In a vote sure to be read as a sign of the Obama admin­is­tra­tions power on defense mat­ters, the Senate voted by a lop­sided 40–58 in favor of an amend­ment strip­ping $1.75 bil­lion for the F-22 from the defense autho­riza­tion bill.

You could almost hear the whoops in Defense Secretary Robert Gates offices as he and his team scored a deci­sive vic­tory. Gates rep­u­ta­tion as a man will­ing to take tough deci­sions and to stick with them gained greatly and won enhanced cred­i­bil­ity with the vote. He will be dif­fi­cult to defeat on any major pro­gram deci­sion he takes for the forsee­able future.

Sen. Carl Levin, chair­man of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he knew stop­ping pro­duc­tion of the fighter would be painful but he and his fel­low law­mak­ers had to grasp such net­tles based on what is best for the nation and what is best for the men and women of the armed forces. Another fac­tor that clearly played a role in swing­ing reluc­tant law­mak­ers behind Levin and Sen. John McCain were the clear sig­nals sent from the Pentagon that F-22 pro­duc­tion should be stopped. The rec­om­men­da­tion is strong and clear, as strong and clear as I have ever heard, Levin said on the Senate floor.

– Colin Clark

I guess I’m going to have to dive in here…though I’m reluc­tant to because the sides are so polar­ized in the issue.

The fight in the Senate is going on over the added fund­ing for F-22s inserted into the 2010 DoD bud­get by Raptor allies in states with key Raptor man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties. Sens. McCain and Levin are on the administration’s side on this one, argu­ing that the bud­get should stick with the 187 plane plan. Obama has said he’ll veto the DoD bud­get bill if it includes any (seven in the Senate, 12 in the House) addi­tional F-22s over his plan.

Advocates argue that 187 is far too few air­craft to main­tain air supe­ri­or­ity in the future, even one still dom­i­nated by US air­power. And the under­cur­rent also flows with job-loss wor­ries — par­tic­u­larly in Georgia, where a large por­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing will be done.

They’re both right.

On the one hand we have Winslow Wheeler and his bros argu­ing that the F-22 is the poster child for a Pentagon pro­cure­ment sys­tem run amok and that it’s aided and abet­ted by a Congress always look­ing for pork to fry up for its con­stituents. And on the other, there’s an elo­quent argu­ment made by Air Force Association pres­i­dent Lt. Gen. Mike Dunn that the 187 F-22s is really 100 oper­a­tional F-22s and that’s way too few even for the most opti­mistic scenarios.

Arguably it’s not about raw num­bers — peo­ple can debate 200 vs. 800 vs. 100 all day long. On the one hand, it seems to me a good idea to have the most advanced fighter in the world in our inven­tory — and to have a good amount of them (no fair fights). But on the other hand it has been frus­trat­ing that the Raptor has taken so damned long to field. I’ve been in the defense report­ing biz for a while and I can remem­ber doing sto­ries in F-22 devel­op­ment (and even the com­pe­ti­tion for the Raptor) and see­ing some stat that the com­po­nents on it were from the 1980s…that’s a problem.

So maybe the F-22 is the B-2 of the fighter world. We need to call it a loss and keep a sil­ver bul­let fleet to sat­isfy all the con­stituen­cies involved and turn the chap­ter on this one. As far as I’m con­cerned, the future belongs to unmanned air­craft and it may be that we’ll go counter to our usual prac­tice and throw dozens of cheap drones at an air supe­ri­or­ity prob­lem in the next two decades rather than send up one or two Gucci fight­ers to knock down Mig-15s, if you know what I mean.

So I’ll reluc­tantly side with McCain/Levin/Obama on this one (though I don’t think it’s worth veto­ing the entire defense bill over seven more Raptors). But I’ll be sad to wit­ness the final death throes of the manned fighter air supe­ri­or­ity era…

– Christian

Reuters is report­ing that the F-22 orig­i­nally sched­uled to be at the Paris Air Show this week is not going after all. And while Air Force reps said the issue was air­craft avail­abil­ity, the rumor mill is gen­er­at­ing a more intrigu­ing explanation.

