"F-22 raptor " to India ?

Bahamut

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Lockheed's F-22 Raptor – a maintenance nightmare
Domain-b.com ^ | July 11, 2009 | Defence Bureau

Posted on 7/14/2009, 5:28:32 PM by myknowledge

With a whistleblower lawsuit against Lockheed Martin grabbing headlines for making the startling allegation that the US Air Force's top-of-the-line fighter, the F-22 Raptor, has been supplied defective stealth coatings, further information is now emerging from Pentagon sources that the F-22 programme is indeed the source of substantial worry for the defence establishment.

Internal documents, as well as Pentagon officials, reveal that Lockheed Martin's F-22 now requires more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour that it spends in the skies. This adverse ratio effectively pushes its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, which easily outstrips the cost of keeping other fighters in the skies – those which the Raptor is meant to replace.

Seemingly lending credence to whistleblower ex-employee Darrol Olsen's claims, that the company knowingly used "coatings that Lockheed knew were defective," are reports that not only are these coatings susceptible to peeling off but also that they are vulnerable to rains and other abrasion. Olsen claims that Lockheed covered up its problem with defective coatings by applying 272kg (600lb) worth of extra layers.

Pentagon sources say that these problems have been bedevilling the aircraft since the mid-1990s. (See: Lawsuit claims Lockheed's F-22 Raptor has defective stealth coatings )

Local media reports reveal that even as most aircraft fleets become easier and less costly to repair as they mature, the reverse is the case with the F-22. On an average, the Defense Department acknowledged this week, just 55 per cent of the deployed F-22 fleet was available to fulfil stipulated missions in the period from October last year to this May.

The F-22 has never flown in combat missions over Iraq or Afghanistan.

A litany of complaints

The Raptor has become a contentious issue between the US Congress and the Obama administration with defence secretary Robert Gates halting further production of the $138 million aircraft, beyond the stipulated 187.

This is far short of what the USAF and the contractors had anticipated.

Defense officials in the know have been quoted in the media as saying that the aircraft can just about manage 1.7 hours of hassle-free flying before contracting a 'critical' ailment other point out that the Cold War-era conceived fighter has, so far, cost an average of $350 million apiece and are just not a priority in an age of small wars and terrorist threats.

The massive maintenance bills are also draining away air force funds urgently required for other projects. Former top Pentagon weapons testing expert Thomas Christie (2001-2005) has been quoted as saying that the plane's huge costs has resulted in the Air Force lacking funds to modernize its other components adequately. He said the force has "embarked on what we used to call unilateral disarmament."

According to Pierre Sprey, one of the founding members of the so-called ''fighter mafia'' – the group that conceived America's most successful modern combat aircraft, the F-15, the F-16, and the A-10 - from the beginning, the Air Force designed the Raptor to be "too big to fail, that is, to be cancellation-proof."

Prime contractor Lockheed farmed out more than 1,000 subcontracts to vendors in more than 40 US states, and Sprey points out that by the time skeptics "could point out the failed tests, the combat flaws, and the exploding costs, most Congressmen were already defending their subcontractors' " revenues.

Media reports quote John Hamre, Pentagon comptroller (1993-1997), as saying that the DoD approved the plane with a very low budget as it knew projecting the real costs would have bounced the project on Capitol Hill.

"We knew that the F-22 was going to cost more than the Air Force thought it was going to cost and we budgeted the lower number, and I was there," Hamre told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April.

"I'm not proud of it," Hamre is quoted as saying in a recent interview.

The aircraft has undergone a plethora of problems, in line with the radical nature of its design it must be said. For the USAF, the sad part is that the problems have failed to stabilise in spite of near six squadrons already deployed in active service.

With limited production commencing in 2001, the plane was "substantially behind its plan to achieve reliability goals," the GAO said in a report the following year. Structural problems compelled forced retrofits to the frame and changes in the fuel flow. Computer flaws, combined with defective software diagnostics, forced the frequent retesting of millions of lines of code, according to two Defence officials quoted in a local media report.

Stealth coating problems, which often require re-gluing small surfaces, as the coating peels off, take more than a day to dry. These facts have been culled from confidential data drawn from tests conducted by the Pentagon's independent Office of Operational Test and Evaluation between 2004 and 2008.

Over this four-year period, the Raptor's average maintenance time per hour of flight grew from 20 hours to 34. Stealth coatings alone accounted for more than half of the maintenance time, and more than half the hourly flying costs last year, according to the test and evaluation office.

While the Air Force claims that the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008, the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808.

The F-15, the F-22's predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.

Sprey has also claimed that he was informed by engineers who have worked on the aircraft that because of Lockheed's use of hundreds of subcontractors, quality control was so poor that workers had to create a "shim line" at the Georgia plant where they retooled badly designed or poorly manufactured components.

"Each plane wound up with all these hand-fitted parts that caused huge fits in maintenance," Sprey said. "They were not interchangeable."

Lockheed denies such claims, however, and says "our supplier base is the best in the industry."

The plane's famed 'gold canopy' a million-dollar, radar-absorbing cause of envy for other fighter pilots has also caused problems. A stuck hatch imprisoned a pilot for hours in 2006 and, to date, engineers have been unable to extend the canopy's lifespan beyond about 18 months of flying time.

