The F-22 isn’t all that stealthy, doesn’t carry much of a bomb payload, is mostly worthless for close-in ground support, and was designed for aerial combat with a generation of hostile aircraft that were never produced, and likely never will be. It’s an over-priced, high-performance novelty toy that’s been kept alive almost entirely by the USAF’s fetish for sleek airborne penises and inability to break free of a Third Generation warfighting mindset, coupled with the cunning distribution of contractor, manufacturing and support jobs across a large number of Congressional Districts with a vested interest in DOD money. Ditto for the F-35, which is almost pornographic in its techno-erotic pointlessness and expense.
Don’t even get me started on Navy shipbuilding. Between the Deepwater Program and the Littoral Combat Fleet, that branch is in real competition with the USAF to claim exclusive rights to the word “boondoggle.”
Attention DOD: We aren’t being beaten by the Soviet Firefox and Fu Manchu’s Death Satellite. We’re being beaten by small organized groups with home-made explosives, cell-phones, computer skills and a deep appreciation of how to disrupt systems, manipulate populations, and paralyze a much better-equipped army by, say, blowing up a 100-foot bridge on the Khyber Pass. Maybe we should match our capabilities to the kinds of wars we’ll actually be fighting, rather planning our weapons systems around the threat of Godzilla or transforming robots from outer space.
