(Luft) Lockheed Martin F-22

[hoj]

The Fighter Dilemma
The unexpected two-month grounding of F-15 A-D models provoked feverish, if unofficial, brainstorming about what USAF could do if the nightmare scenario became reality.

The nightmare scenario was this: Scores of elderly F-15s, beset with fatal structural flaws, are condemned and swiftly retired, with no replacements anywhere in sight.

The obvious answer would be to more rapidly replace the F-15s with new F-22s, but that’s more easily said than done.

On Dec. 12, 28 Senators and 68 members of the House of Representatives wrote to Pentagon chief Robert M. Gates, urging him to keep buying F-22s, at least through the end of the 2009 Quadrennial Defense Review.

They said that, in light of the F-15 groundings and reports indicating that “significantly more than 220” Raptors are needed to fulfill national strategy, ending F-22 production now would be, at best, “ill advised.”

Gates was willing to listen. In late December, Pentagon Comptroller Tina W. Jonas directed USAF to shift $497 million marked for F-22 shutdown costs to fix up the old F-15s instead. The move effectively set the stage for continued F-22 production.

The Air Force had made little secret of the fact that it wanted to ask for an additional 20 F-22s beyond the three-year multiyear buy that finishes delivery in 2011.

To go faster, though, would take some doing, not to mention an immediate infusion of cash. Some items in F-22 construction—such as labor-intensive large forgings and castings—require more than two years to produce.

Lockheed Martin has in recent times built F-22s at a rate of 24 a year. The company officials said it would be relatively easy to ramp back up to that figure, and that its facilities could be revamped to reach 32 a year.

However, if USAF needed the fighters faster, costs could go up, because either additional shifts would be required with heavy overtime, or facilities would have to be expanded with new tooling and factory floor space. A potentially more time-consuming task would be finding, training, and certifying workers.

“We have not done those kinds of excursions recently,” a company official said, meaning that it had not computed the costs of larger-buy options available to the Air Force.

Asked to identify the longest-lead item in F-22 production, Lockheed said simply, “titanium.” Because it is in short supply, its cost has skyrocketed in recent years. One problem is that Russia is one of the world’s chief sources. Obtaining titanium has also caused headaches because of “buy American” laws sharply affecting military programs. The Pentagon maintains a list of programs that take priority when certain materials get scarce, and the F-22 isn’t on it.

Of the Air Force’s hundreds of F-15s, about 180 F-15A-Ds were supposed to remain in service into the mid-2020s. Replacing them with F-22s—above and beyond the 183 Raptors now planned—would require buying at least 20 a year to be minimally efficient. At that rate, it would take nine extra years of production to replace the F-15 fleet fully. Raise the rate, and replacement time would decrease. At 30 per year, the F-15s could be wholly replaced in six years.

However, USAF is also struggling to fund the F-35 fighter. It needs to build 110 per year to replace the F-16 in a timely manner, but can only afford 48 per year in its budget.

Lt. Gen. Raymond E. Johns Jr., deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said accelerating the F-35 isn’t a viable option because that would introduce additional risk in the program, which has a carefully laid-out development and production plan.

“I can only ramp up the F-35 ... as it matures,” Johns said. “I can’t pump it up artificially.”

There are no other good options, USAF officials said. They have ruled out buying more F-15s or F-16s because the versions being built for foreign sales are different than those USAF has. The service also doesn’t want to backtrack from stealthy, fifth generation designs and buy more of what it considers obsolescing fourth generation fighters.

Moreover, Johns said, he can get the F-22s “faster” than he could get the other aircraft, because USAF would have to get F-15 or F-16 customer countries’ permission to “cut into” their production runs.

Air Force officials said it would be nearly impossible to buy a foreign fighter such as the French Rafale or Eurofighter Typhoon, and in any case, the service would want the best available.

Maj. Gen. Paul J. Selva, the Air Force’s strategic planner, said at a Capitol Hill airlift seminar, “Think about the emotion in this room when [USAF leaders] talk about having to hire [Russian and Ukrainian] Antonov transports to carry our armored vehicles because our C-5s don’t work. Now think about the emotion in this room if we had to say, ‘We’re going to have to buy Sukhoi fighters.'"

Johns said the Air Force will probably want to let the F-15 structural issue “settle down” and then make a careful decision on how to press to flesh out the force beyond 183 F-22s.

However, he said, lives enter the calculation, and the F-15’s days of being able to operate over hostile, modern air defenses are over.

“We’re about warfighting capability,” Johns said. “And I don’t want to go into a fair fight. I never want to resource an Air Force to accept high casualties.”

Nun. Ich wette US forces sind jetzt schon dabei über ein billiges, schneller zu bauendes und neueres Jägermodel nachzudenken.