F22 crash?
 

I just heard that an F22 was just lost out by Edwards AFB....anyone heard anything about it? Don't we have a Pelican w/ a relative who flies one? Beautiful plane....saw one a few weeks ago come over our house on final to BAFB. Hope the pilot ejected and is safe.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/25/california.crash/index.html

Scratch a cool $150M. Glad the pilot was OK.

Ouch, that's a pricey one.

The price tag for the F22 ($150MM quoted above, that is the unit cost to acquire each additional F22, excludes all the development costs) got me thinking - about cost and attrition.

In the 1970s, my father helped design the Phoenix missile for the F14 Tomcat. I recall that the F14 was very expensive back then. So I looked it up: $38MM initial acquisition cost. The plane entered service 34 years ago. Assuming 4% inflation, $38MM then is $144MM today. So the F14 was every bit as expensive in the mid-1970s as the F22 is today.

We built appx 630 F14s, not counting the 80 or so sold to Iran. 160 were crashed in the 22-odd years before the F14 was retired. Hopefully we will crash F22s at a fraction of that rate, or in 15 years there won't be many left.

Great, another military aircraft that is probably too expensive to regularly send in harm's way. Looks like we are paying for an air force that is "a force in being". The drones will end up doing the real dangerous, dirty work. Reminds me of the German fleet in WWI: the battleships holed up in port while the then "new technology" submarines went out to take the fight to the enemy. Why is the military always about one and half wars behind the times?

I'm all for my tax dollars being used to design and build things like the F22.
It makes me feel sake knowing we have people that can think up some of the technologies and I would rather have planes than some of the other rat holes our politicians pour our money down
Plus they are about the coolest things going

Steve

The current issue of the Atlantic has a great article about the value of air superiority and how we are losing our edge. More to the point, the continued reductions in the planned F-22 fleet is going to create an irrecoverable hole. Basically for any conflict we've been involved with since Vietnam, we've controlled the skies which allows a degree of freedom on the ground that is quite valuable. But other 4th generation A/C and retrofitted 3rd generation A/C are presenting a genuine threat to the F-15. At some point, some punk nation with some cheap retrofitted 3rd gen A/C are going to try to show their strength.

We've never lost an F-15 flown by the USAF against another fighter. Simply amazing.

I hope the raptor pilot is okay and safe. My buddy the F-15 group commander is at Nellis, wonder what he knows about this...

The F-22 is the tip of our airborne spear. It will do the most dangerous and most important jobs (Air supremacy and SEAD) that allow the rest of the force to function properly.

Don- NO nation that flies F-15s has ever lost one in air to air combat. It has a kill ratio of infinity (i think it's 137.5 kills to no losses).

No US soldier has been lost to air attack since the Korean war.

Without Air superiority, the US cannot fight the way it fights. The US Army is simply not designed to fight in an environment of air parity. Army air defense is quite solid, but it's definitely by no means air tight.

"The F-22 is the tip of our airborne spear. It will do the most dangerous and most important jobs (Air supremacy and SEAD) that allow the rest of the force to function properly.'

Yeah, it will do a "bang up" job of suppressing the North Korean, Iranian, Al Queda and Taliban air forces. It may also be useful if the Kligons attack.

If we go to war with Russia or China air superiority won't matter for long; the nuclear tipped ICBMs will arrive on the scene far sooner that any jet fighter.

Is that really true? didn't we lose some pilots in Mig Alley in Korea?, and there were zero casualties from air attacks in Viet Nam?

Fwiw I don't know the answer, I just find it hard to fathom that in all the conflicts we have been involved in in the last 50 year...no US soldiers have been lost via air attack?

Pilots are not soldiers.

Soldiers serve in the Army.

Here is a more accurate statement: No US ground forces have been killed on land by air attack since the Korean war. Not a single one.

That's how good the US Air Force is.

ya.. semantics et al

Zero losses of ground troupes in Viet Nam From NV Migs...

Again I find that statement a stretch..

That statement is a fact.

Look it up.

M21 sniper;
No US soldier has been lost to air attack since the Korean war.

Tell that to the sailors of the USS Liberty that was strafed in 1973[?] by the Israelis.. [oh , theymade a mistake].. also > I think the North Koreans strafed the USS Pueblo - wounded or killed some of our people

Recognize your point though.. F-22 is a necessary piece of hardware in our arsenal... fantsatic platform...

We also had a slew of hawk missiles set up in South Vietnam during the Vietnam conflict.. would have been suicide for the NVAF to go south

He said soldiers on the ground.... ain't semantics great?

The pilot was not OK, he was killed. It was not my cousin, who heads the F-22 demo team and flies the plane at air shows. It's been a tense few hours.

Denis,

I am very relieved for you, very sad for the family of the pilot.

It is never easy.

Sailors are not soldiers.

My deepest condolences to the man and his family. :(