Ex-Pentagon official Ahern and Air Force Gen CD Moore, have both confirmed that canopy visibility has been declining more rapidly than envisaged, forcing $120,000 of repairs at 331 hours of average flying time, instead of the stipulated 800 hours.

The plane's first operational flight test in September 2004 saw it meet two of 22 key requirements and display a total of 351 deficiencies. In 2006, it fully met five, and in 2008 when the sixth squadron was fully deployed, the Raptor had fully met seven key requirements.

Pentagon officials stress that the F-22s are on track to meet all its key performance parameters by next year.
 

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F-22 and F-35: America’s Costly Boondoggles Are the Victims of Arrogance and Appeasement
March 10, 2013 by Ilana Freedman, Editor5 Comments ↓


If you thought that canceling the White House tours in order to save the Federal Government $74,000 per week was desperate, what do you think about the $40 billion that we have already spent on a ‘state of the art’ fighter plane that was designed by an international committee andcan’t fly!

The development of the latest US fighter planes over the last several decades has been one of the most costly examples of bad military spending in US history. In these days of fiscal crisis and sequestration, the story of the $120 billion development fiasco of the the F-22 and F-35 jet fighter plane is particularly egregious. The F-22 was less than expected, and in a recent report from the US Department of Defense, leaked to the public last week, the F-35 was considered unfit to fly. The report, called “F-35A Joint Strike Fighter: Readiness for Training Operational Utility Evaluation,” was released by the Office of the Secretary of the in February 2013, and adeclassified version was posted on March 6, 2013.

Three reasons stand out for this colossal and costly fiasco:

1. The decisions to move forward with the development of these two fighter jets have been political, not military;

2. The idea that a fighter jet can be designed by committee in order to accommodate bad foreign policy in a ‘global economy’ is patently absurd; and

3. In order to placate Muslim (particularly Turkish) objections, the one country whose technological expertise and experience in building what are arguably the best equipped fighter jets in the world – Israel – was shut out of all development.

Background

The F-22 Raptor entered the fleet of the US Air Force in December 2005. A product of Lockheed-Martin aircraft, it was reputed to be the best overall fighter in the world. It was characterized by its supposed stealth, speed, agility, precision and situational awareness, combined with air-to-air and air-to-ground combat capabilities. However,the aircraft’s stiff price tag, cost overruns, development and production delays, a Congressional ban on Raptor exports, and the ongoing development of the F-35 which was considered more versatile, resulted in demands that F-22 production be ended. Production was halted on December 13, 2011.

In the summer of 2012, at the international Red Flag Alaska training exercise where the planes were matched against Australian, German, Japanese, Polish and [NATO] aircraft, the “most advanced stealth fighter jet in history, the F-22 Raptor” proved that while the plane excels at modern long-range air combat, it is only “evenly matched” with cheaper, foreign jets when it comes to old-fashioned dogfights.

In the meantime, back in October 2001, Lockheed Martin won the contract to the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter to replace the F-16, A-10, F/A-18, and AV-8B tactical fighter aircraft. The government planned to buy a total of 2,443 aircraft for an estimated US$200 billion. The purchase was to provide the centerpiece of the US armed services tactical air power to the US military.

According to the DOD report, the F-35 was intended to be a “multi-service, multi-national program consisting of a single-seat, single-engine aircraft built in three distinctly different variants intended to perform a wide array of missions to meet an advanced threat (year 2010 and beyond). The variants include a conventional take-off configuration (F-35A), a short take-off/vertical landing configuration (F-35B), and an aircraft carrier-compatible configuration (F-35C). “The international market included Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Australia, and Turkey, who were invited to join in the development program. The aircraft was also to be sold to Singapore, Japan, and Israel, although they were not invited to participate in its development.

Ironically, the same optics, avionics, and software packages that have kept the F-15, F-16, and F-18 Hornets as well as the Apache and Cobra helicopters flying long after their ‘sell-by’ date of 1984, could have easily been applied to the F-22 and F-35 projects. However, in the interest of appeasing Islamic sensibilities, because these technologies were developed by Israeli companies such as Elbit, Elisra, and Raphael, they were not consulted and their technology was not utilized.Instead, the F-35 was designed by a committee of manufacturers from the US, Canada, and Europe.

As a possible result, the F-35s now represent such a danger to pilots that according to the leaked report , they are not even fit for training purposes. A comparison between the 1960s designed F-16, which Israeli technology has continually upgraded since 1984, and the F-22 and F-35, which have failed to meet their promised potential, demonstrates how using the best technological advances can – in the case of the F-16, they have enabled it to maintain its well-earned reputation as the finest fighter jet in the world – still. The US has employed all of these Israeli modifications into their entire fleet. Until the development of the F-22, when Israel was cut out of the development loop.

The fact that Congress and not the military made the decision to develop the F-35, that the program used a committee approach to the F-35′s development, that the development team relied on computer models to make key decisions in the final design before flight testing, and that the lack of Israeli know-how in critical areas, all contributed to the failure of the F-35 project. It failed to meet even minimum performance standards although billions of dollars were thrown at the project. Complications during the development included huge cost overruns, delays in development, and international espionage in which several terabytes of data related to the aircraft’s design and its electronics systems were stolen.

