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  • Japan likely to drop plan to buy F-22 fighters

    Japan likely to drop plan to buy F-22 fighters
    by Staff Writers
    Tokyo (AFP) Dec 28, 2008
    Japan is likely to drop its attempts to buy state-of-the-art US F-22 Raptor stealth fighter planes since it expects the United States to stop producing them, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

    The Japanese government had been trying to persuade the United States to sell it F-22 Raptors to replace its own aging F-15 fleet, despite Washington's reluctance.

    Tokyo, however, is now abandoning the plan amid signs that US President-elect Barack Obama's new administration may halt production of the aircraft, the Daily Yomiuri said, quoting government sources.

    "We have a firm impression that its production likely would be halted," a high-ranking official at the defence ministry was quoted by the daily as saying.

    US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, reappointed to stay in the post under Obama, has said publicly that he favours halting production of the F-22.
    Washington is also said to be skeptical about continuing production of the expensive planes due to the financial crisis and declining tax revenues.
    US law prohibits export of Raptors as Congress remains anxious over the possible leaking of details of the Raptor's state-of-the-art technology. They are built to evade radar detection at supersonic speeds.

    Japan's possible alternatives are the Eurofighter Typhoon, jointly developed by NATO members Britain, Italy, Spain and Germany, said the English version of the Yomiuri Shimbun.

    Among other candidates are the US fighter F-15FX and the F-35 Lightning II, produced by the United States, Britain and other countries, it reported.
    Some ministry officials favor the F-35, a high-performance fighter with sophisticated bombing capabilities, but this plane has not even been deployed so far by US forces, the daily said. Japan has been officially pacifist since its defeat in World War II but has one of the world's largest defence budgets and is gradually expanding its military role.
    Source: AFP
    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

  • #2
    Dont they have their own project going on? I heard they did. If so i dont think they need the F-22. Sure i understand the F-22 is the best :P I think if they are really making their own. They dont need the F-22.

    Comment


    • #3
      So, the F-22 has really been on the cards for Japan. Sadly, so the raptor is going out production after all, just as quickly as it was started being produced . So what the final figure then of the raptors, is it 193?

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Super Dude View Post
        Dont they have their own project going on? I heard they did. If so i dont think they need the F-22. Sure i understand the F-22 is the best :P I think if they are really making their own. They dont need the F-22.
        They never needed the F-22.

        Originally posted by Zinja View Post
        So, the F-22 has really been on the cards for Japan. Sadly, so the raptor is going out production after all, just as quickly as it was started being produced . So what the final figure then of the raptors, is it 193?
        Nothing is decided yet. People are guessing what Obama will do after he takes office.

        Edit: But yeah, I'd bet more money than I can afford to that the death of the F-22 comes swiftly and is followed up by more of the same.

        Comment


        • #5
          If Obama halts the production of F-22, i'd have to shoot myself, or something like that.

          I mean, the 200 raptors isn't anywhere near enough.

          I mean, we have like 500 F-15s, which needs replacing, is 200 Raptors going to overwhelm the next possible enemy?

          I mean, sure 1 F-22 can match up against 4 F-15s, but when they are spread thin, doesn't that mean the F-22 will be picked off 1 by 1?

          Kind of like how the U-boats fared, when they were no longer hunting in packs.

          Anyhow, the Japanese attempt to buy the F-22 was pointless anyways.

          Didn't the Japanese technology Demonstrator take flight already? The ATD-X

          Comment


          • #6
            They don't need the F-22 now, but 12 to 15 years down the track when China is like likely to have their own 5th gen plane up?

            May not be be as sophisticated as the Raptor or the PAK-FA, but still may be aheaad of anything else - exception probably the F-35, but will the F-35 be enough of an advantage over something designed as an air-superiority fighter, rather than a strike aircraft first?

            The Japanese philosophy is technological superiority over numbers, & there is severe doubts from them that the F-35 will be good enough for to maintaining a decisive advantage in air superiority roles in the future.


            Most likely response from them I think is to team up with the South Korean's & look further develop their own program in about another year or so..

            If it doesn't look like coming to fruition successfully in the 2016 to 2020 timeframe, you might even see them buying into the Russian-Indian derivative of the FGFA..

            Comment


            • #7
              Regarding the F-22 to Japan, I don't ever see that as being a reality to begin with. I'd be willing to wager just as much as Jimmy that Congress would have said No, No, No, Not A Chance, to a Japanese purchase of the F-22, probably even an inferior export version.

              A big reason for that? As I've pounded into the ground on another thread, if you sell the F-22 to Japan, you might as well just hand over a few of them to the Russians, the Chinese and anybody else that's running a intelligence-gathering operation in Japan.
              Originally posted by Belisarius View Post
              If Obama halts the production of F-22, i'd have to shoot myself, or something like that.
              I think that is simply part-and-parcel of a Democratic White House: Cut the military to pay for social programs and handouts.

              That is most especially true now in the middle of what is predicted to be a long and hard recession.
              No sense in grousing about it guys, it's simply what Democrats do. It is what is. *shrug*
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • #8
                What Will Obama Do About the F-22?

                What Will Obama Do About the F-22?

                Monday 29 December 2008

                »

                by: Bob Cox, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

                photo
                Lockheed-Martin's F-22 Raptor. (Photo: Warren M. Bodie)

                Sometime during his first couple of months in office, President-elect Barack Obama will have to confront one of his first big decisions about U.S. defense policy and budgets.

                And it's a thorny one.

