Chicago Rules: Have you noticed the strangely heavy outbreak of bad F-22 news recently? The timing is convenient for F-22 foes; they face a do-or-die Senate vote this week, so any negativity is welcome. The bad news started Thursday, when USMC Gen. James Cartwright, JCS vice chairman, told a Senate panel about a new Joint Staff-led study—heretofore unknown—validating DOD's plan for 187 F-22s (not 243, USAF's requirement). Next came a punch from US theater commanders; as General Cartwright told it, they didn't want more F-22s as much as they wanted more EW versions of the Navy F/A-18. On Friday came a tiresome Washington Post gut job, titled, "Premier US Fighter Jet Has Major Shortcomings" (more on which below.) Among the story's sources: "confidential Pentagon test results," "Pentagon officials," "internal [Pentagon] documents," "The Defense Department," "a Defense Department critic of the plane," "other skeptics inside the Pentagon," "Pentagon audits," "two Defense officials with access to internal reports." Hmmm. Do you think DOD might have planted this story? Others have watched this spectacle and drawn their own conclusions. Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb on Friday posted a story noting how Pentagon leaders have been spanked by Congress on the F-22 recently. "So what does the White House do?" asked Goldfarb. "It goes on offense." It's what happens when you are not winning the argument on the merits.
The F-22, Bagel and a Smear: The Washington Post's putative exposé of the F-22 and all its shortcomings, printed on its front page Friday (and picked up as gospel by various wires and blogs over the weekend), was riddled with inaccuracies, according to the Air Force, Lockheed Martin, and our own investigation. The Post said only 55 percent of the F-22 fleet is available for missions "guarding US airspace," but as we reported recently, the F-22's combat air forces mission capable rates have been climbing slowly but steadily, and inlate June stood at 62.9 percent, according to Air Combat Command. On Friday, Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-22, said in a statement that the MC rate "has improved from 62 percent to 68 percent from 2004-2009 and we are on track to achieve an 85 percent MCR by the time the fleet reaches maturity," or 100,000 hours, which should take place next year. The company also said that the mean time between maintenance—the number of hours an F-22 flies before it needs service—rose from 0.97 hours in 2004 to 3.22 hours in Lot 6 aircraft. The Post claimed a figure of 1.7 hours. Direct maintenance man-hours per flying hour have dropped from 18.1 in 2008 to 10.46 in 2009, "which exceeds the requirement of 12," the company added. The Post used out of date figures from 2004-2008 when the rates were higher because the F-22 was a new system. The Post also trotted out the old school criticism of stealth that it is somehow "vulnerable to rain," but the company noted that the F-22 is "an all-weather fighter and has been exposed to the harshest climates in the world—ranging from the desert in Nevada and California, extreme cold in Alaska, and rain/humidity in Florida and Guam—and performed magnificently." The information quoted by the Post "is incorrect," the company said flatly. While the Post led its piece saying that the F-22 costs more to fly per hour than the F-15 it replaces, it didn't say whether it had factored inflation or fuel prices into that cost and neglected to point out that the F-15 has no stealth coatings to maintain. An Air Force public affairs spokeswoman said the Post did not contact the service for comment on the story before publication. The F-22 passed Follow-On Test and Evaluation Testing in 2005, and in FOT&E II, in 2007, USAF's test and evaluation outfit rated the F-22 "effective, suitable, and mission capable," despite the Post's claims that it "flunked" those evaluations. The Post attributed most of its information to unnamed Defense Department sources.
(Partial caption to the photo at left, above: "Here, four F-22 Raptor aircraft, assigned to the 90th Fighter Squadron, Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, fly over Andersen AFB, Guam, May 13, 2009. The F-22s, deployed here as part of the 525th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, are supporting Pacific Command's latest theater security package rotation." [US Air Force photo by SrA. Christopher Bush])
And the Air Force's Take: The Air Force also objected to the Washington Post's loose interpretation of F-22 statistics, and the paper's portrait of the fighter as overly expensive, unreliable, and ineffective (see above). Generally, according to USAF's analysis of the article, the Post either used outdated data or exaggerated problems that have long since been corrected. The Post quoted a variety of F-22 glitches from Government Accountability Office reports issued seven years ago, when the F-22 was still in development. In a four-page rebuttal provided to the Daily Report of 23 claims the Post made in its hatchet job on the F-22, the Air Force dismissed the Post's claim that the F-22's stealthy skin maintenance issues are somehow due to rain, and the service said that the Post was wrong in saying the trend is that F-22 has gotten harder and more costly to maintain. "Not true," the service said. The rates "have been improving." The Air Force said the Raptor's cost per flying hour is not much greater than that of the F-15—$19,750 vs. $17,465—and the F-22 is a far more powerful and capable machine. The Post had claimed a cost of more than $40,000 per flying hour. Likewise, whereas the Post claimed the fleet had to be retrofitted due to "structural problems," this claim is "misleading," USAF said. Lessons learned from a static test model were applied to production of new aircraft and retrofitted to earlier aircraft; a normal part of the testing and development process. One problem the Air Force owned up to: The F-22 canopy's stealth coatings last only about half as long as they're supposed to. The service said the program has put some fixes into play and "coating life continues to improve." The Air Force also confirmed Lockheed's contention that the mission capable rate had risen over the years to 68 percent fleetwide today.
I find the title to the first item above… and the narrative therein… to be both interesting and appropriate, given the administration's geographical origins and political methods. This isn't the first time Obamanauts have either made up their own facts or taken things out of context to further their objectives, no?
And about that WaPo article… While I pointedly ignored it when it was published last week, our favorite former fighter pilot did NOT ignore the smear. Lex published a damned good and rather extensive essay on the F-22 last week… written with and from a fighter pilot's perspective… and he takes serious issue with both the Post and other critics of the F-22. His conclusion:
Tremendous maneuver advantages accrue to those that can sweep the air above a battlefield, and the F-22 does so better than any other design. One hundred and eighty seven is, however, too few to do so persistently in an away game.
Read the whole thing. The comments, too. They… the commentariat… are always interesting and informed over there.
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