According to the report “European indus­try exec­u­tives said there might have been con­cerns over whether the stealth plane would be exposed to radar try­ing to unlock its secrets.” Apparently this con­cern is based on the F-117 Steath Fighter’s 1991 (yes, you read that right) appear­ance when, accord­ing to an unnamed indus­try exec, the French gov­ern­ment had report­edly used its ultra low-frequency, long-range radar to track the air­craft on its approach to the air­field. (Man, I’ll be the Iraqis had wished they’d had that capa­bil­ity a few months ear­lier when they were get­ting ham­mered by sor­tie after sor­tie of F-117s dur­ing Desert Storm.)

Or maybe the Raptor has pulled out because of the small detail that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has told our clos­est allies (includ­ing Japan) that it’s not for sale. (Of course, there’s always the oppor­tu­nity to taunt your allies with cool Made-in-America-type techol­ogy. What red-blooded Yankee doesn’t hate to miss that?)

Read the entire arti­cle here.
And for all the lat­est gouge from the Paris Air Show, check out DoD Buzz through­out the day this entire week.

– Ward

Editor’s Note: This comes from our boy Steve Trimble who edits Flight Global’s DEW Line blog. As far as I’m con­cerned, Steve is the “Rainman” of avi­a­tion minis­cu­lia and I’d throw my money on his bet every time. See what you think…

The facts are a bit sketchy here. This clip was posted to YouTube on 18 April by an anony­mous user named “d43e49”. The video iden­ti­fies the attack­ing air­craft as a T-38, but it’s not con­firmed by any­thing shown within the clip. At the 35-sec mark, the F-22’s shape is clearly vis­i­ble as it emerges above the tar­get sight after the kill.

As far as I know, this is the first video clip of a sim­u­lated F-22 shoot­down to reach the pub­lic domain. That is news­wor­thy by itself. Let’s also be very clear: a sin­gle sim­u­lated kill with­out con­text says noth­ing mean­ing­ful about the F-22’s dog­fight­ing or aer­ial prowess. Even an EA-18G can appar­ently get lucky once.

If a T-38 was really involved, then con­grat­u­la­tions to the pilot. Your are either absurdly lucky or insanely skilled.

– Steve Trimble

UPDATE: Unfortunately it looks as if the pilot of the doomed F-22, a Lockheed Martin tester named David Cooley, did not sur­vive the crash. Cooley is a 29 year Air Force vet­eran and joined LockMart in 2003 as a test pilot.

Also, DT com­menter Drake won­ders if the acci­dent might have had some­thing to do with weapons bay test­ing that Flight International reported nearly caused some inci­dents in the past.

Colin reports at DoD Buzz that the Air Force con­gres­sional liai­son office has sent out notices to key law­mak­ers they the ser­vice will update them as details emerge. The USAF is so ter­ri­fied of bad pub­lic­ity around the air­craft dur­ing the run up to bud­get wran­gling that they’ll stum­ble over them­selves to paint a pretty pic­ture. We don’t, of course, know what caused the crash, but any bad pub­lic­ity or delay in pro­duc­tion will hurt the Air Force and F-22 back­ers on the Hill.

My ques­tion is, two crashes in five years after twenty years of test­ing and development…why aren’t the Osprey analo­gies com­ing out?..

All debates aside, our thoughts and prayers go out to the fam­ily, friends and col­leagues of the downed pilot. It’s a ter­ri­ble tragedy for all.

The Air Force is report­ing that an F-22 Raptor has crashed near Edwards AFB in California today.

– Christian

Prodded specif­i­cally by the Senate Armed Services Committee chair­man for their per­sonal opin­ions, U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and chief Gen. T. Michael Moseley allowed that their own pref­er­ences would be for addi­tional F-22 Raptor fight­ers and an alter­na­tive Joint Strike Fighter engine.

The top two Air Force lead­ers repeat­edly stressed their sup­port for President Bush’s fis­cal 2009 bud­get request and out­year defense bud­get plan­ning. Moreover, dur­ing the Wednesday hear­ing in front of the SASC they noted pro­found efforts to “salute smartly” in response to all budget-making guid­ance from White House and Pentagon superiors.

