Mark Bowden’s ode to the F-22 Raptor.
Hat tip, Will Collier, who wrote to Bowden, “It drives me nuts that I can’t really talk about just what the Raptor can really do, but you did a hell of a job with the information that’s available to you.”
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I really can’t say enough about what a great article this is. Bowden just nails what modern air superiority is all about. It’s the best thing I’ve read about current-era air-to-air combat in the popular press, well, ever–and unlike the Axis Of Yglesias/Drum that’s apparently carping about Bowden’s piece, I actually do know what I’m talking about here.
I guess I should have been a journalism major or Berkeley prof instead of an engineer. Then I’d know everything…
Great read. Thanks for the tip!
One line jumped out at me:
“A small country can buy a MiG 21 on the world weapons market for about $100,000…”
Can somebody hook me up with a deal like that? I’ve been saving up for a Tesla roadster, but a Mig of my very own would be WAAAAY cooler….
Yeah, Raptor is better. But in all engineering and technical solutions, there is a question of trade offs. How much is the cost to be that much better?
We’re in a fairly intense, fairly infantry intensive war. We have absolutely no air threat from our enemy.
Rationally, this is an aircraft that can wait.
Unless we want to perpetuate the new economic model that spending money, no matter for what, is a virtue.
I love it when people who don’t know shit about war start talking about “tradeoffs.”
Trust me, Skyler, the LAST thing you want in war is a fair fight. How much is the cost to be that much better? Someone’s life. Granted, your mindset is dominant–as long as someone else has to do the dying, the costs are calculable and “tradeoffs” can be easily made. It will ever be thus, but it won’t erase the contempt those of us who face the wolves feel for those who are willing to trade our lives for a feeling that a slightly less-capable jet, tank, submarine or hummer is a better buy, even if it costs a few jocks, grunts or squids.
Yes, we are in an infantry-intensive war…right now. No, there is no air threat from our enemy…right now. But you can’t develop weapons systems overnight and the operational trials and experience these aircraft bring to our collective engineering know-how and operational tactics development will be invaluable in the future. History doesn’t stand still and neither do those who long to be, once again, our true peer competitors.
If you believe that buying these airplanes is simply a case of “spending money, no matter for what,” well, I guess there’s nothing to discuss. It is as contemptible as it is silly.
REMF.
Um, does that mean I can have my Crusader back, Dusty?
“A small country can buy a MiG 21 on the world weapons market for about $100,000…”
Can somebody hook me up with a deal like that? I’ve been saving up for a Tesla roadster, but a Mig of my very own would be WAAAAY cooler….
A couple minutes with Google led me to this example, a 2 seat Mig-21 for $89,000. If you’re going to rebuild it like the article stated, you can get a non-airworthy example for considerably less. Be prepared for some high hourly operating costs.
We’re in a fairly intense, fairly infantry intensive war. We have absolutely no air threat from our enemy.
Rationally, this is an aircraft that can wait.
One of the hazards of military procurement is “preparing to fight the last war.” It’s almost always a mistake to think that the next war (and there will be one) will be like the current one. It takes many years of lead time to develop and produce a first rate fighter. Delaying and/or cutting production of the F-22 now can cause serious problems should the next war be against a technically advanced adversary (e.g. China).
You left a word out of this sentence. That word is “yet.”
And if we wait until we do have an air threat from an enemy, before building a fighter that will overwhelm that threat, the tradeoff we make for your penny-wise attitude will be — as stated above — lives. American lives.
Penny-wise and lives-foolish. That’s what the Left always is and always has been when it comes to the military.
If I were to develop a weapon to challenge US air superiority, why would I put a single dollar into fighter planes that cost multi-billion dollars each and require a pilot who’s in the top-1/10th of 1% of the population in order to fly and battle effectively?
Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to develop supersonic drones that can use their superior speed, maneuverability and numbers to harass and overwhelm the fighter jocks? Even if the “human touch” in the cockpit is an insurmountable advantage in a one-on-one dogfight, can the same be said about a three-on-one dogfight? When the 3 can maneuver at Mach-3 or 4 without blacking out?
