possible future F-22 exports intended to compete with Eurofighter?

A recent senate panel has urged the US Air Force to development an export model of the F-22.

Before this was not allowed as the F-22 was considered so costly and the new stealth technology that made it up to be "the best fighter jet ever", obviously too good to sell, even to close allies of the US.

But after Obama forced F-22 production to be stopped on the 187th fighter and threatened to veto the rest since the plane had no war to fight and wasn't that reliable meant that people who were clinging to their jobs relating to this Cold War era fighter would be out of work, however production could be continued if models were made to export, they were obviously being represented by Congress on this one.

Countries showing interest in buying the F-22 are Australia, Japan and Israel.

While Australia and Israel were to get the F-35 Lighting II (which was designed nearly solely for export) but it appears having the F-22 up for sale will definitely change things or make them more complicated.

However my first thoughts on this whole idea may be Lockheed Martin wanting a chance to compete in the foreign market of selling fighter jets with the Eurofighter Typhoon.



The Eurofighter has been introduced six years ago and is seen stepped up production, however the design and idea of such a a twin-engine canard-delta wing multirole jet fighter has originated between the Western European allies that designed it as far back as the Cold War, it is often compared to the Raptor but cost half as much and has been shown to be more reliable.

72 Eurofighters for GB£4.43 billion



The United Kingdom has made it's biggest arms deal in history, with Saudi Arabia of all people, the agreement is for 72 Eurofighters 24 of which to be in the Tranche 2 build standard which were previously destined to be the first of its kind in the RAF front line will now be instead sent to Saudi Arabia.

The BAe deal worth GB£4.43 billion is a contract I'm sure Lockheed Martin would have liked to have the likes of and would certainly hope to have a similar arms deal in the mere future to help maintain good business.

This deal has also shifted the balance of air power in the Middle East to Saudi Arabia's favor and is the biggest single sale of jet fighters to a Gulf country since the 80 F-14 Tomcats sold to Iran during Project Persian King in the late 1970's!

the failure that is the F-22!

After the success of Operation Desert Storm the F-22 Raptor was given serious thought and throughout the 90's was continually funded by the US government through Congress. This was going to be a serious plane that would ensure the US had the most technologically superior fighter jet in the world, and they had enough time and resources to do it.

But somewhere along the line it got political, one lie led to one exaggeration and before we knew it a super plane was out there, the F-22 was the best, sure it was a weapon built 20 years ahead of its time but every American could sleep safely at night knowing that this hi-tech mother of all planes was on their side!



And it was going great, simulated combat exercises showed F-22's downing hundreds of "enemy" planes with not a single loss to their own, one of the first signs of major shortcomings however was when on their first overseas deployment to the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa from Hawaii six Raptors experienced multiple computer crashes coincident with their crossing of the 180th meridian of longitude (the International Date Line). They completely lost communication and navigation and had to follow the tanker back to Hawaii in good weather.

This little incident rivaled the plot of the movie Stealth but to be fair the error was fixed in 48 hours, and they made it a second time, and it was only a little news story for like a day not even questioning whether or not the F-22 had shortcomings.

Yes onto those, the Olsen complaint (Olsen a former employee at Lockheed Martin) shows how the company lied and how the whole thing was political, Congress was convinced to keep funding the F-22 since along with it were jobs for hundreds of people across nearly all the states of the union.



It requires 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the sky which means $44,000 is spent on it an hour, only 55% of the entire F-22 fleet can be air ready at any given time to defend the US air space!
And it can only be guaranteed to fly for around 1.7 hours before there is a critical failure that would in turn jeopardize its mission!

The route cause of the maintenance issues boils to the radar absorbing metallic body which is extremely vulnerable to rain and other abrasion.

Apart from that the war it was supposed to fight ended 20 years ago, it has no need in today's war and with its major shortcomings probably none in the future neither, production ended last week (22nd of July 2009) ending the long economic burden that the plane had, Defense Secretary Robert Gates had this to say about the F-22:

"The F-22, to be blunt, does not make much sense anyplace else in the spectrum of conflict. Nonetheless, supporters of the F-22 lately have promoted its use for an ever expanding list of potential missions. These range from protecting the homeland from seaborne cruise missiles to, as one retired general recommended on TV, using F-22s to go after Somali pirates who in many cases are teenagers with AK-47s – a job we already know is better done at much less cost by three Navy SEALs. These are examples of how far-fetched some of the arguments have become for a program that has cost $65 billion – and counting – to produce 187 aircraft, not to mention the thousands of uniformed Air Force positions that were sacrificed to help pay for it."



So there you have it, more expensive than its intended competitor the Su-27 Flanker (that is nearly 30 years old) is still a much better fighter to this day!

are stealth aircraft proven?

In 1980 during the end of the Cold War the hi-tech f-117 stealth bomber was first revealed to the public, it was supposed to be undetectable to radar and able to penetrate deep behind enemy lines to destroy strategic targets.

It was 1991 it was shown to be top gun in Operation Desert Storm flying raids against Baghdad, not one was lost during the war but the British and French frigates in the gulf could easily detect the "undetectable".

In 1999 during the NATO bombing of Kosovo an F-117 was downed after being detected by an old Soviet radar system, the Russians even got a look compromising the then 25 year old stealth technology, another F-117 was damaged before the end of the war but still made it back to its base.

The F-117 was recently decommissioned a few months ago and also last July a 0.9 billion dollar B-2 crashed in Guam because of water in the sensors skewed the air-pressure readings too high causing it to crash and burn.



The F-22 is supposed to fill the void as an air superiority fighter over aircraft such as the Su-27, and also be a stealth fighter but because of its weight, size, speed and maneuverability it fails at these, already 127 F-22's are in service with the USAF and will soon prove to be another expensive unproven failure.