F22 Raptor stealth technology broken?

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: sao123

Originally posted by: PieIsAwesome

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Maintenance issues make F-22's hourly flight cost skyrocket

Obama threatens F-22 veto

Well of course the F-22 has a high maintenance cost, its new. Procedures change as crews become familiarized with the new systems over the first few years and the maintenance cost is reduced.

The same thing occurred when the F-15 was introduced, but now its our main air-superiority fighter.

One also has to take into account that a single F-22 can play the role of multiple other aircraft, say 3 F-15s, and keeping 3 F-15s in the air is more expensive than a single F-22.

not a chance.
for the cost of 1 F22, $361 million per aircraft...

i could have
9x F14 A/B $38million
12x F15 C/D $30million
20x F16 C/D $19million
11x F18 C/D/E/F $32million
or
4x F35 $83million

The F-22 is NOT $361 million per aircraft. It's $138 million per aircraft. You're confusing amortized cost with unit cost. Don't play the "funny numbers" game and divide the total program cost by the number of aircraft produced. The R&D and tooling costs for the program have already been spent and do not add to the cost of each additional fighter. This faulty logic is what politicians use to try to get programs canceled.

For instance, let's say the government commissions you to build police cars for them. You spend $200 million to design the car for them and build a factory to produce it. Let's say it costs you $20,000 to make each car. If you produce 50,000 vehicles on your production run, the amortized cost per car would be $24,000... $20,000 per car plus $4,000 for tooling/R&D.

Now let's say that a politician wants to get that program canceled after you'd started making them. He plays the funny numbers game. First he lobbies to get the numbers reduced and then starts using the "new" price to further justify canceling the program. Instead of 50,000 units he convinces them to only buy 10,000 units. But now since you're only selling 10,000 units, he divides the total program cost by the number produced and comes up with $40,000 per car- $20,000 for the car plus $20,000 for tooling/R&D.

With this new ammo he further lobbies to get the procurement numbers reduced. "$40,000 is way too much to pay for this vehicle. We're wasting taxpayer money buying this thing". Some lawmakers fall for it and reduce the purchase to 5,000 units. With the "new" cost per unit being $60,000 per car ($20k for the car, $40k for tooling/R&D) he is able to further get it reduced to 2,500 units, which makes the amortized cost $100,000 per car ($20k for the car, $80k for tooling/R&D).

Finally the program gets canceled with only 1,250 cars being produced, and you hear on the news how a "wasteful" government spent $180,000 per police car when it actuality it only cost them $20k per new car after the initial R&D/tooling costs were already spent.

 

[fisheerman]

Originally posted by: Rumpltzer

Originally posted by: iFX
It's bullshit. You don't think the US Military tests for these things before they take delivery?

Are you kidding?

When is the last time you heard of the US government (or military) developing something?? They don't. They look to contractors to do the work, and the contractors are the ones supplying the experts and data. In many cases, the government has a third party overseer, but my experience with these places (and these third-party experts) has not been impressive.

You can't ask Lockheed or Raytheon or Boeing or Northrop to oversee the results of their competitors, so you need to go to an independent third-party... and if those "experts" were really experts, they'd likely be working for one of the defense contractors.

wrong............

My dad works for an independent third party company that does sole source contract review for the defense contractors and he makes bank while saving the tax payers millions of dollars.

Some of his stories are unreal.....................

 

[fisheerman]

The real problem with the F22 comes down to cost vs threat.

What real threat does the F22 counter and at what cost? My opinion is it cost way to much.

Plus we are nearing the end of pilot flown combat fighters.
Once the pilots are removed the size and cost are going to plummet.

A big cost in fighter aircraft are life support and control systems.
When they are removed the size of the fighters is going to diminish and so will the cost.

I think gone are the glory days of the dogfights of the F14 - F15.

^---always had dreams of being a fighter pilot but back in the day couldn't pass the eye exam............sihhhhhhh.

We will go into strategic pinpoint bombing by unmanned vehicles.

