60 New F-22s for USAF

[Kanastrous]

Using a nuclear defensive weapon over your own territory would inevitably start a chain of escalation to full nuclear-exchange?

Is that what US war planners have decided?

[Beowulf]

Using a nuclear defensive weapon over your own territory would inevitably start a chain of escalation to full nuclear-exchange?

Is that what US war planners have decided?

It's: Use of a weapon of mass destruction against US military personnel, or US territory. After that, the reaction chain fairly rapidly escalates into a full nuclear exchange, regardless of any intention to keep it limited. So to a first approximation, if you're going to use nuclear SAMs, you might as well just conduct a nuclear first-strike.

Nuclear SAMs and ABMs were used because technology was such that to ensure the destruction of a target, you needed a nuclear device to provide a large enough kill radius. They simply weren't accurate enough to work with a smaller warhead. And you needed to assure destruction of the target because the target was most likely carrying a nuclear warhead itself. Those are not the case anymore, so they aren't used anymore.

[MKSheppard]

Nuclear SAMs are only useful in a nuclear war, and a nuclear war will almost assuredly result in the destruction of Russia. Therefore, nuclear SAMs are kinda useless.

Wrong.

One (1) Heavy ABM system with interceptors several times larger than GBI; having been in service and operational experience gained over the last couple of decades of operation; means European Russia is essentially immune to anything short of a couple boat's worth of Tridents.

One (1) PVO-Strany defense complex that never went away like NORAD did, with scores of interceptors and radars all along the periphery.

Take into the fact that well, our nuclear forces have really gone downhill since even the force levels of the 1980s; with only 2,200 or less warheads deployed; and well, Russia will survive a nuclear war a hell of a lot better thna the US.

That said, I'd just sign a agreement with the Russians for production of at least a thousand B-72 LeMays (think Tu-160 license produced in Russia and US); and for the PAK-FA to be produced as the next "Freedom Fighter" under the designation F-24.

[Traveller]

According to the GAO, as of 2006, the total F-22 cost per unit, based on around 180ish frames is around 336 Million(This figure includes all the R+D up to this point, so I think its appropriate). Now, Im not an american taxpayer, but this cost seems far beyond any reasonable justifcation. Who exactly could threaten the US in air now, or even into the foressable future? Threats aside, the economics of these 5th Generation fighters seems excessive by any standards.

Trying to calculate the 'true' price of a combat jet is anything but simple, I have seen prices for the F-122 as 'low' as 120million/unit or high as $336million\unit as above.

Now for comparison, supposedly a f-16 C/D can run as low as ~20million unit. But I have to question even that since Turkey is looking @ 30 f-16 Block 52's which works out to $50mil/unit. The UAE Latest Block 60's come in@ 80million\unit, but they underwrote all the R+D costs. But if we use the Turkish Deal as a 'average' and take the GOA figures, it works out like this

6X F-16D (new not refurbed or boneyard but new) = One F-22.

Or if your miltary commander needs some Ground attack Aircraft thrown in there

25 A-10 Ground Aircraft(based on Avg USD 13ml\unit = 1 Raptor

Or if you prefer to mix and match

3 F-16's and ~ 11 A-10's

If it was your Airforce, what do you think is going to give you more bang for you buck and greater tactical flexibility? Ill glady concede my #'s could be open to question, Im not in the business after all. It seems hard to rationalize such massive expenditures for a nation in the middle of a fiscal crisis(largely of there own makeing, but still), nor is the USAF afaik, in any imediate threat from anyone, nor likely to be anytime soon. But then again, if the US is ready to print up a trillion dollars to bail out Wall-street Speculators, then I maybe they can print as many dollars as they need to push this program through as well.

http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.c ... -word.html

[K. A. Pital]

Nuclear SAMs and ABMs were used because technology was such that to ensure the destruction of a target, you needed a nuclear device to provide a large enough kill radius. They simply weren't accurate enough to work with a smaller warhead. And you needed to assure destruction of the target because the target was most likely carrying a nuclear warhead itself. Those are not the case anymore, so they aren't used anymore.