The aircraft has been haunted by what the report calls “fatal flaws” that make even the first configuration. An operational evaluation of the F-35A ”Joint Strike Fighter” by the Department of Defense’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, the aircraft was considered “unacceptable for combat” and even “unfit for training”.

USAF test pilots have noted a lack of visibility from the F-35 cockpit during evaluation flights and said that this will get them shot down in every combat. Defense spending analyst Winslow Wheeler concluded from the flight evaluation reports that the F-35A “is flawed beyond redemption”.

On 22 February 2013, the U.S. fleet of F-35s was grounded after a routine inspection of a F-35A at Edwards Air Force Base found a crack in an engine turbine blade.

The report also identified a host of additional problems, including:

  • Aircraft software is inadequate for even basic pilot training.
  • Ejection seat may fail causing pilot fatality.
  • Multiple pilot-vehicle interface issues exist, including feedback failure on touch screen controls.
  • The radar performs poorly, when it works at all.
  • Engine replacement takes an average of 52 hours, instead of the two hours specified.
  • Maintenance tools do not work.
  • Elements of the helmet made it harder, not easier, to see outside the aircraft
In short, the F-35 is a failure of enormous proportions, and the colossal waste of money is difficult to justify. The $40 billion cost for just the F-35 alone, which has been termed “flawed beyond redemption”, might well have been saved, but for the arrogance and willful extravagance of those who put this program into action.

The Loss of Israeli Input

Over 4,500 General Dynamics F-16 have been built since production was first approved in 1976. Israel has been involved in the evolution of the F-16 since it received its first planes four years later, and quickly adapted the aircraft to its own specific requirements, adaptations which were shared with the US. In 1981, Israel had its first success in air-to-air combat against a Syrian Mi-8 helicopter over Lebanon. In that same year, eight Israeli F-16s, escorted by F-15s, executed Operation Opera, the raid that took out Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osiraknear Baghdad.

Despite Israel’s leading position in avionics and weapons development, an illusion remains that Israel is dependent on the United States for the qualitative advantage of its weapon systems. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Over the years, Israel has made hundreds of modifications to the F-16, which is still the mainstay of its air fleet. Israeli technology improved nearly every system with the most advanced avionics, weapons, and radar technology for which Israel is famous.The US has benefited greatly from this technology and in the past has depended on Israeli input for many critical technological upgrades. Israel’s technological expertise and ingenuity has continued to keep the F-16 at the head of the pack, where it still remains the finest jet fighter in the world.

Conclusion

It is possible that Israeli input into the development of the F-35 could have made a significant difference in the outcome of its development. These decisions, in which the lives of our finest pilots are on the line, should not be made on the basis of politics or foreign policy. They should be made on the basis of how the finest technology available should be applied to provide the safest and most effective product for our military personnel. Here, we have failed miserably and, $120 billion later, the F-22 and F-35 debacle is the proof. In particular, the abysmal failure of the F-35 needs to be assessed carefully, without political prejudice, and a new set of priorities needs to be established before billions more are spent on sloppy and wasteful development projects.
 

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The article is old but will gave picture how outdated the electronics of F 22 are
F-22 avionics designers rely on obsolescent electronics, but plan for future upgrades
May 1, 2001

By J.R. Wilson

The U.S. Air Force's new F-22 Raptor advanced tactical fighter is finally preparing to move into production after more than a decade of development. In the process its avionics architecture has passed through at least three cycles of obsolescence and relies on an Intel microprocessor — the i960MX — that went out of production four years ago.

The U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor's avionics is targeted for an upgrade to PowerPC technology beginning in 2004.Click here to enlarge image
There is nothing unusual about that, of course; the time frame for developing, testing, and producing a new military aircraft far exceeds the confines of Moore's Law, as well as the confines of commercial development, production, and eventual obsolescence of microprocessors.For the F-22, an upgrade to a new PowerPC processor already is on the drawing board, beginning with Lot 5 production of the aircraft around 2004. However, the aircraft's builders must freeze the jet's design baseline at the end of this year, which means a fifth generation (G-5) chip, at best, which will undoubtedly have long passed its own moment of obsolescence by 2004.

The avionics suite is the responsibility of engineers at the Boeing Military Aircraft & Missiles Systems in Seattle, with Mike Harris as avionics production team leader. The overall avionics production team manager is Tom McDermott of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Marietta, Ga. The two companies team with Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, Conn., to produce the F-22, which will replace the aging F-15 as the Air Force's primary air-superiority jet fighter.

The F-22's integrated avionics suite features extensive use of very high-speed integrated circuit (VHSIC) technology, common modules, and high-speed data buses to manage its sensors. This approach frees the pilot to concentrate on his mission.

The technologies applied to that task include a Common Integrated Processor (CIP), the system's "brain", which has been described as having the equivalent power of two Cray supercomputers; shared low-observable antennas; Ada software; expert systems; advanced data fusion cockpit displays; integrated electronic warfare system (INEWS) technology; integrated communications, navigation and identification (CNI) avionics technology; and optical fiber data transmission.

Shared legacy
Along with the U.S. Army's RAH-66 Comanche scout-attack helicopter and the still-in-development Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the F-22 represents the most advanced electronic technology in military aviation.

Originally, it was to have shared much of its avionics technology with the Comanche under standards established in the late 1980s by the Joint Integrated Avionics Working Group (JIAWG). That included a standard backplane interface, a test and maintenance interface, and two external fiber optic serial databuses — a high-speed databus and a sensor data distribution network.