But explic­itly asked by Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to offer their per­sonal assess­ments, Wynne and Moseley made clear their own desires for more Raptors and an alter­na­tive JSF engine. The Air Force lead­ers sug­gested the SASC chair­man ask them for their per­sonal opin­ions after Levin grew momen­tar­ily frus­trated with their hes­i­ta­tion to respond to his direct ques­tions on the issues.

(more…)

Our friend and some­times DT poster Bob Cox of Fort Worth Star-Telegram fame had this piece on Saturday:

General rep­ri­manded for dis­agree­ing on F-22

A senior Air Force gen­eral picked a bad time to pub­licly dis­agree with Defense Secretary Robert Gates over his oppo­si­tion to buy­ing more F-22 Raptors. 

After weeks of debate over the future of Lockheed Martin’s high-priced stealth fighter jet, Gates sent Air Force lead­ers a mes­sage to tone down the rhetoric by hav­ing a top gen­eral rep­ri­manded for sug­gest­ing that the ser­vice would find a way to cir­cum­vent Pentagon and White House objections. 

Experts don’t expect Air Force offi­cials to change their minds about the need to buy more F-22s after the dis­ci­plin­ing of Gen. Bruce Carlson. But a Washington insider said Friday that ser­vice lead­ers will turn down the volume. 

“The sec­re­tary of the Air Force has sent a mes­sage to all of his four stars [gen­er­als] say­ing they need to be more cir­cum­spect in their lan­guage,” said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, who has close ties to the Air Force and is a con­sul­tant to Lockheed. 

Leaders of the Air Force and the Pentagon have been engaged for weeks in an unusu­ally pub­lic and testy dis­agree­ment about the future of the F-22 program. 

The lat­est devel­op­ments were spurred by Carlson’s com­ments pub­lished this week in the trade jour­nal Aviation Week. 

The gen­eral, speak­ing to reporters Wednesday, said the Air Force was “com­mit­ted to fund­ing 380″ F-22s regard­less of the Bush administration’s bud­get poli­cies. “We’re build­ing a pro­gram right now to do that. It’s going to be incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult … but we’ve done this before.” 

Carlson’s com­ments came as Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England was tes­ti­fy­ing before con­gres­sional committees. 

In an exchange dur­ing a Senate Budget Committee hear­ing Tuesday, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, asked whether the Pentagon would buy F-22s to replace aging F-15s, some of which have been grounded because of struc­tural defects. 

“I do not believe the F-22 will be the replace­ment for the F-15,” England said. “I would expect instead to try and accel­er­ate the [F-35] joint strike fighter,” which he called a capa­ble and far less costly replacement. 

The Air Force has long insisted that it needs at least 381 F-22s, which cost about $175 mil­lion each, accord­ing to bud­get doc­u­ments. Bush’s 2009 defense bud­get pro­vides funds to buy 20 F-22s, which would bring the total force to 183 planes. 

(more…)

I LOVE it!

From today’s LA Times:

In an inten­si­fy­ing dis­pute over weapons pri­or­i­ties, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Thursday pri­vately rebuked a four-star gen­eral for sug­gest­ing the Air Force intended to buy twice as many sophis­ti­cated F-22 Raptor air­craft as the Bush admin­is­tra­tion had approved, accord­ing to Air Force officials.

One senior defense offi­cial called the remarks by Gen. Bruce Carlson, who heads the Air Force com­mand respon­si­ble for test­ing and devel­op­ing new weapons, “bor­der­line insub­or­di­na­tion,” because they con­tra­dicted a deci­sion by the president.

In its 2009 bud­get sub­mit­ted to Congress ear­lier this month, the White House approved mul­ti­year plans to buy 183 of the stealthy new fight­ers at an esti­mated $140 mil­lion apiece. Many Air Force offi­cials, how­ever, con­tinue to insist they need 381 of the F-22s to deter global threats.

The rebuke by Gates on Thursday, in a tele­phone call to Carlson’s supe­rior, reflects a deep­en­ing debate within the Defense Department over the direc­tion of the mil­i­tary in the post-Iraq era. In par­tic­u­lar, the clash over the F-22 — the Air Force’s pre­mier fighter plane — has become a micro­cosm of the argu­ment over what kind of wars the United States is likely to encounter in the future.

