The Pentagon and Congress all but dared each other Thursday to a showdown over funding for fighter jets in a multimillion-dollar squabble that each side said they were fighting in the interests of U.S. security.
The chairman of a key House Appropriations panel said he's confident that plans to add $369 million to the Pentagon's budget for a dozen more F-22 jets will survive a White House veto threat.
I've long said I want two wings of Raptors (144 planes). I also assumed this requires more than 144 planes to account for training and experimentation, attrition, and war losses. I don't think that 187 is enough for this, but I don't know how this if calculated. The Air Force fighter guys say a minimum of about 250 are needed (some news says 243) for a moderate or possibly higher risk in carrying out our wartime missions.
This article gives me some numbers to work with. Oh, not the maintenance rate and availability junk. That stuff is true for all aircraft and is just meant to mimimize the number of apparent Raptors we have to argue for more. There is a place for this kind of math in planning operations, but procurement is not appropriate.
The numbers I take from this are that we have 130 in 7 weak squadrons as front line strength with the remainder used for training and other purposes.
Starting with two full wings we start with 144 planes as the frontline strength. Using the ratio of planes in squadrons to the training/other total, add 56 more planes. (I'm assuming the lesser planes incapable of being upgraded over the life of the plane are included in this number.) I'll assume 30 more years of useful life and that we could expect one plane lost each year, for 30 more planes for normal attrition. And then we'd want war loss replacements. Over those 30 years, most enemies won't even require the use of these planes to beat them, so I'll call it 20 more.
That adds up to 250 planes. I actually wasn't adding it up as I went so the number kind of surprised me for matching the general number the Air Force fighter guys have tossed off.
Of course, in a major war, the training/other craft would be thrown into the fight even if they aren't top of the line. They'll still be better than whatever is our second-best fighter.
I'll mention that I have a tiny number of Lockheed shares. But they aren't nearly enough to influence me into exaggerating what I think we need. If I run across calculation assumptions that lower the amount of planes we need to maintain two full squadrons for the life of the plane, I'll surely report that.
UPDATE: I meant to add that my assumptions also include the idea that our defense budget is not static. I assume that given our massive domestic spending, perhaps buying more F-22s is "affordable" in these strange budgetary times.
Strategypage rightly points out that in a static or shtrinking defense budget, we have priorities--even within the Air Force--higher than more F-22s:
The air force knows it cannot get the money for everything it needs (or thinks it needs), and has to establish priorities. A new president and Congress is likely to cut the defense budget, and the air force is eager to get sufficient money to build thousands of F-35s, to replace the many F-16s and F-15s that will be retired, because of old age, in the next decade or so.
In this reality, we still certainly need more Raptors. But we can't risk doing without the capabilities that would need to scaled back to afford more Raptors.
I'd rather change the assumption that drives Strategypage's observation. But since I can't, I accept that more American F-22s aren't going to happen.
And I'm not sure whether it is safe to allow even export versions of the plane to trusted allies such as Japan. Although I admit the Chinese might get information on the planes whether or not the Japanese have them.