"All of those initially were common with the Comanche, but the helicopter has since moved on," McDermott says. "We're using that baseline today. We intend to carry that baseline out through at least production Lot 4, through about 2004," which represents about 55 aircraft out of 339 currently approved by Congress.

"Right now the F-22 program has a funding cap for both development and production, so being stable is good," McDermott says. In the future, a combination of DMS [diminishing manufacturing sources]) and trying to be more compatible with other programs will bring us to a more commercial architecture. What will really do that is if we get a new derivative of the aircraft in the program, such as an air-to-ground version. Right now we are basically an A-model throughout the entire production run and funding is capped. But if there is a new version, as with the F-15E, that probably would be a big driver to bring up the COTS content."

Lot 1 production is to begin this year and run through 2003, using the avionics baseline developed in 1991. To keep that configuration stable for the past 10 years, program managers lined up parts early on. They made several "bridge" buys to procure enough components for production and spares — including the central microprocessor — until the next logical redesign point for each subsystem.

In addition to the Intel i960MX-based multiprocessor (a cluster of 35 processors), the suite uses an F-22-unique signal processor from Raytheon derived from the radar processor on the F-15.

"That signal processing element does around 200 million operations per second," McDermott says. "The i960 is about 30 million operations per second. What we get in the end is about one billion instructions per second for data processing and about 3 billion per second for signal processing. It was considered to have plenty of margin when we set that baseline in 1991 and for what we have on the airplane today, it has held up. It's a modular system, so we can increase capacity by adding more modules to the box. But right now we haven't identified any functions to put on the airplane that it can't handle."

When the time comes, designers say they expect to replace the signal processor with a PowerPC using AltiVec technology, Motorola's high-performance vector parallel processing expansion to the PowerPC RISC processor architecture. AltiVec adds a 128-bit vector execution unit operating in concert with the PowerPC's existing integer and floating point units to provide highly parallel operations, as many as 16 simultaneously in one clock cycle.

"It really depends on what the overall change plans for the aircraft are and what funding is available, but eventually, I imagine we will go that way," McDermott says.

Optical fiber interconnects
Most of the aircraft's box-to-box interfaces are fiber optic. "From the sensors to the common integrated processors is a point-to-point integrated fiber optic link, very wide band, which is quite fast and easily takes care of any bandwidth problems we might have for those sensors, both in terms of speed and range," says Boeing's Harris. "That was designed up front quite well with plenty of bandwidth. In terms of studying what future F-22 avionics will look like, we are looking into the RapidIO and InfiniBand standards, but we really don't have a requirement right now to go that way.

"The air-to-air mission requires some throughputs and speed within the processors and signal processors to handle the sensors, but not much different from the requirements for the F-15E, except it is a lot newer and a lot easier to handle the requirement," Harris continues. "The same is true for the Super Hornet."

Despite the advance technology aboard the aircraft, future growth is still an important consideration. While the F-22 already has two common integrated processors, it also was designed with space for a third, which has not been used yet. "I'm sure that extra space was put in to handle future derivative missions beyond the air-to-air requirements," Harris says.

While the Comanche helicopter has diverged from the original goal of commonality, one area in which the F-22 and other aircraft will share technology is flat-panel displays, which are from Kaiser Electronics in San Jose, Calif., now a part of Rockwell Collins.

"If there is any backward compatibility or commonality between airplanes, it would be in that area," says Harris. "The (F/A18-E/F) Super Hornet also uses the Kaiser flat-panel displays; they are different sizes, but the technology and most of the circuitry is the same."

The F-22 has an 8-by-8-inch display and a couple of smaller 6-by-6-inch displays; the Super Hornet has a couple of 6 by 6s and an 8 by 8 or 8 by 6 planned for the future.

"The technology has grown now such that the size of the display is irrelevant," Harris explains. "You get a lot of the efficiencies in having the same kind of display without forcing all cockpits to use the same size. Ten years ago the simple solution was to gain efficiencies by making all displays the same size, but that's not necessarily desirable today. Flat panels were expensive and hard to make and customized back then. That is no longer the case. That's a big success story."

The new generation of flat panel displays also is lighter and more durable, and better able to handle vibration and other environmental issues than earlier versions, Harris says.

"We don't have any problems on the Hornet or the F-22 in terms of temperature ranges and such. If the pilot is comfortable, the displays will work fine," he says. "That isn't saying there's no risk to large displays in military cockpits, but no more so than other things in the cockpit.

"The newer technology uses projection displays rather than liquid crystal, which takes care of any brightness issues you might ever have," Harris says. "You just turn up the power to increase brightness. So for military applications, I think that [sunlight readability] is solved."

The F-22 also includes some advanced design work to support maintenance by going one step beyond the modular line replaceable unit (LRU) design that set the F/A-18 apart from its predecessors.

"On the F-22, you can open a panel and replace the cards, which have less function attached to them, so you can sometimes replace one card with an adjacent card," Harris explains. "That makes the pipeline for spares less broad for that airplane. So as far as maintainability is concerned, that is a significant jump forward. And the lifecycle maintenance cost of F-22 avionics is much better because you don't have to replace the box, just the card."