So? What has changed? Nuclear SAMs and ABMs were needed to ensure target destruction. Once it became clear that the target can be destroyed by conventional means, without the side effect of EMP knocking out your stuff, nuclear SAMs and ABMs were frowned upon.

Now we're back to square one, a nuclear detonation will efficiently destroy the target.

Oh, and cut it with the "weapon of mass destruction against fighters" - I'm sure using tactical nuclear devices won't be considered grounds for a batshit all-out launch. In essence, the EMP of a nuclear detonation is still large from small yields, because it's regression follows a different law; hence, you can use nukes with very small yields for non-neglible EMP effects.

The real reason nuclear and EMP weapons aren't proliferated is that so far there have been other means of dealing with the enemy. If you need to deal with stealth, you are fully justified in using "WMD" SAMs.

And somehow I didn't see either US or Soviet planners considering the use of nuclear-tipped SAMs a trigger for nuclear war in the 1960s - at an all-time high for tensions, when both nations used, and planned to use nuclear armed anti-air missiles routinely. So perhaps you could expand a little on your strawman about nuclear SAMs being equivalent to nuclear war. Shep is right, that's just silly.

[phongn]

Trying to calculate the 'true' price of a combat jet is anything but simple, I have seen prices for the F-122 as 'low' as 120million/unit or high as $336million\unit as above.

If you just sort of assume that R&D are sunk costs now, then any additional expenditure is $120M/unit or so. Yes, it is still expensive.

Now for comparison, supposedly a f-16 C/D can run as low as ~20million unit. But I have to question even that since Turkey is looking @ 30 f-16 Block 52's which works out to $50mil/unit. The UAE Latest Block 60's come in@ 80million\unit, but they underwrote all the R+D costs. But if we use the Turkish Deal as a 'average' and take the GOA figures, it works out like this

6X F-16D (new not refurbed or boneyard but new) = One F-22.

Or if your miltary commander needs some Ground attack Aircraft thrown in there

25 A-10 Ground Aircraft(based on Avg USD 13ml\unit = 1 Raptor

Or if you prefer to mix and match

3 F-16's and ~ 11 A-10's

Well, you're missing the costs of reopening the A-10 production line (expensive!) and then you're implicitly conceding that you'll purchase aircraft with obsolete systems (Block 52 F-16, A-10A). If you want aircraft with modern avionics (F-16 Block 60, A-10C, etc) that'll cost more and reduce your numbers. Then - you have to decide what you want to do as well. If you want air-superiority, another airframe is needed. If we add in a hypothetical air-combat-optimized version of the F-15SG, that'd be on the order of $100M/unit. Don't forget that the cost of some birds you quoted might be in older fiscal-year dollars and have to be adjusted.

In short - what are the requirements?

[Sea Skimmer]

According to the GAO, as of 2006, the total F-22 cost per unit, based on around 180ish frames is around 336 Million(This figure includes all the R+D up to this point, so I think its appropriate).

Why? That R&D money, which is over half of all the cost, is already spent and gone. The only rational cost to consider at this point is the flyaway cost which is about 130 million for current aircraft, and expected to drop to about 110 million for any follow on order as is being considered here. The F-22 was originally planned around a production run of no less then 750, at which point the total unit cost would have been less then 100 million counting R&D.

This is the stupidity of cutting numbers to ‘save money’ you enormously drive up the cost of each weapon you actually get at an incredible unfavorable rate.

Now, Im not an american taxpayer, but this cost seems far beyond any reasonable justifcation. Who exactly could threaten the US in air now, or even into the foressable future? Threats aside, the economics of these 5th Generation fighters seems excessive by any standards.

