Death of the F-22?

I woke up early this morning (3AM) so I could IM with my son in Korea. He did have two E-mails waiting for me when I got up:

I just read that Gates is canceling the F-22 program. Really??? He said that we are just going to use the F-35 and because the 35 is based a lot off of the 22, we don't need to put that much more into the program. And other countries want to buy the 22 but Congress has put it into law and kept it that we can't sell it to other countries. A lot of other countries want to wait out for the 35 now. If we are going to export that and not the F-22... I just don't get it. But whatever.

How Chris ended up in the Army is beyond me. For as long as I can remember, he was always about aircraft. When the F-22 first came out I hated it...it was going to replace my beloved F-15, Chris just couldn't understand my attachment to "archaic" technology.

I was convinced (grudgingly) he was right when we saw the Raptor fly at Edwards Air Force Base at an Air Show with AFJROTC. In 20 years of Air Shows, I'd never seen a jet that maneuvered like that, and coupled with the stealth technology and the "super cruise", I was sold.



We knew that we had maintained air superiority for the next 20+ years. Of course the gov't doesn't see it that way. His second Email had some conflicting news articles:

Time to Scrap the F-22 Raptor

and

We Cannot Afford to Lose the F-22

To me this is the typical short sightedness the gov't usually displays, just like the kerfuffle over body armor at the start of the Iraqi war. The gov't decides we can cut the military budget by getting rid of something "not needed" right now, then screaming to high heavens that they "Shocked!, Shocked!!! I tell you!!!" that the needed equipment isn't there when required.

The Russians have 2 versions of Next Generation jets in production right now, and the WILL sell versions of it to get cash, not to mention the Chinese getting one and reverse designing it.

In about 10 years, our jets are going to be blown out of the sky, and congress and everyone who is saying we can't afford it now is going to be the first screaming about "How come someone didn't see this coming?" and this won't be just about old body armor or Humvees that aren't upgraded, this will mean major battles lost being the guys we're fighting have better planes than we do.

Air superiority is not something we can just ignore for years and then crank out a bunch of planes when we need them. In 10 years when the should have been there...the company that made them, the people that knew how to put them together, and the pilots that know how to fly them are gone.

The F-35 is a fine plane...for what it was designed to do. Land attack missions. which is fine if you're fighting the Taliban, but when we have to face the new Russian designed planes and their knockoffs, we're going to lose a lot of 35's.