Although the power requirements are basically 1990s technology, when the avionics system baseline was frozen, the 17 different power supply types incorporated in the avionics suite are fewer than necessary on other airplanes.

Software development
In January, flight testing for the F-22's Block 3.0 software components began. Block 3.0 — developed by 11 major subsystem suppliers — provides functions such as radar processing and sensor fusion, electronic warfare and countermeasures, communication, navigation, and identification and the pilot/vehicle interface. Two more upgrades are planned, but 80 percent of all functions that will be on the production airplane are now flying.

The pilot/vehicle interface and much of the operating system are either written or managed by Lockheed-Martin Marietta; the electronics warfare and CNI are managed or written by Lockheed Fort Worth and the sensor fusion and mission software are written at Boeing; the radar software is written by Northrop Grumman in Baltimore, and managed by Boeing in Seattle. Harris Corp. in Melbourne, Fla., is building the fiber optics data transmission and electronics interfaces, which McDermott manages. The integrated electronic warfare system (INEWS) technology comes from British Aerospace and managed out of Lockheed Fort Worth.

"That has always been a difficult technical problem and the F-22 has gone a long way toward solving those, but it is still a challenge technically to integrate pieces of electronic warfare that have always been separate and designed by different people into a single fused sensor on a small airplane, especially with apertures that normally counter the stealth requirements of the F-22," Harris says. "The CNI avionics technology has similar problems. The basic communications elements [developed by TRW and managed by Lockheed Fort Worth] are working fine, but again it is a technical challenge to integrate those."

A primary program goal of affordability also has met with what Harris terms "some huge success stories."

"Whenever there is an opportunity for redesign, improving quality or cost, we do that," Harris notes. "One such is the Northrop Grumman radar system. In order to build the stationary radar array, they have lots of transmit/receive modules fastened to a large backplane. Northrop Grumman has done a great job of using robotics in that production and saved a lot of cost. We're claiming something like a $300 million cost reduction just in the radar over the 339 airplane buy."

Prior to installation on the F-22 test aircraft, the systems were first integrated and tested at Boeing's Avionics Integration Lab (AIL) in Seattle and on the Flying Test Bed (FTB), a specially equipped Boeing 757. They are then shipped to Lockheed Marietta, where the aircraft are assembled.

Getting a Raptor into the air with combat-capable avionics was a major requirement that designers needed to meet before low-rate initial production (LRIP) could begin. Air Force Brig. Gen. Jay Jabour, the F-22 system program director, said flying Block 3.0 was "the program's current most technically demanding challenge."

The F-22 avionics suite represented by Block 3.0 provides and controls the aircraft's "first look, first shot, first kill" warfighting capability to accurately acquire, track, identify and engage multiple targets. It also enables the Raptor to automatically detect and defeat incoming missiles by initiating counter-measures.

"Block 3 is the first sensor fusion software, fusing all the sensors on the airplane to give the pilot the most information long before the bad guy sees him," Harris says. "That is the heart of F-22 avionics."

The Raptor program is managed by the F-22 System Program Office at the Air Force Aeronautical Systems Center (Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio). A decision on LRIP is expected later this year, following an April Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) chaired by the U.S. Department Defense undersecretary for acquisition and technology.
 

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F-35 Tech Rescues The F-22
by James Dunnigan
April 22, 2011

The U.S. Air Force has found that using the more durable radar absorbent coatings from the F-35, on the F-22, reduces the maintenance costs of the F-22. The F-35 coatings did not require as much modification as thought, in order to be used on the F-22. The air force needs this kind of help with the F-22, which is noted more for its spectacular cost, than its spectacular performance.
That's because, two years ago, Congressional hearings over building more F-22s has led to the release of data about how much it costs, per flight hour, to maintain the aircraft. It's $44,000 per flight hour, compared to $30,000 per hour for the older F-15 that the F-22 is replacing. The F-22 per-hour cost is nearly twice what it is for the F-16. While it requires 19 man hours of maintenance for each F-16 flight hour, the F-22 requires 34 hours. The manufacturer originally said it would be less than ten hours. Most of this additional F-22 expense (and man hours) is for special materials and labor needed to keep the aircraft invisible to radar.

The main problem is the radar absorbent material used on the aircraft. The B-2 had a similar problem, which was eventually brought under control. But even then, the B-2 cost more than twice as much to operate than the half century old B-52. The B-2 and F-22 use different types of radar absorbent materials, so many of the B-2 solutions will not work for the F-22. But some of the F-35 materials did.

Some of the F-22 electronics are still not as reliable as the air force would like. The F-35 uses a different approach to defeating radar signals, and the manufacturer insists that F-35 maintenance costs will be closer to that for the F-15, than for the F-22. But Lockheed Martin has been saying, for years, that its F-22 would be cheaper to maintain than existing aircraft. The air force never challenged this, at least not in public. Instead, the air force tried to keep the high operating costs a secret.

In addition, the F-22 costs more than three times as much as the aircraft it was to replace. The air force wants to build more than 187, and has allies in Congress who want the jobs (and votes) continued production will generate. But the Department of Defense is reluctant to spend that kind of money, especially when there so many other programs seeking funds (like electronic warfare aircraft, UAVs and upgrades for F-15s and F-16s). Thus, last year, the Department of Defense decided to terminate F-22 production at 187 aircraft. This resulted in each aircraft costing (including development and production spending), $332 million. Just the production costs of the last F-22s built was $153.2 million. Added to the cost of the last few aircraft was a $147 million fee the Department of Defense agreed to pay if the production line was shut down. This goes to pay for shutting down facilities and terminating contracts with hundreds of suppliers.