The future for the F-22 is 40 years long; can you claim to foresee the air threats of 2049? In the future fighters will not be cheaper, they will be far more expensive. Buying a sufficient pool of F-22s now ensures we don’t get screwed over and have to start designing a new fighter in an even more drawn out and colossal program around 2020 when other nations really start catching up to the whole stealth deal.

Trying to calculate the 'true' price of a combat jet is anything but simple, I have seen prices for the F-122 as 'low' as 120million/unit or high as $336million\unit as above.

See above, flyaway cost (what you pay to build one plane) vs. total program cost divided by number of aircraft. The Air Force has been very open about the costs involved in this program by military standards.

Now for comparison, supposedly a f-16 C/D can run as low as ~20million unit.

In 1990 maybe, for a model which was approaching obsolesce even back then. So what? That’s also BTW related to the fact that over 4,000 F-16s have been produced which created an immense economy of scale.

But I have to question even that since Turkey is looking @ 30 f-16 Block 52's which works out to $50mil/unit. The UAE Latest Block 60's come in@ 80million\unit, but they underwrote all the R+D costs. But if we use the Turkish Deal as a 'average' and take the GOA figures, it works out like this

6X F-16D (new not refurbed or boneyard but new) = One F-22.

That’s nice, the F-22 has beat F-16s in two on sixteen scenarios, repeatedly and could do better except that it doesn’t have enough missiles to get even more kills, so it would just run away in real life. The Block 52 standard dates to 1993 and is just plain obsolete, and the airframe is incapable of carrying out the missions intended for the F-22. Thanks for showing yet how much more cost effective the F-22 is.

Of course, comparing single engine fighters to twin engine fighters is apples and oranges already. An F-15, the only plane we could even think about comparing an F-22 for and it already costs around 80 million dollars. Its absurd to think that we should not just spend 40% more for a plane that’s a dozen times more effective.

Or if your miltary commander needs some Ground attack Aircraft thrown in there

25 A-10 Ground Aircraft(based on Avg USD 13ml\unit = 1 Raptor

WTF? Okay, so you take the 1984 price, that's the last time an A-10 was built, for a ground attack plane that doesn’t even have a radar and compare it to the 2009 price of an air superiority fighter? What is that supposed to demonstrate?

Hey here’s another meaningless comparison of dissimilar weapons across time. A P-38L cost 97,000 dollars in 1944, so we can buy 83,505 of them for the cost of the nuclear powered Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier. Clearly the P-38L is the plane of the future! 20 million for an F-16 is clearly far too expensive when the P-38L can spam the enemy to death until he runs out of ammo.

Or if you prefer to mix and match

3 F-16's and ~ 11 A-10's

Okay, so you really actually think you can trade F-22s against A-10s? Do you even know what the job of a fighter is?

If it was your Airforce, what do you think is going to give you more bang for you buck and greater tactical flexibility?

The F-22, because it wont simply be shot down by anyone who can afford a Su-30. It will actually accomplish its missions, which no other aircraft can think about doing and will completely dominate the enemy in the air as well as providing an incredible potent SEAD capability.

[Sea Skimmer]

And somehow I didn't see either US or Soviet planners considering the use of nuclear-tipped SAMs a trigger for nuclear war in the 1960s - at an all-time high for tensions, when both nations used, and planned to use nuclear armed anti-air missiles routinely. So perhaps you could expand a little on your strawman about nuclear SAMs being equivalent to nuclear war. Shep is right, that's just silly.

That logic makes no sense, in the 1960s both sides essentially ruled out the possibility of a conventional conflict at all. So of course we had nukes on everything, any and all wars between superpowers would be nuclear from the first minute. Only latter did both sides build up conventional forces to the point that it was slightly within reason that a war might at least start out purely conventional, abet it was never very reasonable to expect a war would not have soon gone nuclear.

[K. A. Pital]

That logic makes no sense, in the 1960s both sides essentially ruled out the possibility of a conventional conflict at all.

