Home Overview Today on the Hill Why F-22?   • Air Dominance   • FAQ   • Modernizing GOVERNMENT - Why the F-22? Frequently Asked Questions These are the common points of contention within the media: Q. Why can’t we continue to use the F-15 as our main source of air dominance, since the F-15 performed so well in the Persian Gulf War and the Kosovo conflict? A. Today, with advanced surface-to-air missiles available both to major powers and terrorists alike, the F-15 cannot survive and ensure mission success in a dense surface-to-air missile environment. Surface-to-air missiles, because of their relatively low cost, are a quick and easy way for countries to modernize their air defense systems. Twenty-one countries will possess the most advanced systems by 2005. Some are already denying America access to airspace around the globe because they pose a formidable challenge to the F-15. Amid sophisticated air defenses, the F-22 can cover ten times more battlefield compared to the F-15. The F-15 has always been a great aircraft, a great fighter (for which we can give thanks), but its heyday is over. It is a Pong-era aircraft. Some F-15 avionics parts are already becoming obsolete. We can maintain and maintain a nearly 30-year-old aircraft, but we cannot, practically speaking, continue to bolt new features onto old technology and hope to retain air dominance. The Air Force investigated a "bolt-on stealth" variant of the F-15. The amount of "stealth" achieved was modest, and the cost for a third of the relative combat effectiveness of the F-22 amounted to 90 percent of the cost of the F-22 itself. Nevada congressman Jim Gibbons, a former USAF pilot, wrote in a 1999 letter to his colleagues, “The F-15 is ‘trailing-edge’ technology compared to the F-22 Raptor; when you get into a dogfight with trailing-edge technology, one thing will happen: leading-edge technology will win, period.” It is time to say goodbye and move on. The F-15 has been in service for nearly 25 years. It requires costly upgrades to aircraft systems to meet rough parity with existing threats. Continue with it as our mainstay, and we will be bested by rival technology. We can't accept parity... or worse. Q. Why can’t we use the F-35 JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) or the Navy Hornet in place of the F-22? A. The F-22 is the only stealth air dominance fighter America is building. Lockheed Martin is leading its development, as well as that of the JSF. It is up to the Pentagon to decide if, when and how each of those aircraft should be developed, built and delivered. The Joint Strike Fighter is not an alternative to the F-22. It is meant to work in tandem with the F-22 as a multirole fighter, similarly to the synergistic team of the F-15 and F-16 today. Neither the Navy's Super Hornet nor the JSF can perform the F-22's air dominance mission. They are primarily air-to-ground attack aircraft with a secondary air-to-air combat capability. Q. Why not have the F-15 and F-16 provide top cover for the JSF? A. Today's F-15s and F-16s cannot safely and effectively protect the JSF and their nonstealthy airframes would reveal the location of the stealthy JSF. Q. Why is the F-22 considered unique and indispensible? A. The F-22 Raptor achieves air dominance through the skillful blending of stealth technologies, speed made possible with supercruise engines, agility and integrated avionics. Two Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 engines allow the Raptor to soar to uncontested heights and achieve dry-thrust speeds unheard of by today’s fighters. Its main weapons bays are packed with either six radar-guided AIM-120 medium-range missiles or two AIM-120s and two GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) for ground attack. The F-22 also packs two heat-seeking AIM-9 short-range missiles, one in each of its side weapons bays. As a result, the Raptor can fly very high, very far and very fast with little risk of detection or intercept and strike with near-impunity against both airborne and ground-based targets. It is the one aircraft that can assure American air dominance, giving us an asymmetric advantage. Q. Why is air dominance considered so important to America today? A. Air dominance is a precondition for all other successful combat operations in modern warfare. As General Eisenhower said after the D-Day invasion, "If I didn't have air supremacy, I wouldn't be here." Air dominance has proven instrumental in nearly every modern military victory, from the invasion of Normandy in World War II to the most recent Operation Iraqi Freedom. More importantly, it minimizes U.S. casualties and losses. Since WWII, the U.S. has always had a state-of-the-art air dominance fighter, usually with a ten-year lead on other countries' aircraft. Because of American air superiority, no American soldier, sailor, marine, or airman on the ground has died from enemy air attack in over 50 years. If we seek air dominance as this century unfolds, we must get on with the F-22. The goal is not parity or slight