If the F-22 is Unnecessary, Why Can't We Export It?

It's a simple question.

Are you retarded?

The lack of international demand makes it more unnecessary?

The issue is one of The US wants to keep the only Air Dominance Fighter for the US. There are several countries, including Japan and Israel that want to purchase the F-22. They will probably wind up selling a dumbed down version of it, with some software lockouts.

Which begs the question, why do those countries want a Cold War relic?

We can't export it because it's to our advantage not to let anyone else get their hands on it.

But it's useless apparently.

It'll stimulate the economy!

I think it's export status (as in lack of) is due to national security concerns. Once we sell them, the technology proliferates to everyone. We don't want all that Gen 5 goodness out there up for grabs.

So it's so advanced that we don't need it?

Pretty much, yeah. Without the F-22 we can already bring such overwhelming force to bear in any feasible situation that the return on dollars spent on the F-22 is essentially zero, especially given the lack of a Soviet Union for us to fight against. Others, with more limited militaries, would get a significant return from their sale, mostly in the form of reverse engineering.

It's so advanced it basically guarantees us air superiority wherever and whenever it is deployed for probably the next two decades. In case you are unclear on whether that's a good or a bad thing, it's the former.

So the chance the Russians, Chinese, or Europeans won't export their fighters is nil?

And how much is the cost of this "overwhelming force" vs. the operational cost of more F-22's?

We????

WTF are you?

Leftists like to argue the the US is so powerful that they don't need to spend money on all that new fangled weaponry if they already have bombs that can wipe out entire civilizations.

Yet their pussies would be the very first to weep if said bombs were dropped on our enemies.

Modern weapons can guide weapons to accurately hit their targets and minimize civilian casualties. I mean, why are liberals against this??

It almost seems like they want a lot of innocent people to die so they can place more blame on America and wring their hands at how evil it is.

What the fuck sort of retarded logic are you using here?

Early designs of atomic weapons like the used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are outdated and unnecessary in the modern US arsenal, by your logic you should start exporting them to anyone who wants one.

That's a bit of a strawman, because the Raptor isn't obsolete, and we're not planning on replacing nuclear destruction with inferior conventional bombs.

In any case, that's my point though. We're trying to shoehorn a plane that isn't necessarily designed to do this job as well as the one we've already tasked for the job. We're going to put a band-aid over our air defense capabilities because the Raptor doesn't help us invade third world nations.

Doesn't anyone see how ludicrous this idea is? The very people supporting it are the ones who were the strongest opponents of the idea of an American Empire, and yet we're shifting our military to conquer and garrison weaker states.

Thing is, it's not unnecessary.

As we'll find out as the F-15 fleet is slowly whittled away by attrition due to age.

And you'd think that'd be pretty obvious.

Actually, lefties think that the US has no need to be involved in so much fighting - killing innocents or not - and that it should reduce it's enormous arsenal accordingly.

Non sequitur. I am enough of a "leftist" (surprisingly, to some) to agree that "the US has no need to be involved in so much fighting - killing innocents or not," but the deterrment factor of having such an "enormous arsenal" is nevertheless not to be discounted. If we can afford it (and we can, if we can afford all the significantly more expensive social programs we have), it is a good thing. About the best way for an enormously rich nation to "not have to be involved in so much fighting," in a world filled with jealous other nations, is to have such an "enormous arsenal" that fewer rogue nations will be tempted to do anything that would require us to fight.

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The bottom line is

"the F-15 Eagles have to be replaced by SOMETHING"

Given that, why not replace them with something that is technologically advanced and superior to all comers for a few more years.

Thought the F-15's were been replaced by the 2300+ F-35's

So here's my dumb, ignorant question: Why couldn't we have continued building new F-15 airframes, outfitted with what Marso called "Gen 5 goodness"?

Think they removed all the parts for the production line back in the mid 1980's.

You'd have to completely redesign the aircraft.

Which is what was done.

So.....do we have a better reason for that than a fresh, expensive R&D contract? We evidently still have a need for F-15s.

They are being replaced by something. Overall military funding is not being cut.

Really? What?

Yeah. A few of the reasons that we need the F-22 are:

• combat survivability. Man portable SAM's can take down what we have now.
• Fuel efficiency - CAP's from F-22's are much more fuel effiient, at greater ranges and with greater speed. To make an auto analogy, it's like F-15's don't have overdrive and F-22's do.
• Ability to engage more targets with fewer airplanes. 10 F-22's can engage 100 enemy fighters, and win.

Yeah, folks usually associate fighter survivability with aircraft to aircraft dogfighting combat.

The stealth factor, however, makes surface to air missiles and radar guided cannon fire much less likely to bring down the F-22 compared to the F-15. There are recently created prototypes of retrofitted F-15s with some stealth, but not near compared to the Raptor.

Combine that with the fact that the assembly line for the F-22 is tooled and in production, not to mention the R&D costs for the Raptor has already been spent, and it makes no sense whatsoever to upgrade and/or build Eagles.

The only other option is to make the F-35 a jack of all trades and it looks like it's currently having trouble with its assigned specialty, much less any others.

The ultimate goal would appear to be heading in the area of stealth UAVs.