The F-22 is a superb aircraft, probably the most capable fighter in the world. But the development and manufacturing costs kept rising until it became too expensive for the media, voters and politicians. The air force was able to build it, but they couldn't sell it to the people who paid the bills.

A decade ago, the F-22 was a $62 billion program, of which development accounted for $18.9 billion (this was a spending cap imposed by Congress). A decade before that, the air force was planning to buy 750 F-22s. Costs kept going up for two decades, and Congress refused to provide more money. So, for $62 billion, the air force ended up getting fewer aircraft.

The air force ran into a similar problem with the B-2 bomber, which became so expensive they were only allowed to build 21, and these cost $2.1 billion each. About half of that was development expense. Actual construction costs for each of those aircraft was about $933 million each. Still pretty high, mainly because a lot of special machinery and factories had to be built to manufacture the many custom components.

The air force likes to point out that if the original (1986) plan had been followed, each B-2 would have cost $438 million each. But then the entire program would have cost $58.2 billion, versus $44.3 billion for the 21 plane program (which included $10 billion more R&D expense).

New technology gives a weapon, especially an aircraft, an edge in combat. But since World War II, most military technology has been developed in peacetime conditions. This means it is more than twice as expensive, as there is no wartime urgency to overcome bureaucratic inertia (and emphasis on covering your ass, which is very time consuming and expensive) and hesitation (because you don't have a war going on to settle disputes over what will work best). Developing this new technology takes longer in peacetime, which also raises the cost, and fewer units of a new weapon are produced (driving up the amount of development cost each weapon will have to carry.) If several hundred B-2s were produced under wartime conditions, each aircraft would have probably cost $200 million, or less. In other words, a tenth of what it actually cost. Same deal with the mythical $35 million F-22, or any other high tech weapon.

Other nations have adapted more effectively to peacetime development conditions. But the United States has the largest amount of peacetime military research and development, and this has created a unique military/industry/media/political atmosphere that drives costs up to the point where voters, politicians and the media will no longer support them.
 

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QWIP equipped IRST cannot be fooled by flares ,flares are use for missiles
Seekers in missiles are also IRST..qwip can not be categorised as an IR sensor.
 

sasum

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F 22 will not use radar as it risk itself being tracked and locked on .Leaving it blind.
For every counter-measure, there is counter-counter-measure. Jammers, anti-radiation missiles, towed decoy radars have not rendered on-board Radars in fighter planes useless.
 

SilverSabre

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Bit confused with what @HariPrasad-1 mentioned for half a billion per plane, are you confusing it with F-35. Also F-22 is something even USA is struggling to keep it's issues in check. The list of issues are staggering for USAF to manage to fully induct it in the Air Force. Following link would help those who want to know more details.
https://defenseissues.wordpress.com/tag/f-22-raptor/

Also it's serious issues with in flight Oxygen filtration systems malfunctioning made 187 top pilots refuse to fly it for full 1 year. Why India wil ever think of adopting a plane like that in it's force.
 

SilverSabre

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No f-22's have been built since 2012. Flyaway cost was reported at 150 million each but in reality it is probably over 300 million last number I heard was 280 million?


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Revised cost is US$ 339 Mn per piece.. Check with Wikipedia, though I can't trust wiki for all such Info.
 

Bahamut

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Seekers in missiles are also IRST..qwip can not be categorised as an IR sensor.
QWIP is a seeker technology for IRST ,the can detech cooler target and are more sensitive to temperature difference.
 
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Revised cost is US$ 339 Mn per piece.. Check with Wikipedia, though I can't trust wiki for all such Info.
Add maintenance cost to this and you will see extraordinarily high numbers


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

sasum

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QWIP is a seeker technology for IRST ,the can detech cooler target and are more sensitive to temperature difference.
I see qwip more as a photodetector than heat detector. Heat detectors use IR devices in the short and medium spectrum of IR radiation--invisible). Qwip uses longer & cooler IR wavelength which is near-visible; otherwise the entire infrared spectrum is distinguished only by wavelengths, each having its own temperature signature.
Qwip based seekers are more like thermal cameras or night-vision binoculars.
 

manutdfan

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:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::doh:

No offense,but where did you get this picture that you claim to be a radar signature of a Chinese plane.


This is a movie still from
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Powers:_The_Spy_Who_Shagged_Me


https://www.google.co.in/search?q=A...ved=0ahUKEwjtrbyksazMAhXYCo4KHVV1C7UQ_AUIBigB



This is not the signature of any flying plane let alone a Chinese warplane.

P.S. I have no idea or opinion of F-22 or PAK FA.
I know :laugh: Just google it man.
 

Bahamut

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F-22 fact spinning on USAF website
Posted by picard578 on October 28, 2012

I was browsing http://www.af.mil, when I have found this page. While most, possibly all, of claims there have been addressed in my F-22 Analysis, I am aware that it is very long read, and as such I will examine claims here.