With defense spend­ing expected to decline as U.S. troops with­draw from Iraq, some in the Pentagon have argued for shift­ing money to high-end weapons sys­tems, like fight­ers and Navy ships, that can be used if needed against rivals with larger mil­i­taries, like China and Russia.

Gates prefers a focus on equip­ment and per­son­nel needed to wage low-grade coun­terin­sur­gen­cies, like Iraq, argu­ing that such fights are more likely to occur in the near future.

“The real­ity is we are fight­ing two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not per­formed a sin­gle mis­sion in either the­ater,” Gates told a Senate com­mit­tee last week.

Carlson, how­ever, told a group of reporters ear­lier in the week that the Air Force was “com­mit­ted to fund­ing 380″ of the fight­ers, regard­less of the Bush administration’s decision.

According to an Air Force offi­cial briefed on the Thursday rebuke, Gates tele­phoned Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne, who was on vaca­tion at the time, to express his dis­plea­sure with Carlson.

The senior defense offi­cial said Carlson’s remarks, reported Thursday by the trade pub­li­ca­tion Aerospace Daily, angered the Pentagon’s top lead­er­ship, adding that they were “com­pletely unac­cept­able and out of line.”

“Gen. Carlson and oth­ers in the Air Force may not like it, but 183 is the num­ber of F-22s approved first by Defense Secretary [Donald H.] Rumsfeld, then reaf­firmed by Defense Secretary Gates and pro­vided for in bud­gets pre­sented to Congress by President Bush — Gen. Carlson’s com­man­der in chief,” the offi­cial said, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity when dis­cussing inter­nal debates.

Although the com­ments by Carlson reflect wide­spread think­ing within the ser­vice, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, has been care­ful in recent weeks to shy away from a direct con­fronta­tion with Gates, say­ing he would take the F-22 up again with the new administration.

“I’m being very, very, very care­ful not to get pit­ted against Dr. Gates, because I’ve said to him over and over, when we’ve had this con­ver­sa­tion, ‘Just don’t shut the [assem­bly] lines down,’ ” Moseley said in an inter­view with The Times last week. 

Oh I bet Moseley is being VERY careful…

(Gouge: NC)

– Christian

Move over grounded F-15s, there’s a new sher­riff in town.

From an end-zone danc­ing Lockheed Martin:

The U.S. Air Force declared Full Operational Capability (FOC) for Lockheed Martins F-22 Raptor today, mark­ing another his­toric occa­sion for the worlds only 5th gen­er­a­tion fighter in pro­duc­tion. Gen. John Corley, Air Combat Command Commander (ACC), made the announce­ment from Langley Air Force Base, Va., home of ACC head­quar­ters and the 1st Fighter Wing, the first unit to fly the F-22 operationally.

After years of col­lab­o­ra­tive effort, a key mile­stone for the F-22 has been reached, said Gen. Corley. The Raptors suc­cess at Langley with the inte­gra­tion of active duty and Guard air­men is the show­case exam­ple of ACCs shared vision with Air Force lead­er­ship for the Total Force Integration of tomorrow.

FOC sig­ni­fies the Raptor has ful­filled all per­for­mance and oper­a­tional require­ments for the weapon sys­tem, Gen. Corley said. It affirms the entire pro­gram, from the air­craft to the pilots and main­te­nance crews, is ready for a myr­iad of oper­a­tions, includ­ing employ­ment in a wartime environment.

This announce­ment means the F-22 is ready for world-wide oper­a­tions, should it be called upon, said Larry Lawson, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and F-22 gen­eral man­ager. Its a great day for our nation and for the men and women who fly and main­tain this incred­i­ble air­craft. They deserve the best our coun­try can pro­vide, and the F-22 will stand in the gap pro­vid­ing air dom­i­nance and air cover for those who defend us on the ground for the next four decades.

The 27th Fighter Squadron at Langley was the first squadron to become oper­a­tional with the F-22. Since the ini­tial oper­a­tional capa­bil­ity announce­ment in 2005, Raptors have been deliv­ered to three addi­tional squadrons, which, along with an Air National Guard asso­ciate unit and an Air Force Reserve asso­ciate unit, have truly made the Raptor a Total Force asset.