advantage. It is overwhelming advantage. We must defeat opposing fighters, air-defense radars and surface-to-air missiles by a decisive margin. The mission requires an airplane that will not only fly undetected and see the enemy first, but also outfly and outmaneuver the enemy in combat engagements, if required. The F-22 is a national asset that will guarantee our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines the ability to operate free from air attack and to come home safe. Q. How far along is the F/A -22 in meeting its benchmarks? A. The F-22 is ready to go into high-rate production. The F-22 is flying today with more than 6100 flight test hours and is meeting or exceeding all Air Superiority Key Performance Parameters. The purpose of every flight test program is to determine an aircraft’s final design. Simulation is useful up to a point, but there are certain parameters that can only be conclusively validated through actual flight testing. Testing to date has indicated that the F-22 will require minor necessary design refinements and we have made these changes. Now that the aircraft delivery rate has increased, we expect the number of flight test hours to increase dramatically and quickly. We have met or exceeded every developmental and flight test milestone to date. The F-22 is a Mach 2.0 class aircraft, but reaches Mach 1.5+ in supercruise without afterburners. Superior maneuverability throughout the flying envelope from sea level to 60,000 feet assures that the F-22 will maintain a distinct advantage in visual range dogfights. Integrated avionics delivering unprecedented situational awareness. Highly stealthy signature. Supercruising was reached in less than 275 flight hours. The 50,000 feet benchmark was reached a full year ahead of schedule. F-22 avionics have been tested on the ground and in a flying test bed, reducing the number of flight tests needed and identifying anomalies early in the program, when they are less costly to correct. The F-22 has undergone the most extensive and sophisticated testing of any combat aircraft ever developed. Over 42 months and over 900 hours, in comparison to the F-18A/B (100 hours before production), F-16 (brief testing before production) and the F-15 (180 hours before production). Compared to the F-15, F-16 and the F/A -18, the F-22 has already completed more flight test time than any of the other three aircraft at this point in their development. In fact, the F-22 has undergone more testing than any other fighter aircraft prior to its initial production decision and the Raptor has met or exceeded all of its key performance requirements. The F-22 is ready to go into high-rate production. Q. Isn’t the F-22 creating a negative economic impact in this country? A. The F-22 is creating an estimated EMD 25,000 jobs, plus 21,000 production jobs, with 42,000 total projected personnel on production. The positive economics of the F-22 will impact 5,000 firms across 48 states and Puerto Rico. Virtually every state in the union has aerospace firms that manufacture the smaller components that make up the F-22. In California alone, there are 380 companies that support the F-22 with a total contract value in excess of $575 million. Q. How can we afford to have the F-22? A. The F-22 will require only half the F-15's support personnel because it can fly twice as long as the Eagle between maintenance periods and be made ready for combat in 1/3 less time than the F-15. With an average aircraft "sticker price" of less than $125 million per Raptor, not $250 million as is often quoted in the media. In fact, the F-22’s average annual program costs are little more than 1% of the DOD budget, yet the Raptor enables all of the Pentagon's land, sea and air forces to operate free from fear of enemy air attack. In addition, 2/3 of fighter life-cycle costs are incurred after production in the form of maintenance, munitions and other support costs - and the F-22 is expected to be significantly less expensive to operate than the F-15. Many of the media stories to date focus on the cost issues around the F-22 here and now. Politics are a staple of news coverage and one of the most significant factors to judge newsworthiness is the degree of controversy involved. The media tend to focus here and do not judge it to be within their purview to address the strategic necessity of having the F-22 ­ the importance of having an asymmetric advantage against all would-be adversaries. By 2005, over 21 countries will maintain arsenals formidably challenging to the F-15. The balance of world power will tip accordingly. But perhaps the best answer is: How can we afford not to have it? The F-22 provides "first-look, first-shot, first-kill" capability. It can see the enemy first while avoiding detection itself. When we meet the enemy, we want to win 100-0, not 51-49. Why? Simple. American and allied lives. The F-22’s effectiveness minimizes the loss of American and allied lives. What price will you put on these?

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