth, speed, agility, and situational awareness."

A huge understatement. It's the only true 5th gen that's tailored for performance, rather than cost savings (ala the F-35). The others are completely unproven (Chinese) or both unproven and in extremely limited quantities, while not providing true stealth (PAK FA, though if anything, the SU-35 family is the closer analogue).

[consumer451]

I’m not a huge fan of obscene military spending, but the cancellation[0] of F-22 production must be one of the most boneheaded decisions I’ve seen in US military procurement. I must add the caveat that I have no security clearance so there may be other factors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor

> Service officials had originally planned to buy a total of 750 ATFs. In 2009, the program was cut to 187 operational production aircraft...

[SkyMarshal]

I always wondered why they couldn’t have just used the F-22 for both the air superiority role it was originally designed for and the multi-purpose role the F-35 was made for. The F-22 is more capable in every way, and more survivable with dual engines. They would have needed to figure out vertical take-off/landing version of the F-22 but I’m sure that was not impossible.

It may have looked more expensive on paper with ideal assumptions to produce lots of expensive F-22s instead of a few F-22’s and lots of cheaper JSFs. But in practice I bet the costs would have equalized, due to the increased volume of F-22s and the development of extensive institutional knowledge of that airframe - from manufacturing to maintenance to piloting/operating.

[jki275]

The F22 was designed in the 80s. It's old. It's fast, certainly the best in some aerodynamic ways, but nothing like the capability the JSF brings in computing technology.

In addition, the threats anticipated that led to its development never materialized.

That's why it was cancelled.

[ohaideredevs]

>but nothing like the capability the JSF brings in computing technology.

What computing technology can't be put into the F-22? Iirc it has a much bigger radar housing, and EO DAS (fancy term for 360 IR / situational awareness) can be added to it.

To answer the parent term - the F-22 was used for air-to-ground in the middle east, so it can definitely fill that role. There was also an attack plane/bomber variant proposed.

With that said, I don't think "its old" holds.

[jki275]

JSF has sensors built into its skin. You don’t just retrofit sensors onto an LO platform.

Retrofitting new computing technology into an aircraft is a huge deal. Just getting a data link into it so it can talk to the rest of the DOD has taken over a decade and I’m not sure it’s even complete yet.

Yes, it’s old. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful, the F15 is far older and still in use and will be for decades, but it was more cost effective to put the money into the new platform instead.

[ohaideredevs]

I don't mean to get into the weeds here, but what part of EODAS can't be added by literally putting a thermal camera (from the F-35 program) in several places on the F-22 and running wiring to it?

I completely understand that it interfaces with the helmet. I also know that it took ages for the F-22 to get a simple FLIR built in, but if even a fraction of the F-35 resources were directed at the F-22, this would all be more than doable quickly.

As far as I am concerned, the selling pitch of the F-35 is the STOVL and EODAS. At that point the F-22 could be fitted for carrier operations, because no one uses VTOL (or plans to) on the F-35 anyway except for moving it around parking lots with no ordinance.

Again, this is ignoring all the political info.

Also, to get more specific, I don't know of any "sensors built into its skin" - EODAS is just a bunch of little pods with thermal cameras and fancy computing. Obviously don't tell me if it's something that's not public knowledge.

[ohaideredevs]

Oh, the other argument for the JSF is that it could be exported to allies, whereas the F-22 is US-only.

[burfog]

Obama really really wanted to kill the F-22.

I note that the F-22 was primarily produced in Georgia. That usually isn't a swing state and it doesn't have a lot of representatives in the US House of Representatives.

The F-35 is produced in nearly every state, certainly including all the swing states. This is terribly inefficient, but probably kept the F-35 from being cancelled.

[jedberg]

Keep in mind the military has a history of claiming they stopped production and then producing them in secret or producing a slightly modified version as a way of making our enemies think we have fewer weapons than we actually have.

[detritus]

Ooh, do you have any articles on this? Sounds interesting!

[ohaideredevs]

Stealth Blackhawks (pretty much confirmed by the Bin Laden raid) are definitely an example of the cancelled Comanche program tech going into black projects.

[cc81]

I assume they realized they don't need that many air superiority fighters and that they are costly to maintain. What would you even do with 750 planes that have very limited use in bombing Taliban fighters in caves?

[PedroBatista]

"Cost savings" and "F-35" in the same sentence made my brain crash.

[dmix]

Nothing saves money like designing your airplane by saying yes to every persons idea in the conference room!

[WrtCdEvrydy]

Insert Pentagon Wars Scene Here

[dmix]

Based on a true story too: https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Wars-Reformers-Challenge-Gua...

[checktheorder]

>cost savings (ala the F-35)

What.

[jandrese]

It was supposed to be the next generation F-16. The lightweight single engine jack of all trades fighter that could be exported to other countries to help defray development costs.

There was even a notion that you could use the same plane across all branches of the military so the same supply chain could be used for all three and you could build them in higher quantities to spread the development costs over more aircraft. But then of course the aircraft got saddled with requirements from three different branches of the military at once which made it extremely difficult to design and build and thus very very expensive.

[checktheorder]

>But then of course the aircraft got saddled with requirements from three different branches of the military at once which made it extremely difficult to design and build and thus very very expensive.

Sounds rather like the Space Transportation System. During design, it went from a compact inexpensive passenger shuttle with modest payload capability, to a complete pig of a ship. And all because the Air Force contributed cash on the condition that it be capable of classified high-payload-pass missions to polar orbits.

It is nothing short of a tragedy that fully-reusable compact shuttles with flyback boosters (like the Rockwell P333) lost out to the disposable-booster design that was eventually built.

[jandrese]

An extremely important part of project management is the ability to say "no", even if the customer is bringing extra money to the table. Extra requirements have a way of increasing costs in an exponential way and it's very easy to lose sight of your original goal.

Of course this is a problem when you have Congress breathing down your neck and looking for any excuse to cut your program. One big advantage of skunk works projects is that they keep you firewalled off from idea men.

[ohaideredevs]

Hue hue, but it WAS the theory. The F-35 was planned as:

A. The "light" F/A part of the heavy/light fighter model.

B. Meant to save costs by having one aircraft with shared parts (across the three models) fill virtually all roles.

[dharmab]

Yup, that was the original goal of the F-35. The idea was that by sharing parts across multiple variants and across multiple militaries, the F-35 would be a cheaper fighter than the F-22 that could scale to a larger fleet.

It's not totally crazy on the face of it- The expensive but undefeated F-15 and the relatively cheaper F-16 successfully pulled it off in the 20th century.