The USAF has lost another of its precious F-22 Raptors this week. The jet went down a couple of miles from the end of the Runway at Tyndall AFB in Florida, with the pilot ejecting to safety. No word yet on a potential cause.
Military combat aviation is a risky business, and sadly aircraft do go down. Attrition has been a part of air arm planning since the beginning of weaponizing flying machines. In other words, this will not be the last Raptor loss the force will have to endure. With just 182 examples on hand and a closed production line, it is eye opening to know that of those 182 only about 120 or so are combat coded at any given time. With such a small force structure the F-22 fleet will continue to be seen as either a silver bullet force or a token weapon system, depending on how you look at it or who you ask. Furthermore, with such a small fleet losing a jet with a price tag of over $150M (like $400M if you count R&D costs) is a hard pill to swallow. Yet even with the F-22′s high cost, the small size of the force makes losing an aircraft occasionally a comparatively small economic hardship for the USAF and the DoD as a whole. The F-35 on the other hand, an equally if not more complex machine, that is rapidly approaching the Raptor’s price tag, will be fielded by the thousands and a portion of that fleet will operate in the volatile short takeoff and vertical landing envelope and challenging fixed wing aircraft carrier environment. In turn many more examples will be lost proportionately to the tiny F-22 fleet over the program’s life, thus magnifying the economic volatility of such losses. In other words, if a Raptor is lost every other year statistically, and the F-35 is able to obtain the same attrition rate even though many examples will be operating in a riskier environment than the F-22 does today, that means about 14 F-35s would be lost biannually once the fleet is fully fielded. This would equal roughly a billion dollars a year in lost Joint Strike Fighters.
Will this break the DoD’s bank? No. But it will be much more expensive than losing a mix of simpler F-16s, F/A-18s, F-15s, A-10s, F-22s and AV-8Bs over time. Class A mishaps, costing $2M or more to repair, will also become more common as the aircraft’s stealthy skin, largely composite structure, and miniaturized advanced electronics will be vastly more expensive to fix than that of the “legacy” aircraft it replaces. For instance, what would be $350k in damage caused by a ground handling mishap with F/A-18 very well could turn into a Class A incident with an F-35C.
In the end when you operate an all stealth 5th generation fighter fleet, everything you do is simply more costly, crashing or damaging an aircraft is no different.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/15/us/fighter-jet-crash-florida/index.html?hpt=us_c2
hey
no offense but its been a while since you’ve written an interesting articl
I don’t know how anyone could consider 120 F-22s a token force. Most nations don’t have 120 fighters, and none have 5th generation fighters.
Vibhor- Thanks man, really appreciate that. Its been a while since you have made a introspective comment, wait, this is your first comment. You can cancel your subscription at any time, oh wait I don’t charge you a dime for the ungodly amount of time I put into this site. Not to worry, WAAS article is almost done, and two to follow after that which should be pretty outstanding.
LTRFC- Thanks for commenting. Most countries do not use their air forces the way the US does, especially when it comes to first day of war SEAD/DEAD/OCA capabilities and expeditionary warfare around the world. 70 Raptors based in Guam, over half the combat coded fleet, would allow for 4 Raptors on station over the S. China Sea at any given time. Four. These four will be dependent on tanker gas within a few hundred miles or so to stay on station and have a total BVR load-out of 24 missiles. A capable peer state could easily overwhelm such a force when it comes to targets alone. There are only so many missiles to use and one shot one kill is not a realistic possibility. Also, these aircraft are incredibly maintenance intensive, they can only surge for so long before the mission capable rates nose dives.
Numbers like 120 combat coded F-22s is seriously a tiny force for the mission that the F-22 was intended to service. Just look at the Gulf War and you will see how sortie rates over sustained periods of time and distance really make other nations comparatively small fleets of fighter aircraft clearly lacking for the situations the US finds, or may find itself in, for better or worse.
AF initial reports indicate that the pilot did not advance throttle to mil power after a touch and go and sucked the gear up too early. Pilot error.
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2012/11/air-force-tyndall-f22-crash-report-111512/
Wonder what will happen with US media if we lose one of those Marine Corps F35B getting ready to declare early IOC next year. Yeah,that’s not a juicy story when it gets known that flight testing isn’t finished and software still being worked on,etc…and some USMC pilot loses one, that’s going to be really easy to explain away to Congress, the family and public….
182 F22s sounds like a big number but only 120 of them are really go to war. Once you factor in maintenance, CAP requirements, contingency, other potential war fronts,etc… the number remaining is pretty small, USAF can’t afford to lose to many of them every fiscal year…
As an aside, Indian Air force has cut the number of PAKFA’s it is looking to acquire, probably half the original number also not sure if the want to buy the two seaters… it will be interesting to see how many J20s the Chinese buy. These new 5th Gen fighters are freaking super expense, I have the feeling that most nations will buy a few top of the line fighters and just fill up the numbers with 4.5 Gen fighters, something the USAF will regret not doing (buying more F15 and F16s) instead buying far less F35s than the listed amount.
Todd, that was the last mishap earlier this year at Tyndall, no this one.
ugh, so it was… I forget that we have lost so many. Thanks.