Differentiating between conventional and nuclear during the Cold War was always there; quite a few WARPAC war games concerning the TOE in Europe had descriptions of a period of purely conventional operations before strategical nuclear devices were considered.

...any and all wars between superpowers would be nuclear from the first minute

Certainly they had a distinction between going all out ballistic, and considerations before the strike which necessarily applied to planning. "First minute"? It's quite so in case of a NATO nuclear first strike in a response to WARPAC conventional attack, but it seems that even the US politicians wanted more leeway with nukes than offered by their predecessors with "massive retaliation".

Certainly, by the 1950s, NATO war plans assumed early use of nuclear weapons, even immediate use under some circumstances.[1] By the 1960s, however, the situation began to change as the Kennedy and Johnson administrations began to push for contingency planning for conventional and limited nuclear war. Moreover, U.S. presidents would make final decisions on nuclear weapons use (unless the president was out of action and predelegation arrangements kicked in). Nevertheless, as shown by the documents that follow, high-level U.S. officials assumed that a Warsaw Pact conventional or nuclear attack on NATO Europe would invite a U.S. nuclear response (unless the Soviets agreed to limit fighting to conventional weapons).

The scenarios that the NESC presented drew upon major targeting options in the still-secret U.S. strategic nuclear war plan, the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) that went into effect in fiscal year 1963. For example, SIOP-63 included a counterforce option designed to limit a major nuclear attack to Soviet bloc nuclear weapons targets only--virtually a first strike option--which senior officials wanted available when a Soviet attack seemed imminent. At several points in the scenarios in this report the decisionmakers ordered counterforce attacks; for example in the one for a European conflict, they ordered a "limited counterforce attack" that would supposedly have been "carefully constrained to reduce urban-industrial damage." Other options in SIOP 63 were for attacks on cities/industrial targets only, attacks on nonnuclear military targets, combinations of those target categories, as well as "withholds" for China and Eastern European countries. Even though the Kennedy administration was looking for alternatives to Truman-Eisenhower era "massive retaliation", SIOP options nevertheless stipulated enormous nuclear attacks.

[Sea Skimmer]

Differentiating between conventional and nuclear during the Cold War was always there; quite a few WARPAC war games concerning the TOE in Europe had descriptions of a period of purely conventional operations before strategical nuclear devices were considered.

Irrelevant, a period might exist, but still, the war would quickly go nuclear, everyone knew it, planned for it and expected it, and thus designed weapons to suit that situation. NATO ground forces couldn’t have lasted more then a couple days at best, and the longer we waited to use nukes the worse even a limited nuclear war would be for us, so it made little sense to delay it. And this is all why WW3 never happened.

Talk of limited nuclear war is as absurd. To be effective at stopping an attack even a limited nuclear strikes would easily involve hundreds of devices and millions of people killed. After that, then what, one side just gives up and cedes world domination to the other which has just killed more people then Hitler? Yeah right. A purely conventional war or limited nuclear war only works if both sides have an omniscient view of the world.

Certainly they had a distinction between going all out ballistic, and considerations before the strike which necessarily applied to planning. "First minute"? It's quite so in case of a NATO nuclear first strike in a response to WARPAC conventional attack, but it seems that even the US politicians wanted more leeway with nukes than offered by their predecessors with "massive retaliation".

And that’s why they started building up a conventional army… except then they promptly sent it off to die in Vietnam, leaving Europe as poorly defended (in conventional terms) as ever until the 1980s. This is why the Kennedy administration is pretty much the dumbest in history. At least when Bush crippled our army by invading Iraq, we didn’t have anything else pressing to do with it.

The 1980s buildup took place in large part because of a fear that Soviet conventional strength was now so great you guys would just plain overrun all of our European nukes before we could use them. However its strength was still never sufficient to engage the entire Soviet army.. so nuclear war was still going to be inevitable unless the Soviet Union launched a huge attack, suffered enormous losses, didn’t commit any reserves, and then just gave up, this is not a very rational scenario . If someone starts popping off nukes for ‘defensive’ purposes, that’s not going to help things back down.

