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Air Force Likely To Seek 20 Additional F-22s
It looks like the Air Force will request at least 20 more F-22 Raptors, and the tide may be turning to get even more, service Secretary Michael W. Wynne told Air Force Magazine.
"The way the Joint Strike Fighter is going, we may yet need another tranche of F-22s simply to continue to bridge the gap and make sure the President has a fifth generation fighter line available for expansion if he needs it," Wynne maintained. The F-22 is being bought at 20 airplanes a year through 2009.
"It looks to me like that argument could take us at least into '10 and ... get you some deliveries in the '12-'13 time frame," he added. That would get close to overlapping the F-35 production at the current schedule.
Wynne confessed that, given the stellar performance of the F-22 in recent wargames, "I don't know what the total quantity required is," even though USAF has verified 381 as its hard requisite. However, he noted that he sees "a growing consensus that 183 doesn’t give you the breadth you might need."
Source
Originally posted by iori_komei
...but do we really need that many?
Originally posted by iori_komei
How much do Raptors cost a piece?
Originally posted by iori_komei
Oh, and how come we can never order things in 10s, I mean why 183,
180 or 190 seems like a better number.
Originally posted by Ste2652
How many Raptors do you think the US should order, WestPoint?
Originally posted by WestPoint23
I think ~350 would suffice for any eventuality, given that we would have to take about ~30 for training and the rest for attrition, testing, demos, airframe losses etc... That would leave us with around 300 combat ready Raptors. Currently do to our limited buy of only 183 each F-22 squadron consists of only 20 Raptors (18 Active, 2 Attrition). Ideally each squadrons should have 26 jets, (24 Active, 2 Attrition). If we go by this standard 300 Raptors translates roughly into 11 active squadrons.
Originally posted by emile
Here you can see because of widely seperated setting engine bay, PAK_FA will get bigger weapon bay than F-22 to carry more and bigger missiles.
Originally posted by emile
The Ominidiractional Vectoring Thrust nozzle will give the PAKFA more agility than F-22.
Originally posted by emile
I am so worried about F-22 in next decade.
Originally posted by emile
The air show you given in another thread didn't show F-22 has much higher agility than current jetfighters.
Originally posted by Ghost01
The threat of terrorist and rouge nations has shown us that we can't afford to take air defense for granted.
Tim
Originally posted by stumason
Originally posted by Ghost01
The threat of terrorist and rouge nations has shown us that we can't afford to take air defense for granted.
Tim
Arrgh!!! Sorry for the off topic post (I am interested by the topic though)
But it's Rogue!
Not rouge! Rouge is a shade of Red!
Or is a rouge nation a slightly commie nation, but not gone all the way? So instead of Pinko-commies, it's now rouge?
EDIT: Sorry for the impromptu spelling lesson, but I've seen it so many times misspelt on here that I cracked....
[edit on 7/5/07 by stumason]