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: sao123

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Fighter Jets are for the most part merely a weapons delivery system. Better missiles/radar/guidance/countermeasures = win. Doesn't matter so much whether the missiles are launched from an F15 or an F22 or a hypothetical F44, so long as they can be launched first, and fly further, faster, and with accuracy towards their target. Dogfighting in the classical sense died in the Vietnam war, and even then it was rare. It was mostly dodging SAMs and firing short and medium-range AAMs.

thats why we lost vietnam... classical dogfighting is still very important.
whoever designed the F22 seems to have ignored this simple concept, which is another reason this plane will fail.

the F22 is amazing, but it cant take on 32 F14/15/16s all at one time.
which is about what its out numbered by.

lulwut?

dogfighting doesn't matter if you can just put the plane down 100+km away. Modern war is about power projection, and then boots on the ground. Aircraft have diminished in importance since WW2, and have become less of a fighting machine, and more of just a way to carry and launch missiles / drop bombs.

And the more accepted answer for the "loss" in Vietnam was that the Vietnamese were fighting a civil war, and they would not accept a western occupation, even with 2+ million civilian dead, and 1.1+ million dead enemy soldiers. That's comparing to our ~60k KIA and virtually zero U.S. civilian casualties.

So :

~2,000,000 to 3,000,000 Dead Soldiers and Civilians

vs

~60,000

It doesn't any more lopsided than that, but they just wouldn't let go.

Dogfighting might be forced on you by the PTB. If you're required to get visual ID before engaging for instance. Modern A/C have FoF stuff, but that's not always perceived as good enough with the possibility of friendly fire deaths.

In any case, the F-22 is a more than capable dogfighter, and it has the ability to dictate the engagement. If it chooses not to dogfight, it can leave the scene. There are probably zero active a/c that can successfully chase it down (maybe a Mig 31?), and of course, they've got to detect it to even try.

Second, I would say airpower in general has increased in importance dramatically since WWII. Airplanes have become far more effective at everything they do.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: sao123

once again, all of these require pilots, training, and maintenance...
AND all three of those are far more costly on the F22 than any of the afore mentioned jets.

You seem to be dead wrong on just about everything you're posting in this thread.

The cost to train a pilot to fly an F-22 isn't going to be much more than if he'd fly a F-16. In fact, it would probably be less than it would cost to fly the F-14 or F-18 since landing on a carrier takes a lot of extra training.

Secondly, the cost to fly the F-22 isn't going to even be REMOTELY close to flying a bunch of F-14's. You seem to be absolutely clueless about this stuff. The F-14 was a very maintenance intensive aircraft, it required a lot of maintenance per every flying hour. In addition, the F-14 has 2 crew members while the F-22 has only 1. The F-18 which replaced the F-14 costs about half as much to fly.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: sao123

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Fighter Jets are for the most part merely a weapons delivery system. Better missiles/radar/guidance/countermeasures = win. Doesn't matter so much whether the missiles are launched from an F15 or an F22 or a hypothetical F44, so long as they can be launched first, and fly further, faster, and with accuracy towards their target. Dogfighting in the classical sense died in the Vietnam war, and even then it was rare. It was mostly dodging SAMs and firing short and medium-range AAMs.

thats why we lost vietnam... classical dogfighting is still very important.
whoever designed the F22 seems to have ignored this simple concept, which is another reason this plane will fail.

You're claiming that we lost vietnam because we didn't have enough classic dogfighters? You are only injecting stupidity and nonsense into this thread. Please stop posting in it until you get a clue.

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: sao123

once again, all of these require pilots, training, and maintenance...
AND all three of those are far more costly on the F22 than any of the afore mentioned jets.

You seem to be dead wrong on just about everything you're posting in this thread.

The cost to train a pilot to fly an F-22 isn't going to be much more than if he'd fly a F-16. In fact, it would probably be less than it would cost to fly the F-14 or F-18 since landing on a carrier takes a lot of extra training.

Secondly, the cost to fly the F-22 isn't going to even be REMOTELY close to flying a bunch of F-14's. You seem to be absolutely clueless about this stuff. The F-14 was a very maintenance intensive aircraft, it required a lot of maintenance per every flying hour. In addition, the F-14 has 2 crew members while the F-22 has only 1. The F-18 which replaced the F-14 costs about half as much to fly.