                Specifically, Obama and his as-yet-unnamed circle of top defense advisers will have to determine whether to continue spending roughly $4 billion a year to buy F-22 Raptor fighter jets built by Lockheed Martin.

                They might decide, as the Bush administration has, that the F-22 is superfluous and that the money is needed for other priorities. On the other hand, the Air Force, according to defense analysts and consultants, wants to buy at least 60 more of the $180 million jets.

                Jim McAleese, a consultant with close ties to the Air Force, told a Reuters conference in Washington last week that the service was putting "all its political capital" into buying more F-22s beyond the 183 on order.

                "I think the Air Force will work very hard to build a consensus" around the idea of buying 60 more F-22s under a three-year agreement, McAleese said.

                Time is of the essence, according to the Air Force and Lockheed, which says it needs hundreds of millions of dollars soon to keep the F-22 production line up and running. If the line begins to shut down and then is restarted, F-22 advocates say it would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of buying more planes.

                The F-22, launched in the early 1980s to counter Soviet air forces in Europe, has been targeted by the Pentagon civilian management team as an airplane that is likely to be of little use in the kinds of irregular wars the U.S. is fighting or is likely to face.

                The Air Force and its backers say the F-22 could be necessary to deal with regional threats posed by countries buying advanced Russian and Chinese fighter jets. Lockheed Chief Executive Robert Stevens told the same conference that the F-22's stealth capabilities make it an excellent deterrent.

                And F-22 supporters are trotting out the jobs argument, saying the Obama administration surely will not want to put thousands more aerospace industry employees out of work in the midst of a deep recession.

                Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank and a consultant to Lockheed with close ties to the Air Force, said in a recent op-ed piece that while defense purchases shouldn't be justified by the jobs they create, killing the F-22 could potentially affect thousands of jobs, directly and indirectly.

                Maintaining F-22 production, Thompson said, is important "because the U.S. still has a big commercial aerospace sector benefiting from the economies of scale created by suppliers and labor forces serving both public and private markets."

                About 1,800 employees work on the F-22 at Lockheed's Fort Worth plant, where the aircraft's midfuselage section is produced. Boeing produces the wings in Seattle; Pratt & Whitney supplies the engines; and Lockheed assembles the planes in Marietta, Ga.

                "We await and will support the decision of the next administration regarding any continuation of F-22 production," Lockheed spokesman Rob Fuller said in a statement.

                Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been in open conflict with the Air Force over the F-22 and fired the former Air Force secretary and chief of staff for, among other things, their open advocacy of the program in defiance of administration policy.

                Obama is retaining Gates, but F-22 supporters believe that they have a better chance of preserving the program once Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England leaves.

                England, the former head of General Dynamics and Lockheed's Fort Worth plant, has said repeatedly that the Air Force does not need more F-22s and has worked to accelerate purchases of the F-35 joint strike fighter.

                In a recent interview with the Star-Telegram, England said the Pentagon's limited funds for aircraft need to be spent on speeding F-35 development and production.

                "There's no question that Gordon England has tried to kill the F-22," Thompson said in an interview.

                England's view is supported by a number of recent position papers from think tanks offering advice to Obama, and The New York Times editorial page has weighed in against the Raptor.

                Obama is a smart politician and, Thompson said, will probably pick other defense battles to fight that will produce greater budgetary savings than shutting down F-22 production.

                Plus, senior Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee are supporters of the program. "Why would Obama want to get into an argument with these people?" Thompson said.

                Other than retaining Gates, Obama has not named anyone to fill key Defense Department posts, most notably England's successor. Obama has been advised on defense policy by officials from the Clinton administration, including former Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters, who some say may be an F-22 advocate.

                http://www.truthout.org/122908S?print

                Comment


                • #9
                  The Obama administration will probably defer to whatever Gates recommends.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Why is the F-22 so expensive anyways? Is it the AESA radar? The high T:W engines?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Inst View Post
                      Why is the F-22 so expensive anyways? Is it the AESA radar? The high T:W engines?
                      Heres my guess:

                      1. Stealth coating

                      2. High T:W Engine

                      3. AESA Radar

                      4. Avionics

                      5. The general airframe / internal weapons bay

                      6. Radar warning receivers and all of the other gadgets

                      7. Low amounts of demand

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Fly-away cost is $137m right now, which is comparable to the Eurofighter. AESA is supposed to cost $2m a pop for the F-15; the F-22 may use a more expensive model.

                        My main suspicion is that it's the stealth-composite body that's adding so much of the cost.

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                        • #13
                          Procurement cost for the F-22A Raptor was apparently $177.6 million in 2006 according to the GAO, while the cost per plane by program cost in 2006 was $338.8 million.

                          It's gone up since then - last figure I heard was for $189 million procurement cost for the next 4.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Jimmy View Post
                            ...Edit: But yeah, I'd bet more money than I can afford to that the death of the F-22 comes swiftly and is followed up by more of the same.
                            I'm not sure Obama will choose this particular fight. The F-22 program has a lot of support in Congress, note the funding for long-lead procurement for 20 additional frames in this year's defense budget.

                            When John Young rejected the 20 and only ordered procurement for 4 frames, he was called to task for the decision, and it's not settled yet. The 2009 budget still calls for 20 additional frames above the 183.

                            Some 25,000 jobs in 40+ States are in play. Will Obama really ax the program in these economic times, against widespread support in the Congress?

                            I think he will look for lower hanging fruit.
                            "We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Besides financial sense, this makes a lot sense militarily. Eventually I suspect we will be selling versions of these babies to our allies, that would lower their price and create American jobs. This recession will not last for ever.

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