I find the idea of limiting nuclear war through purely counter force attacks to be especially hilarious, since that places the opponent in a do or die situation in which its own nuclear arsenal is so reduced they might have no choice BUT to launch an attack on the enemy’s population centers. The US had hoards of SOIPs for any given year anyway. Of course you'd have one to cover about every senario, that just means someone made a plan.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, that's all true. But in case you're dealing with 600 top line US fighters attacking 400 top line Russian fighters (and most likely we're talking about thousands of legacy fighters duking it out in the same place) that's most certainly already a huge US-Russia (or US-China) war which is probably either already gone nuclear, or about to go nuclear anyway.

So what reservations about using nuclear SAMs would one have?

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, if I’m going to use nukes first, I’d much prefer it to be in an offensive manner. Got a problem with F-22s? Then nuke the F-22 base. Air superiority has always been won by attacking the enemy on the ground anyway; shooting down planes in the air has rarely been the decisive factor. Using nukes defensively first invites the enemy to then make the first offensive strike. I’d much rather strike offensively; then use my nuclear SAMs to destroy an already weakened or at least less organized enemy counter attack.

Also the command and control problem are huge. If you have a nuclear SAM, and you want to shoot it at an intermittent radar contract like an F-22, how quickly will political leadership grant permission to shoot? Probably not fast enough to make a hit, F-22’s speed and altitude matter here as much as its stealth. Now political leadership could just delegate the authority to use nukes first, but would anyone really give some SAM battery, or even a regional air defence command center, authority to shoot a nuke when it thinks the time is best? I think not.

You also have significant problems simply by having nuclear SAMs even loaded on the launcher. Mainly, one might be accidental fired, and even if it is not armed, that’s not good. This was a big factor in the decline of nuclear SAMs and why the USN didn’t develop a nuclear version of SM-2. With VLS we wouldn’t have been able to physically remove the nuclear warheads from the missiles (this was done with Talos and Terrier SAMs, and Nike Hercules as well) to ensure that no accident launch could lose a nuke. Of course doing this also meant you didn’t have nuclear SAMs at instant readiness… so why bother?

So all and all, nuclear SAMs are not that useful at all in the absence of full scale nuclear war when you just cease to care about positive control or losing a bomb or anything at all like that. Given all the costs involved with giving each SAM battery the command and control and security to handle nuclear weapons, well, it might be cheaper to just buy even more SAM batteries and thicken up the defenses. If you have a dense enough defence, even a stealth plane simply can’t pass by it without being detected, no special VHF radar or nuclear warheads required. In fact, I strongly suspect this is why most versions of S-300 never had nuclear warheads, it would just be too much trouble and money for dozens of regiments to be so armed and to all have secure command links to Moscow.

I’m also just kind of dubious that you‘d even get many situations in which you could nuke the F-22 and yet not already be able to engage it with conventional missiles. Especially if you remotely care about not spamming nukes all over your own skies at a fairly low ceiling compared to ABM and you dont want to end up shooting nukes as US jammer drones which might simulate F-22 radar emissions. Maybe I’m wrong on that, but a reasonable sized nuke still has to come awful close to a mach 2 target to kill it.

Nuclear ABM is easier, since at least for the US and Russia, we could pretty well assume any ballistic missile coming at our cities would have a nuclear warhead, and ABM command centers would already be staffed by very high ranking generals to ensure positive control. The weapons themselves have no alternative uses to stir up trouble.

[K. A. Pital]

But why "first"? The nuclear combat can continue for days, if not weeks, or so at least people thought in the 1960-1990s. Has anything changed?

I’m also just kind of dubious that you‘d even get many situations in which you could nuke the F-22 and yet not already be able to engage it with conventional missiles.

I mainly thought about overseas engagements, because the envelopes of detection outwards into the seas offered by Daryal and Volga type radars are pretty huge.