First claim is that “The F-22 possesses a sophisticated sensor suite allowing the pilot to track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats before being detected.”. Problem with that claim is that F-22 has no sensor capable of tracking and identifying target without requiring either F-22 or enemy aircraft to actively use its radar. Thus, F-22 must either rely on (jammable) uplink from another unit or on enemies being willing to give it first strike possibility by radiating themselves. However, IRST-equipped aircraft can detect subsonic fighter aircraft from large distance, without being required to radiate themselves – Su-35 can do it from 50 kilometers head-on, and Eurofighter Typhoon from 90 kilometers, also head-on. From rear, Su-35 can detect subsonic fighters from 90 kilometers, which means that Typhoon can do the same thing from over 150 kilometers.

While F-22s radar can detect 1m2 target (which is approximately same as Typhoon’s frontal RCS when in air-to-air configuration) from 200 – 240 kilometers, jammers can reduce range required for a lock-on to be achieved to less than a third of range in non-jammed environment. That can be confirmed by recent exercises, where F-22 was unable to lock on clean-configured Typhoon from front until latter was 20 miles (32 kilometers) away; as Typhoon has frontal RCS (when clean) between 0,25 and 0,75 m2, it means that F-22’s radar range has been reduced by jammers to approximately 14,4 – 22,7 % of expected range. Thus, F-22 cannot be expected to lock on combat-configured Typhoon from range larger than 45 – 54 kilometers from front. Both ranges are well inside detection range of PIRATE IRST. With Su-35, situation is somewhat better, due to its larger RCS and lower-capability IRST; however, reduction of radar range by jammer, which means that F-22 may not be able to even launch all BVR missiles (and even if it does, 6 BVR missiles combined have Pk of 36 – 48 % against capable opponent) means that far more enemy aircraft than is assumed will be able to get to visual range with F-22.

While F-22 is a capable dogfighter for its size and weight, its low production run and high maintenance downtime mean that it will likely find itself outnumbered in any war against China – which is a primary justification for continuing production. For comparasion, while Su-35 has flyaway cost of 65 million USD at most, F-22 has flyaway cost of 250 million USD, and maintenance downtime of 45 hours per hour of flight. While I was unable to find any figures for Su-35s maintenance downtime, it most likely isn’t worse than 30 hours per hour of flight as required by USAF’s ancient F-15s. Thus, F-22 will find itself outnumbered 5:1 in best case, whereas Typhoons, with flyaway cost of 120 million USD and maintenance downtime of 10-15 hours per flight hour, might even be able to slightly outnumber Su-35s.

What is worse, Russians have air-to-air anti-radiation missile (R-27P), and are very willing to sell it over the world. As internal USAF exercises have shown during the Cold War, several aircraft equipped with anti-radiation missiles can force everyone to shut down radars. That, in turn, will force aircraft to return to visual-range dogfight, with IRST-equipped aircraft having very large advantage in situational awareness – even larger than usual.

Second claim that needs examining is the value of stealth. While I have already discussed value of stealth in air-to-air scenario, I have not addressed scenario with surface-to-air threats – mostly SAMs.

While it is true that stealth aircraft have increased survivability compared to legacy aircraft when confronted by X-band radars, it is not so with lower-frequency, long-wavelength radars. Namely, aircraft RCS depends on size and shape of aircraft, its position relative to radar waves as well as wavelength radar in question is using. Stealth aircraft are designed to scatter radar waves away from (monostatic) X-band radar, with stealth coating absorbing minor part of radar signal. However, that only works when wavelength is far shorter than dimensions of the shaping features of the aircraft. Against VHF radars, with their 1-2 meters long waves, fighter aircraft such as F-22 and F-35 will see majority of their shaping features fall into either resonance or Raleigh scattering region. In these regions, shape of feature in question becomes irrelevant, and skin becomes electrically charged by radar waves, increasing RCS even further. Against such radars, stealth aircraft are forced to use same tactics as legacy aircraft against any type of radar, making stealth irrelevant and even harmful.

Third claim is that F-22’s engines produce more thrust than any current fighter engine. While it is true, F-22 is also heaviest fighter aircraft in existence, and these powerful engines give it thrust-to-weight ratio of 1,09 at loaded weight and 1,28 with 50% fuel, 2 Sidewinders and 4 AMRAAM. Later value is same as Eurofighter Typhoon, while former is inferior to Typhoon, which has TWR of 1,14 at loaded weight. Rafale has thrust to weight ratio of 1,1 at loaded weight, and 1,23 with 2 WVR, 6 BVR missiles (all MICA) and 50% fuel.

Fourth claim is that F-22 can outmaneuver all current and projected aircraft. It cannot; thrust vectoring is only useful as help with maneuvering at speeds below 150 knots; above 150 knots aircraft ends up with drifting motion – lower aircraft has TVC, upper doesn’t – which increases drag for no decrease in turn diameter. At the onset of the turn, aircraft looses lift and sinks in mid-air, with nose rotating up. Suffice to say, both of these effects are very dangerous in visual-range dogfight, especially in era of high off-bore missiles.