P&N would seem to disagree with you.
Text

Text

Over the four-year period, the F-22's average maintenance time per hour of flight grew from 20 hours to 34, with skin repairs accounting for more than half of that time -- and more than half the hourly flying costs -- last year, according to the test and evaluation office. The Air Force says the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008; the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808. The F-15, the F-22's predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: sao123

P&N would seem to disagree with you.
Text

Text

Over the four-year period, the F-22's average maintenance time per hour of flight grew from 20 hours to 34, with skin repairs accounting for more than half of that time -- and more than half the hourly flying costs -- last year, according to the test and evaluation office. The Air Force says the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008; the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808. The F-15, the F-22's predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.

The information you just posted backs up my argument and disagrees with what you said.

Earlier in the thread you argued the point that you could fly multiple older fighters for the cost of flying a single F-22. You gave the example that you could fly 12 F-15's for the cost of 1 F-22 (which isn't even correct since you got the unit cost wrong).

Since the F-22 costs $44,259 per hour to fly and the F-15 costs $30,818 per hour to fly, in order to fly those 12 F-15's it would cost $369,816 per hour to fly them. In addition, since the F-15s are approaching the end of their life expectancy their flying costs will increase dramatically. Another thing to consider is that they said half of that downtime was to repair unforeseen problem with the stealth coating. Since the F-35 also has that stealth coating, it stands to reason that it'll have the same unforeseen problems.

After reading your posts in this thread it is abundantly clear that you're not really familiar with the subject matter. You're trying to fool people but nobody's buying it. In order to stop making a fool of yourself I suggest you stop posting because people are just going to make you look bad.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
lulwut?

dogfighting doesn't matter if you can just put the plane down 100+km away.

Military brass, aircraft designers, and fighter pilots disagree with you.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: arcenite
Is the US really considering taking a step backwards?

How are UAVs and F-35s a step backwards from what we have now?

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
The F-22 is NOT $361 million per aircraft. It's $138 million per aircraft. You're confusing amortized cost with unit cost. Don't play the "funny numbers" game and divide the total program cost by the number of aircraft produced.

Who is playing the funny numbers game? The person who takes R&D costs into account, or the person who ignores them?

R&D costs are where military contractors love to rape taxpayers. Case in point. Thanks Boeing, for taking $7 billion in R&D costs and charging us $700 million just to terminate the contract because your development program took too long and cost too much.

Another fat military R&D contract with nothing to show for it.

People are up in arms about the bailout, but we've been bailing out the defense industry to the tune of hundreds of billions every year for decades.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: sao123

P&N would seem to disagree with you.
Text

Text

Over the four-year period, the F-22's average maintenance time per hour of flight grew from 20 hours to 34, with skin repairs accounting for more than half of that time -- and more than half the hourly flying costs -- last year, according to the test and evaluation office. The Air Force says the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008; the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808. The F-15, the F-22's predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.

The information you just posted backs up my argument and disagrees with what you said.

Earlier in the thread you argued the point that you could fly multiple older fighters for the cost of flying a single F-22. You gave the example that you could fly 12 F-15's for the cost of 1 F-22 (which isn't even correct since you got the unit cost wrong).

Since the F-22 costs $44,259 per hour to fly and the F-15 costs $30,818 per hour to fly, in order to fly those 12 F-15's it would cost $369,816 per hour to fly them. In addition, since the F-15s are approaching the end of their life expectancy their flying costs will increase dramatically. Another thing to consider is that they said half of that downtime was to repair unforeseen problem with the stealth coating. Since the F-35 also has that stealth coating, it stands to reason that it'll have the same unforeseen problems.

After reading your posts in this thread it is abundantly clear that you're not really familiar with the subject matter. You're trying to fool people but nobody's buying it. In order to stop making a fool of yourself I suggest you stop posting because people are just going to make you look bad.

some people are just too busy fondling obamas balls to care about facts😛

 

[krylon]

Originally posted by: arcenite

Originally posted by: Rumpltzer

Originally posted by: iFX
It's bullshit. You don't think the US Military tests for these things before they take delivery?

Are you kidding?

