It made sense to kill the Crusader self-propelled howitzer
program, a bulky cold war left-over developing so slowly it
wouldn’t be available before the Starship Enterprise. We also
didn’t need the Comanche stealth helicopter when our problem is
losing choppers to low-tech ground fire. But the stealth F/A-22
Raptor fighter, with apologies to those who consider every new
military project a boondoggle, we need this jet. And far more of it
than Congress plans to buy.
Even critics admit the Raptor is an incredible fighting machine.
Slated to enter Air Force service next year, it blends key
technologies that before only existed separately on other aircraft
— or not at all.
It has radar-avoiding stealth, of the F-117A Nighthawk, the
agility of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, air-to-air combat abilities
and penetrability of the F-15 Eagle, tracking abilities of the E-3
Sentry (AWACS), and, like the SR-71 Blackbird, it can fly faster
than the speed of sound without using fuel-guzzling
afterburners.
The F/A-22 also has better reliability and maintainability than
any military fighter in history and can wipe out ground targets
like radar, anti-aircraft sites, and armor formations as readily as
it can sweep the skies.
IT’S NOT THAT WE’RE in danger of losing our air superiority edge
— we’ve already lost it. With “some foreign aircraft we’ve been
able to test, our best pilots flying their airplanes beat our
pilots flying our airplanes every time,” Air Force Commander John
Jumper told Congress three years ago. When U.S. planes go against
the Soviet Su-27 Flanker “our guys ‘die’ 95 percent of the time,”
observes Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham of California.
Cunningham is one of only two American aces from the Vietnam
War. He knows the value of even a slight edge in combat
capabilities. “I’m alive today because of it,” he told me.
The international arms market is now flooded with Su-27
aircraft, because the Russians will sell to anybody with a bit of
loose change jingling around.
The independent American Federation of Scientists notes that the
Su-27 “leveled the playing field” with the F-15, our best fighter
but one that’s 30 years old. Meanwhile, “The Su-37 represents a new
level of capability compared with the Su-27.” The Su-37, apparently
close to deployment, looks frightfully effective against both air
and ground targets — meaning our soldiers.
Nor is it just Russian planes we have to worry about. Brookings
Institution Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon, who wrote in the
Wall Street Journal in 1999 that “Congress Should Shoot
Down The F-22.” O’Hanlon nevertheless admitted that even then the
“Swedish Gripen, French Rafale, Eurofighter EF-2000” are
“impressive weapons systems that rival the F-15 and F-16.” As well
they should be: One entered service in 2001, one in 2002, and one
just last year. The F-15 is their grand-pappy.
No, we probably won’t go to war with Sweden or France anytime
soon. (Well, maybe France.) But we already face enemies with
high-tech French weaponry. Rest assured in the future we will clash
with them — including the Rafale fighter. It’s also rather
pathetic that the Czech air force is about to take possession of 39
Gripen fighters, meaning this tiny country will be flying more
advanced aircraft than the United States.
Fortunately even the Su-37 lacks one thing the F/A-22 has —
stealth capability. “Only the F/A-22 can compete with the Su-27 or
Su-37,” Cunningham insists, because “the stealthiness allows you to
get inside his radar so you can have first [missile] launch.”
Surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) also regularly improve, and
potential targets like the North Korean capitol of Pyongyang
bristle like porcupines with SAM sites. “If you target an area with
the current SAM threat today, our planes will probably die before
they ever get to the target,” says Cunningham. “So the F/A-22 and
B2 [stealth bomber] must soften up those radar sites.” Cunningham
knows a bit about SAMs, too. After his fifth “kill,” he was
splashed by an enemy missile that’s a slingshot compared to today’s
technology.
ONE MAJOR CONGRESSIONAL criticism of the Raptor is the cost per
plane, now over twice the original estimate. But much of that is
because prime contractor Lockheed Martin added a ground attack
role. Most of the rest is because those congressional critics cut
back the order, knowing that with fixed development costs the
smaller the order the higher the per-unit price. Sound like a
sneaky game? It is.
Originally the Air Force requested 762 Raptors to support two
squadrons for its ten Expeditionary Wings, and then was forced to
cut that in half. But it only made its first official purchase last
month of a grand total of 22 planes. That’s almost enough to stock
the nation’s aeronautical museums. Worse, it has only authorized
only enough money for 218 planes total, and may slice that
further.
Mind you, these same congressmen recently passed pork-laden
highway spending bills of around $300 billion, but apparently
Cleveland needs that transportation museum more than our troops
need protection from enemy aircraft.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona told NBC’s Meet the
Press that we should consider completely canceling the F/A-22
program to free up money for more troops in Iraq. But McCain
assumes defense spending is a zero-sum game. It’s not.
In 1960, with no U.S. involvement in a hot war, the percentage
of GDP spent on defense was 9.3. This year, with wars in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and anti-terrorist military activities around
the world, we’re spending a miserly 3.5 percent. Merely splitting
the difference between 1960 and now would allow the Army to expand
from 10 divisions to 12 and supply the Air Force with more F/A-22s
than it would know what to do with. And yet last summer Democratic
Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia offered an amendment to seize
$1.1 billion from the Defense Budget and use it for AIDS/HIV
spending.
Other armchair air experts say we can skip the F/A-22 (other
than the 22 already procured) while awaiting the cheaper F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter. The F-35 is a fine plane and will be great for
exporting to our allies, but it’s far inferior to the F-22,
especially in the stealth category. (Its advantage is a much lower
price.) F-35 development is also three years behind that of the
Raptor. If you needed a top-of-the-line new car immediately, would
you hold off three years on buying that BMW until Honda Civics
become available?
It’s also true that F/A-22s were unneeded in invading Iraq —
though one of our F-117s was shot down over Serbia. The value of
the F-22 in the current guerrilla war? Zero. But you know that
expression about generals “planning to fight the last war”? Here
it’s the F/A-22 critics like O’Hanlon who remind us that during
Desert Storm “The Air Force’s premier fighter, the F-15C, flew
6,000 missions without a single loss.” Yes, and that was 13 years
ago. Any war against North Korea or China would make heavy use of
the Raptor.
A WASHINGTON POST ANALYSIS piece that ripped the F/A-22 was reprinted on
websites of such groups as Environmentalists Against War and
Million Worker March. The Post claimed the plane’s “role
is now more ambiguous because no country is developing an aircraft
with anything near its capabilities.”
But isn’t that exactly what we want: Quick and complete air
domination? If price is the primary consideration, why not scrap
both the F-22 and the F-35 and start rebuilding the P-51s of World
War II, which cost only $54,000 in 1943 dollars? Like the F-15,
they were marvelous planes in their time.
Why not? Because our potential enemies will be flying the best
jets and antiaircraft missiles they can make or buy, allowing them
to intimidate us in peacetime and defeat us in war. We must beat
their capabilities, or we will surely die trying.