Fifth claim is that “The combination of stealth, integrated avionics and supercruise drastically shrinks surface-to-air missile engagement envelopes and minimizes enemy capabilities to track and engage the F-22 .” Stealth has already been addressed as have sensors; supercruise is of interest here. While non-afterburner supercruise is useful, as it reduces fuel expenditure and heat signature of exhaust plume, it is not a game breaker. F-22 has low fuel fraction, is heavy and with large amount of drag, limiting duration of supercruise. Moreover, aircraft supercruising at Mach 1,7 can be tracked from 10% longer range than subsonic one, which means that Su-35 will detect it from 55, and Typhoon from 100 kilometers, head on. Reduction of engagement envelope can be achieved by increasing speed, supercruise or not; however, supercruise does reduce fuel expenditure, although such reduction is not very large.

Next is the claim that F-22 will have “better reliability and maintainability than any other fighter aircraft in history”. With F-22s maintenance costs and downtime being as they are (maintenance downtime of 45 hours per hour of flight, maintenance cost of 61 000 USD per hour of flight, and availability rate of 55,5%), claim is certainly false. Indeed, while Eurofighter Typhoon is a very complex aircraft, comparing it with F-22 produces shaming numbers: maintenance downtime of 10-15 hours per hour of flight, cost of 18 000 USD per hour of flight, and availability rate from 50% for Luftwaffe to 88% for RAF during Operation Elamy, RAF participation in Libya. Dassault Rafale costs 16 500 USD per hour of flight; unfortunately, I do not have figures for either maintenance downtime or availability rates.

Last is the characteristics table. While most of it seems correct – I won’t check it now – unit price is not. When debate has been held about ending F-22 production at 187 aircraft, proposal was to buy seven more F-22s for total price of 1,75 billion USD. Since it R&D expenses have already been paid, and production line was still active, sum shows an actual F-22 flyaway cost of 250 million USD per aircraft.
 

manutdfan

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@Bahamut i've read picard578's website. it's an interesting read. but he's got an affinity for Eurofighter and Rafale. most of what he's said is true. even if F-22's have a flyaway cost of $250 or 400 million it's still justifiable considering the quantum leap in technology that it provides. also IRST and VHF radars do detect stealth but they cannot track stealth fighters continuously and definitely cannot provide any missile guidance or more specifically guidance in the terminal stages of interception. please mind that i'm no stealth fanboy myself and i despise the F-35 to my guts.
 

sasum

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also IRST and VHF radars do detect stealth but they cannot track stealth fighters continuously and definitely cannot provide any missile guidance or more specifically guidance in the terminal stages of interception.
IRST provides top-class missile guidance and homing..in fact in the terminal stages, all missiles use the infrared camera to lock onto the target. VHF, I agree cannot be an airborne radar because of its antenna size.
 

Bahamut

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@Bahamut i've read picard578's website. it's an interesting read. but he's got an affinity for Eurofighter and Rafale. most of what he's said is true. even if F-22's have a flyaway cost of $250 or 400 million it's still justifiable considering the quantum leap in technology that it provides. also IRST and VHF radars do detect stealth but they cannot track stealth fighters continuously and definitely cannot provide any missile guidance or more specifically guidance in the terminal stages of interception. please mind that i'm no stealth fanboy myself and i despise the F-35 to my guts.
Land based AESR VHF radar are used as advance warning radar that will guide other radar. for locking The can detect F 22 and B2 at about 600 km and plans are there to mount them on AEWACS in future.The are used to scan a area and locate approximate location of target at long ranges and pass it to more short range but accurate radar.As for IRST with QWIP will detect a subsonic F 22 at 100-180 Km and are very accurate and can easily guide missile.
 

sasum

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plans are there to mount them on AEWACS in future.
VHF radars can't be mounted on plane. They have tall polls for antenna. They will be ground-based but can "talk to" pilots to give input. Another minus is VHF signals are noisy, indistinct and full of clutter in lower atmosphere. Plus point is long-waves of VHF can reflect back faithfully from stealth surface. Powerful computer and new signal processing algorithm will be required to make sense out of them.
 

Bahamut

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VHF radars can't be mounted on plane. They have tall polls for antenna. They will be ground-based but can "talk to" pilots to give input. Another minus is VHF signals are noisy, indistinct and full of clutter in lower atmosphere. Plus point is long-waves of VHF can reflect back faithfully from stealth surface. Powerful computer and new signal processing algorithm will be required to make sense out of them.
Yes the size and power is the main issue and they are trying to get over it but there is no success till now but research is on ,plus computing power is also increasing and new algorithm are used and developed but as there is lot of investment in it so in the next 5-10 year it will make possible to identify ,track and lock on planes using VHF only .
 

manutdfan

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IRST provides top-class missile guidance and homing..in fact in the terminal stages, all missiles use the infrared camera to lock onto the target. VHF, I agree cannot be an airborne radar because of its antenna size.
totally agree but the one mounted on the plane itself IRST/OLS or whatever you call it cannot provide guidance to the missile or course correction updates right from pre-launch to impact.
 

sasum

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totally agree but the one mounted on the plane itself IRST/OLS or whatever you call it cannot provide guidance to the missile or course correction updates right from pre-launch to impact.
There are fire and forget missiles. These missiles have on-board seekers (IRST) which home in on targets. US's much acclaimed anti-ship Harpoon is one such. Back home we have Nag anti-tank missile with own guidance. Pilot intervention of fire-&-forget missile is possible upto some distance ( See 'Know your Rafale' thread, May 22,my discussion with @Zebra) which is called re-targetting.
 
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