Unless your supersonic UCAV has artificial intelligence, someone on the ground is going to have to fly it. In order to have the same situational awareness that an F-22 pilot has, you’re going to need a very big data link to send a lot of data to the ground controller. If you’re outside line of sight, you’ll have to use a satcom relay. That imposes some significant propagation delays on your data link. Second, links can be jammed.
Not having a pilot on board lets you get around the human G limitations but it doesn’t make anything else about aerodynamics easier. You’re going to have the same issues trying to fly at high Mach numbers as a manned aircraft (heat, especially). In the end, your UCAV is likely to cost as much per copy as an F-22 and still be less capable. UAVs and UCAVs are wonderful things but they aren’t the be all and end all of aircraft.
I should have added in my last comment that the overwhelming majority of the lives lost would be on the ground, not in the air. UAVs and the like wouldn’t make much difference in that.
If you’re talking about a 2-3 decade project to overcome US air supremacy, I can think of less valuable problems to overcome than massive data inflows and outflows, anti-jamming technologies and AI-assisted maneuverability – all of those seem like they would have broader technological applications than the work you’d need to do to reinvent the Yankee wheel. And those pilots on the ground don’t need to be guys who can squeeze blood into their brains at will while doing instinctual vector calculus.
It seems to me as well that not having a pilot would give you all kinds of flexibility in the design within the limits of aerodynamics. You could also experiment with making them simply hyped-up guided missiles. The point is, that jet fighters will rule the sky until they don’t. Hopefully we’ll figure out that that day has come in our own wargames before we have the reality thrust upon us from an external source. A smart enemy won’t be thinking in terms of building better jet fighters than the US. They’ll be thinking in terms of building a better air superiority solution. So that’s the way we need to think as well.
Argh, I would suggest you mind your manners. You toss out insults quite freely, yet you don’t address the matter very logically.
I am no “remf,” but you are a POS. See? I know acronyms too. My bona fides are beyond reproach, but also irrelevent. I’ve been in the Marines since 1985, in an A-6E squadron, an F/A-18D squadron, an infantry battalion in Iraq, a reconnaissance battalion, and I’m in another Marine infantry battalion now. I know both aviation and ground warfare and I won’t take any guff from someone like you who knows nothing of manners.
If it takes a few decades to develop an aircraft, and it wouldn’t were it not for a politically perverted procurement system, why does no one mention that it takes any potential enemy as long? Our industry can potentailly react much faster than anyone else’s.
My battalion in Iraq was required to control 100 miles of the Euphrates with two companies short. We didn’t need more airplanes. We needed more people. We needed more and better equipment. We could have used some integrated and networked MSR surveillance systems, a novel and untypical solution for the military. Instead, the pentagon was sucking money up on a plane that is designed to fight an enemy that doesn’t exist, for a war that is only imaginary, when our air forces already have complete mastery of the skies everywhere they go against anyone we could meet, without exception.
You may call this sensible valuation of priorities “contemptible,” but the families of the 48 dead men in my battalion would have rather have had that money spent on something different and useful to help them fight the war we’re in, not the cold war we ended in 1992.
If you think huge, ponderous government contracts that take a dozen years of soaking up money before anything is even fielded is more important than route security, or any number of other useful tools, then I might say that your values are the contemptible ones. Perhaps you really don’t understand warfare at all.
You don’t win wars because you have pretty airplanes. You win wars by controlling the enemy and his actions. Sometimes pretty airplanes are a good thing, but right now we have airplanes that are a hundred times more capable than we need and we’re now buying airplanes that are a thousand times more capable than we need, and we’ll have fewer airplanes to boot.
It’s as if we’re building only battleships after the attack at Pearl Harbor. Some people are slow to get with the times.
I don’t see the value add. But then, I’m not a congressman trying to get kickbacks from defense contractors. And I don’t “get invited” to the White House by people getting kickbacks from defense contractors.
Who doesn’t love a good inter-service bar fight?