We got our letter from the Air Force stating that the the F-22 Raptor is now combat ready as of today! Note the name is being changed back to F-22A from F/A-22. That's fine by me.

Anyway, I hope this means we'll see some nice new kits from Tamiya or Hasegawa in all the popular scales. Shouldn't be long now!

I pray the maistream companies do kits of this baby! Those POS kits that Svezda/Testors/Revell puts out are fairly atrocious.

A nice new-tooled 1/48 one from Hasegawa would hit the spot.

There is a airforce base in Alaska that has already received the F-22.

There is a airforce base in Alaska that has already received the F-22.

Which one?

Elmendorf AFB will get 12 combat ready F-22 in June. I thought that they already received them.

I believe Tyndall in Florida was the first to get an operational squadron. I think Langley is second.

gaincorp company has a very nice 1/72 raptor metal diecast.
dragon wings is also coming out with one in the near future.

According to Air Force magazine, the Quadrennial Defence Review is over, and the pentagon ahs once again slashed the number of F-22s that are going to be built. The AF says it needs a MINIMUM of 381 Raptors to properly equip 10 Air Expeditionalry Forces, and to replace 600 F-15s currently in service.

The pentagon will only allow 183 F-22s (total) to be built.

183 to replace 600. Screwy.

I wouldn't worry too much about numbers at this stage of the game. Production of the C-5A (81? planes) ended in 1973 but 50 C-5Bs were authorized in 82. The B-1A was cancelled in 1977 but the B-1B was ordered into production in 81.

Time will tell. I expect the F-22 may be the last air superiority fighter we will ever see and I don't imagine the tooling will be chucked out until after we're dead and gone.

I would also expect the success or lack thereof of the F-35 will play a role in determining total F-22 production.

Oh yeah, if there's anything that's certain it's that things will change.

Some dopes in Congress (or the Pentagon) are even saying to cancel the F-22 altogether and build only F-35s.

The silliest thing I read this month is that the Navy and Marines want the fighter business all for themselves - they're suggesting the Air Force get rid of their fighters and only be a bomber and transport/tanker force. :freak:

The F-22 may be victim of it's own success. Normally, a new fighter generate complaints about performance shortfalls. But so far, everything I've read about the F-22 seems to indicate it has almost supernatural capabilities. It may be so good that they decide they just don't need the numbers they originally thought.

Here's a little cut-and-paste from the official Eurofighter Typhoon website. They compiled perfromace figures to provide a comparison table of the performance of various Western fights against an upgraded Flanker in BVR combat.

Now, this is the Eurofighter site so they have no stake in making the F-22 look good. This is what they say:


"A more
typical way to present this data is as a combat exchange
ratio, for the Typhoon this equals 4.5:1. In other words statistically one Eurofighter would be lost for every 4.5 Su-35
fighters shot down. This compares extremely favourably to the other aircraft ... Only the LM/Boeing F-22
Raptor bettered the Eurofighter's performance with a combat exchange ratio of 10.1:1."


That F-22 number is incredible...especially coming from Eurofighter!

Well, we had a 10:1 kill ration in Korea, it's about time we got it back.

AF magazine points out that the F-15's kill ratio is currently 100:0. F-15s over the years, in service with several nations, have shot down 100 enemy planes, for zero losses. And in every mock combat ever flown between F-15s and F-22s, the Raptors have won easily.

Another thing to worry about from a PR point of view is unit cost. Most of the cost of the F-22 program was already spent in development and tooling, beofre the production planes were built. If you only build a few planes, and you divide the number of planes by the total cost, it's WAY higher per-plane cost than if you build a lot. A few years ago I read that if they build the 381 planes, the unit cost will be over $70 million per plane. Now they've cut the production, you know some schmuck somewhere is going to start screaming that the damn things cost over $150M (or whatever) a piece and we should cut production further - which will cause the unit price to increase again... etc, etc...

Well, we had a 10:1 kill ration in Korea, it's about time we got it back.

...

Yes. In fact, the ONLY RCAF pilot shot down in Korea was Squadron Leader Andy Mackenzie (WWII Spitfire ace) who had his F-86 shot to pieces by a USAF F-86 near the Yalu River in 1952. Fortunately, he got out (though he spent 2 years in a Chinese prison camp in solitary confinement).

You guys aren't allowed to count that one :).

Well, ya know, at a distance that maple leaf looks like a star.... :freak:

Brent, You have to understand the politics behind the cancellation of the B-1 program back then. What Jimmy Carter knew was that the F-117 Stealth Fighter was exiting development and entering production at the time. So to ensure funding for production he cut the bomber program. Not very astute, but he tried.

Poor Ronnie (Pres. Reagan), when he promised to reinstate the B-1 prgram before the election, he thought he was doing right. BUT! When he entered office and was briefed on the F-117 project he was flabbergasted and wondered how he was going to be able to work around this.

We had 5 silver bullets (unmarked fighters) at the mid - 80s's, all loaded for covert ops. Some of those were used in the Panama op as you know, but it's hard to hit a empty field.. Nothing to reflect the laser properly!

John, about the only time any air group beat the USAF's Korean numbers was the AVG in China. That kind of insane domination is nice, but not always attainable.

Another thing to worry about from a PR point of view is unit cost. Most of the cost of the F-22 program was already spent in development and tooling, beofre the production planes were built. If you only build a few planes, and you divide the number of planes by the total cost, it's WAY higher per-plane cost than if you build a lot. A few years ago I read that if they build the 381 planes, the unit cost will be over $70 million per plane. Now they've cut the production, you know some schmuck somewhere is going to start screaming that the damn things cost over $150M (or whatever) a piece and we should cut production further - which will cause the unit price to increase again... etc, etc...


Yep, JohnP is right. That is one of the easiest ways that F-22 detractors can make it look bad. I work on software at LM so I guess as long as there are some operational, we'll have work.

Now, if they go ahead with a bomber variant of the F-22, I could easily work to retirement! That would be two sets of displays in each aircraft...