When is the last time you heard of the US government (or military) developing something?? They don't. They look to contractors to do the work, and the contractors are the ones supplying the experts and data. In many cases, the government has a third party overseer, but my experience with these places (and these third-party experts) has not been impressive.

You can't ask Lockheed or Raytheon or Boeing or Northrop to oversee the results of their competitors, so you need to go to an independent third-party... and if those "experts" were really experts, they'd likely be working for one of the defense contractors.

The US military does in fact go over each aircraft with a fine tooth comb before taking delivery.

Please stop posting until you know what you're talking about. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtkK3eijBso

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Who is playing the funny numbers game? The person who takes R&D costs into account, or the person who ignores them?

When talking about cost per aircraft you do not take R&D cost into account. When talking about total program cost you do. People often get confused about this and they use the incorrect figure. If a F-22 crashes the news often says, "Air force loses $350 million fighter". The fact is that they did NOT lose a $350 million fighter. They lost a $138 million dollar fighter since that's the flyaway cost. The cost to replace that fighter would be $138 million, not $350 million.

Originally posted by: jpeyton
R&D costs are where military contractors love to rape taxpayers. Case in point. Thanks Boeing, for taking $7 billion in R&D costs and charging us $700 million just to terminate the contract because your development program took too long and cost too much.

I agree. This is why I'm against the military taking on these huge programs and then canceling them before the full benefit to the taxpayers is realized (which is the aircraft). They spent big R&D bucks for 25 years before they decided that they didn't really need that many fighters. While the politicians made it look like they saved the taxpayers money by cutting the program, in reality they only continued the pattern of waste. Believe me, the contractors would like nothing more than to be able to transition from one lucrative project that ends in termination to another without ever giving the taxpayers anything to show for it.

In my opinion it's a bigger waste to pay for the prolonged development of a fighter that's either not produced or produced in insufficient numbers than it is to purchase more than some think we need. At least we'd be getting something for our money.

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: sao123

P&N would seem to disagree with you.
Text

Text

Over the four-year period, the F-22's average maintenance time per hour of flight grew from 20 hours to 34, with skin repairs accounting for more than half of that time -- and more than half the hourly flying costs -- last year, according to the test and evaluation office. The Air Force says the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008; the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808. The F-15, the F-22's predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.

The information you just posted backs up my argument and disagrees with what you said.

Earlier in the thread you argued the point that you could fly multiple older fighters for the cost of flying a single F-22. You gave the example that you could fly 12 F-15's for the cost of 1 F-22 (which isn't even correct since you got the unit cost wrong).

Since the F-22 costs $44,259 per hour to fly and the F-15 costs $30,818 per hour to fly, in order to fly those 12 F-15's it would cost $369,816 per hour to fly them. In addition, since the F-15s are approaching the end of their life expectancy their flying costs will increase dramatically. Another thing to consider is that they said half of that downtime was to repair unforeseen problem with the stealth coating. Since the F-35 also has that stealth coating, it stands to reason that it'll have the same unforeseen problems.

After reading your posts in this thread it is abundantly clear that you're not really familiar with the subject matter. You're trying to fool people but nobody's buying it. In order to stop making a fool of yourself I suggest you stop posting because people are just going to make you look bad.

first of all, if you are going to ignore the r&d, which IMO is a complete waste of a program cost, considering you made a full program to create only 243 fighters, while the F15 program purchased 1200. The cost per fighter is enormous.
the out the door cost of the last several F22-s were 153million each, not including 150 million in misc costs divided each by the last 4. thus costing 196 million each.
Text

Secondly, you have 402 in service F15's right now, so you are going to have 187 planes doing the work of 402, and you have the balls to tell me the maintenance is going to be cheaper per plane?

these planes are going to be clocking 2-3 times their predecessors (especially if some are lost), and at 10K more per hour of flight time...

no effin way.

for anythign less than 1K fighters over 2 decades, the program should have never been started.
at least the f35 program has 2500 fighters planned.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: sao123

first of all, if you are going to ignore the r&d, which IMO is a complete waste of a program cost, considering you made a full program to create only 243 fighters, while the F15 program purchased 1200. The cost per fighter is enormous.
the out the door cost of the last several F22-s were 153million each, not including 150 million in misc costs divided each by the last 4. thus costing 196 million each.
[L=Text]http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE5491W720090510[/L

You are completely and utterly clueless. It angers me that I need to explain things to you like a child that should be considered the required baseline knowledge to participate in the conversation.

