The House Armed Services Committee’s tactical air and land forces panel’s version of the Fiscal 2017 defense authorization bill calls on the Air Force to assess the cost of resuming F-22 production. The mark language, released Tuesday, directs the Secretary of the Air Force to study the cost of procuring another 194 F-22s to meet the 381 aircraft the Air Force originally said it required and report the findings to the congressional defense committees no later than Jan. 1, 2017.

Now that's very interesting, isn't it? More thoughts here at The Diplomat from Robert Farley. Money quote:

Its outstanding quality notwithstanding, the F-22 is an old airframe, and a redesigned “F-22B” capable of integrating the latest in electronics and avionics would incur a substantial up-front cost. While focusing on the F-22 at the expense of the F-35 sounds appealing, restarting the line would draw resources away from other Air Force priorities and would do nothing whatsoever to solve the fighter problems faced by the Navy or the Marine Corps.

I think this has to be considered Congress aiming a shot across the Pentagon's bow with regard to the F-35; an implicit threat that they're very seriously considering killing the program in its entirety and simply ordering a big whack of F-22s to replace it, even though the F-22 really can't do the jobs the F-35 is (nominally) supposed to be capable of doing. But if the F-35 can't do them either, well, we might as well have more of the best fighter in the world instead.

Of the numerous problems here... man, where to begin.

While this might be great for the Air Force and merely "meh" for the Army, it sort of leaves the Navy and the Marines in a bit of a spot. The Navy can maybe stick with the Super Hornet... if Boeing's promises are accurate.

Which is key. The latest upgrade package from Boeing reduces the aircraft’s radar signature by an order of magnitude, rendering the F/A-18 a “low-observable” aircraft according to Boeing. Other upgrades in the program should keep the Super Hornet viable for the next 10 to 15 years for all roles except deep-penetration strikes into heavily defended airspace. But, again, this depends a little on how much you trust Boeing.

The Marines may have to live without jump-jet capability for a while. If any part of the F-35 program continues to get funding, actual concentrated development of the Marines’ STOVL version of the F-35 might be the best bang for the excessive bucks.

And it would be excessive bucks. We're talking about ungodly amounts of money either way, whether we continue to throw cash at the F-35 until it becomes workable, or if we restart the F-22 line.

The best way to square that circle might be to produce an export version of the F-22, which could recoup a fair amount of the costs of a line restart. That's not just a little bit illegal at the moment, something that could be changed at-will by a SecDef or President; it's super major crazy illegal, as a result of a twenty-year-old law. Congress would need to act.

The problem with changing that, however, is the fact that the entire reason we're not willing to sell the F-22 abroad the first place is, to be blunt about it, Israel. Israel has a long and proud history of buying stuff from us and then passing the technology on to Russia and China in exchange for goodies. But politically speaking, you cannot say out loud "We're gonna sell this stuff to Japan, and Australia, and South Korea, but not to Israel." Well, I can say that. But I'm not a Senator.

Bit of a digression. The point is, we might be headed for a sea change in the long-fucked-up world of high-end fighter procurement. To an extent, the question is a bit academic; we're not really gonna be fighting a peer competitor anytime soon. (Or at least I hope not.) But to an extent it isn't; the F-22 has already been called on to replace the now-retired F-117 in strike roles (which is another thing the F-35 was supposed to do it has failed at) and a line restart might include the possibility of dedicated F-22 variants as sort of a side-step around needing to develop whole new airframes.

Or we might not. Hard to say. The military-industrial complex is an inscrutable beast.

-Merc
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Really, this is the story of the F-35, not the F-22, and a sad and pathetic story it is. They really thought it'd be everything to everybody, and there's some high end Air Force people with a hell of a lot of egg on their faces, throwing good money after bad for the sake of pride. I'm encouraged by Congress telling the military to get their heads out of their asses, though the F-22 won't solve the whole problem, true.

I'm still a proponent of the Right Plane For The Right Job camp, where we could have the F-22 for stand-off missile capability (isn't that more a function of the missile, after all? Does it really matter which jet fires it if it's outside enemy airspace? The F-22 has air superiority so it can defend itself) and maybe a modern reimagining of the A-10 for the air support role. Trying to roll those two completely disparate elements into one has been like watching a train wreck. I can't look away, just wince in pain.

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Jargon-heavy and possibly off-putting if you aren't already a plane nerd but informative and interesting. A sunnier take on the F-35 than we're used to, but still with a realistic look at the very real limitations of the airframe.

The TLDR takeaway is that whatever its limitations, the F-35 might still be the best available (which is different from "best") solution to the problem of how to survivably operate strike craft in environments defended by ever-better SAMs. Depressing if true.

-Merc
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