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An F-22 ----- by most accounts, the world?s most advance fighter aircraft-----cools down after a 10 hour flight from Hawaii to Japan last month. The Air Force has bought 183 F-22s and wants more. But no F22s have seen action yet in either Iraq or Afghanistan and performance reports reveal that the $350 million airplane is ready to fly just 62% of the time.
The fighter can fly at supersonic speeds without using afterburners, meaning that it can reach and stay in a battlespace faster and longer without being easily detected. It is also easier to maneuver and provides much better visibility and electronic information systems to keep the pilot informed about targets, and able to pass that information on to others in battle.
The Army
Defense Secretary Robert Gates FINAL TARGET IS ON LAND. THE Army is getting $160 billion to outfit a third of its force with a complex network of electronically linked vehicles, beginning in 2015. This supposedly synchronized web of vehicles is called the Future Combat Systems (FCS) and would include tanks, troop carriers and unmanned aircraft ostensibly knit together in a computerized cavalry.
Losing Steam
The Navy?s newest carrier, the George H. W. Bush, was commissioned last month in Norfolk Va. Jan. 2009, becoming the 10th and final ship of the Nimitz class. The Navy wants to spend about $100 billion on new Ford-class carriers. Naval analyst doubt it makes economic or military sense to invest so much in carriers when smaller vessels increasingly pack nearly as much punch.
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