Maybe I’m wrong on that, but a reasonable sized nuke still has to come awful close to a mach 2 target to kill it.

Why? EMP disruptions can affect a circle of a dozen or a hundred kilometers easily; you could calculate the needed strike envelope and the needed detonation altitude.

Besides, when considering naval SAMs, it's likewise reasonable to assume that even if the SAMs have other uses, those "other uses" are also pretty well boding with nuclear warheads; like for example, using S-300 as anti-ship missiles with nukes will ensure that even a single hit means target ship and it's vinicity is toast.

I agree that it makes no sense to make a huge number of nuclear-armed SAM batteries; but hence my comment about a saturated SAM environment where the majority of conventional SAMs are augmented by a few batteries armed with nuclear warheads. Makes sense in remote areas of Russia (if someone's penetrating there, that's quite certainly nuclear war already), and at sea.

[Starglider]

Good analysis by Sea Skimmer.

Why? EMP disruptions can affect a circle of a dozen or a hundred kilometers easily; you could calculate the needed strike envelope and the needed detonation altitude.

What exactly do you think is the damaging mechanism for EMP? This isn't Hollywood where everything electrical in the blast radius magically burns out. An EMP induces a current in all unshielded conductors roughly proportional to the length of the conductor. It will not affect anything in a Faraday cage (up to reasonable saturation limits). EMP will knock out power distribution grids, telephone lines (but not fibre optics) and anything connected to a large aerial. Everything on a modern fighter is going to be shielded except the radar and comms aerials, and I imagine they have some kind of surge suppression. The general line I have heard from experts on this is that 'EMP is not really a problem for modern military systems, but it's still a huge issue for civillian infrastructure'.

[K. A. Pital]

The general line I have heard from experts on this is that 'EMP is not really a problem for modern military systems, but it's still a huge issue for civillian infrastructure'.

"Is not really a problem"? You think the sensitive radar and comm equipment of the F-22 won't be totally fucked up after an EMP, considering that it managed to fuck itself up simply due to flying in a cluttered environment recently, IIRC? Of course, the plane itself might not completely fail, but how useful is it without it's radar and comm?

[Starglider]

The general line I have heard from experts on this is that 'EMP is not really a problem for modern military systems, but it's still a huge issue for civillian infrastructure'.

"Is not really a problem"? You think the sensitive radar and comm equipment of the F-22 won't be totally fucked up after an EMP,

Well, I know that phased array radar is inherently less vulnerable because the individual antennae elements are smaller, and that is is quite possible to protect civilian radio transmitters against lightning strikes to the antennaes. So I would imagine that the EMP hardening on the F-22 is quite effective, but I do not have the expertise to know for sure.

considering that it managed to fuck itself up simply due to flying in a cluttered environment recently, IIRC?

Wasn't that a software fault?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Don't they actually have to reset the radar systems and software in event of an EMP surge? Have they actually attempted a restart for the Raptor in flight?

[phongn]

Don't they actually have to reset the radar systems and software in event of an EMP surge? Have they actually attempted a restart for the Raptor in flight?

During F-22 testing they had incidents where the onboard systems crashed and they had to reboot in-flight. However, this is embedded software so it's not like the pilot is going to watch a load screen.

The general line I have heard from experts on this is that 'EMP is not really a problem for modern military systems, but it's still a huge issue for civillian infrastructure'.

"Is not really a problem"? You think the sensitive radar and comm equipment of the F-22 won't be totally fucked up after an EMP, considering that it managed to fuck itself up simply due to flying in a cluttered environment recently, IIRC? Of course, the plane itself might not completely fail, but how useful is it without it's radar and comm?

There are a variety of techniques used to defend radio systems against HEMP, such as detecting the leading edge of the pulse, shutting the system down some (very short) period of time and then restarting. In one example, the big phased arrays first deployed for the Nike ABMs were designed to be hardened against HEMP.