The F-22 has proven its oper­a­tional capa­bil­ity and matu­rity lead­ing up to this impor­tant announce­ment, said Lawson. The Air Force declares Full Operational Capability after excelling in numer­ous oper­a­tional tests such as the deploy­ment to Kadena Air Base in Japan, Red Flag, Combat Hammer and the Northern Edge exer­cise in Alaska along with com­plet­ing air­craft deliv­er­ies to the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley AFB.

Raptors are cur­rently assigned to five U.S. bases. Flight test­ing takes place at Edwards AFB, Calif. Operational tac­tics devel­op­ment is ongo­ing at Nellis AFB, Nev. Pilot and main­tainer train­ing takes place at Tyndall AFB, Fla. Operational Raptors are assigned to Langley AFB, Va. and at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. Raptors will also be based at Holloman AFB, N.M., and Hickam AFB, Hawaii.

– Christian

The Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor is the best fighter jet in the world. It’s faster, longer-legged, more maneu­ver­able and packs bet­ter sen­sors than any­thing else fly­ing. But there’s one inex­cus­able gap in its capa­bil­i­ties. Unlike even older fight­ers, the Raptor can only receive data from exter­nal sources; it can’t send. Raptor pilots have to get on the radio and tell oth­ers what they see on their radars. This at a time when rapidly shar­ing infor­ma­tion between planes, ships and ground forces is the arguably the key to U.S. mil­i­tary power.

I asked the Raptor jock­eys at Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base about this last year and they shifted uncom­fort­ably in their seats while feed­ing me some line about how voice comms work just fine. Then they qui­ety stressed that fixes were being planned. Now those fixes are finally firm­ing up, accord­ing to Aerospace Daily & Defense Report:

The F-22 Raptor’s “embar­rass­ing suc­cess” has cre­ated a need for rapid mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the fighter, says Air Force Gen. Ronald Keys, chief of Air Combat Command. ACC wants a stealthy “tac­ti­cal tar­get net­work” data link that can quickly pass key para­me­ters on enemy tar­gets with­out giv­ing away its posi­tion. In ini­tial exer­cises, the F-22 “was much bet­ter at [intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance] and absorb­ing sig­nals than we had antic­i­pated,” Keys says.

Keys went on to say that fixes were planned for the 2008–2013 period, by which time all 180 Raptors should be in squadron ser­vice at Langley and in Alaska and New Mexico. The gen­eral didn’t exactly spec­ify which datalink would be fit­ted, but recent Air Force exper­i­ments, as reported in Defense News last sum­mer, might offer a clue:

The pro­posed Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT) proved its met­tle dur­ing a recent two-week exer­cise in Nevada, allow­ing troops and mil­i­tary plat­forms to swap infor­ma­tion with Internet-like speed and ease. F-15 and F/A-18 fighter jets took in infor­ma­tion about pro­posed tar­gets, gath­ered sen­sor data, and sent it to ground sta­tions to be fused with other data for more pre­cise tar­get­ing, Boeing Advanced Systems President George Muellner said May 11. And its all machine-to-machine, Muellner said.

– David Axe, cross-posted at Ares and War Is Boring

UPDATE 01/29/07 2:44 PM: “The stealthy Raptor fighter and intelligence-gathering air­craft is ready for war, but prob­a­bly not the war we’ve got, Air Combat Command’s chief, Gen. Ronald E. Keys, tells Aviation Week.”

Essential elec­tronic sur­veil­lance sys­tems may be too sensitive–overwhelmed by the den­sity of U.S. and allied emitters–to be use­ful in the elec­tron­i­cally pol­luted envi­ron­ment of Baghdad, the main focus of the new U.S. mil­i­tary surge.
“If war breaks out, I’m send­ing the F-22,” Keys said last week. But not for oper­a­tions in Iraq or Afghanistan. “I didn’t buy the F-22 for Iraq. We’re look­ing for what can sop up intel­li­gence, recon­nais­sance and sur­veil­lance [ISR] in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is the invest­ment [of send­ing the F-22] worth it? Is it a good idea or just an attrac­tive idea? Will it com­pli­cate the air com­po­nent commander’s prob­lems for no gain?”