Originally posted by: sao123
first of all, if you are going to ignore the r&d, which IMO is a complete waste of a program cost, considering you made a full program to create only 243 fighters

Wrong. If you knew what you were talking about you'd know that they made a program to create 750 fighters, not 243. Only after the program was in progress did the procurement numbers begin decreasing.

Originally posted by: sao123
Secondly, you have 402 in service F15's right now, so you are going to have 187 planes doing the work of 402, and you have the balls to tell me the maintenance is going to be cheaper per plane?

The cost to operate an aircraft does not remain the same forever. Like any other machine, the various parts have different life expectancies. The F-15 A/D's in service are reaching the end of their life expectancies and the aircraft will have to be replaced. Some of the older aircraft are already experiencing metal fatigue and the fleet was grounded in November of 2007 after an aircraft was lost due to a longeron failing. Japan also grounded their F-15s. Some of them were put back in service but their performance is being limited to lower the stress on the aircraft. If you want to keep them flying you're going to have to rebuild them as they reach the end of their life which will lead to a huge increase to the operating expenses. Remember, they were never expected to fly this long, they were supposed to be replaced by a newer model (the F-22)

Also, the F-22 was never expected to replace the F-15 on a 1:1 ratio so your assumption "so you are going to have 187 planes doing the work of 402" is faulty. When the government began reducing the procurement numbers they already knew that the limited number of F-22s wasn't going to be matching the flight hours of the F-15s they were replacing.

Another simple fact that you're overlooking is that the F-22 is part of a hi/low mix just like the F-15 was. The F-15 was the high end fighter that was complemented by the less expensive F-16. The F-22 is meant to be complemented by the F-35. They already said that the reduced number of F-22s will be partially compensated by an increased purchase of F-35s.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: sao123


first of all, if you are going to ignore the r&d, which IMO is a complete waste of a program cost, considering you made a full program to create only 243 fighters, while the F15 program purchased 1200. The cost per fighter is enormous.
the out the door cost of the last several F22-s were 153million each, not including 150 million in misc costs divided each by the last 4. thus costing 196 million each.
Text

Secondly, you have 402 in service F15's right now, so you are going to have 187 planes doing the work of 402, and you have the balls to tell me the maintenance is going to be cheaper per plane?

these planes are going to be clocking 2-3 times their predecessors (especially if some are lost), and at 10K more per hour of flight time...
.

r&d is never a waste. it just builds up the base of technology we use for the next fighter.

planes don't fly 2-3x, its just not going to happen that way.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: sao123


first of all, if you are going to ignore the r&d, which IMO is a complete waste of a program cost, considering you made a full program to create only 243 fighters, while the F15 program purchased 1200. The cost per fighter is enormous.
the out the door cost of the last several F22-s were 153million each, not including 150 million in misc costs divided each by the last 4. thus costing 196 million each.
Text

Secondly, you have 402 in service F15's right now, so you are going to have 187 planes doing the work of 402, and you have the balls to tell me the maintenance is going to be cheaper per plane?

these planes are going to be clocking 2-3 times their predecessors (especially if some are lost), and at 10K more per hour of flight time...
.

r&d is never a waste. it just builds up the base of technology we use for the next fighter.

planes don't fly 2-3x, its just not going to happen that way.

I'm almost beginning to feel bad for this guy because it's obvious that he's not very familiar with the subject. I don't want to feel that I'm beating up a guy who's only casually posting about a subject he's mildly interested in.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
r&d is never a waste. it just builds up the base of technology we use for the next fighter.

I think it can be wasteful in that you get a diminishing return on investment of resources if you're researching something which is possible, but expensive at that time. Take the fission powered aircraft for example.

I'm not saying that R&D is bad, not at all, just that we need to be mindful of forgetting practicality and best use of available resources.