Vendetta wrote:The taxpayer cost involved in doing so given the current state of the US economy would destroy the nation entirely.
Actually, you could run a military as big as the old 1960s military (and build it) without breaking the budget.
The keys here are
1.)
No joint national programs. The British and everyone else can develop their own goddamn stealth fighter. Bringing in foreigners triples the cost of any program at a minimum, as the UK found out with EF 2000 versus building an equivalent study by BAE alone.
2.)
No joint interservice programs (beyond simple stuff like tactical trucks etc). The abortion that is the F-35 is a result of Clinton killing the Navy's AFX program, as well as the USAF and Marines' programs for F-16 and AV-8 replacements, and telling them they had to concentrate on a single plane if they wanted one.
3.)
No High-Low Mixes. Development costs for the F-35 is about $40 billion. That's 285 more F-22s. If you add in the $200 billion that will be needed for buying 2,400 F-35s, you get 1,400 more F-22s. As a bonus, the F-22 flies higher and faster, and supercruises; giving it significant advantages over the F-35. It also has twin engines, meaning much less operational attrition.
4.)
Deleting Congressional Oversight. This has ended up costing us more than it saves, as Congress fucks around with and completely alters budgets. A hypothetical example: We have programmed say, $2 billion for the next three fiscal years in R&D for the F-40 program. The next year, congress decides arbitrarily to rearrange funding to $1.8 billion over the next five fiscal years as an "economy" measure. This leads to program delays, hence increased costs, since the accountants cannot plan ahead reliably.
This also eliminates the traditional Congressional game of "oh my god, this F-40 will cost us $150 million each to buy 1,000 of them! Lets cut the buy to five hundred F-40s! We'll save money that way!" completely fucking up the programmed buys of long lead items -- this is one reason we really only have two operational Seawolves.
All the bids for the various spare parts et al for the SSN-21 program were made by contractors and vendors for a projected fleet of twelve SSN-21s. Then congress cut it to two boats; with a third added by Clinton during his re-election campaign. This of course meant that the contractors had to raise prices on the parts in order to not take a bath on building them.
The thing is; Congress also cut the spare parts budget for the SSN-21 class at the same time they terminated the other ten boats; and the increased prices of the spares meant proportionately less were acquired, meaning the class was chronically short of parts - at least one SSN-21 is sort of in degraded condition to keep the other two at full efficiency.
5.)
No cancelling programs for lighter, cheaper versions. Classic case in point is theSSN-21/Centurion/NSSN/Virginia class mess. The hue and cry in 1990 or so was "with the Cold War over, why are we going to buy 12 to 29 Seawolf SSN-21s to defend against a threat which just evaporated?"
After much congressional back and forth, it's agreed to terminate the program at two boats, and develop a cheaper SSN as an alternative, named "Centurion" or NSSN. This program would also be oriented away from "legacy" missions and more towards "littorial" missions to stay "revelant" to Congress. At the time the Centurion/NSSN program was launched; the price was to be $1.5 billion per boat.
By the time it was in production as the Virginia SSN, it cost about $2 billion per boat in FY2007. Earlier boats in FY05 cost about $2.3 billion. Meanwhile, the third Seawolf, added to production orders by Clinton against the Navy's wishes because he made a campaign promise to keep the shipyards open, cost $1.9 billion (adjusted to FY07 dollars). I don't have any firm figures on how much we spent in development on the Virginias, but one of the program reports I have for early in the program shows a steady supply of about $567 million in FY07 dollars each year in R&DTE funding over several years; that adds up pretty fast.
Another case in point is Congress and the F-22 vs F-35. They looked towards the F-35 as the "Cheap" alternative to the expensive F-22, since it was programmed to cost quite a bit less than the F-22.
However, the F-22 was just finishing it's torturous development cycle, while the F-35 was only just beginning it.
Right now, there's only a $58 million difference between the F-22 and F-35; and the F-22 flies much higher and faster (the F-35 had supercruise deleted to save money in development); among other things. This is all based on an $80 million fly away cost for the F-35; which is only likely to go up, as F-35 numbers are cut. So it's very likely the total cost difference will be only $30~ million between the two.
Additionally, we only need to look into the recent sad saga of the ARH-70. We cancelled Comanche because it would have cost too much -- $23.5 million for the first 12 of them, and about $17 ish million with mass production; in favor of the ARH-70, which was to cost $8.56 million per copy. When ARH-70 died; it's unit cost was $14.48 million. Basically, we were gonna pay 85% percent of the price of a mass production RAH-66 to get a converted traffic helicopter with virtually no armament and armor; while Comanche had excellent built in ballistic protection for the crew and the heaviest armament to weight ratio of any helicopter. Brilliance.
6.)
Withdraw Forces from Overseas: It costs roughly twice as much to station a division overseas as it does to keep it in CONUS. Why do we have 31,460 troops in Korea, when the South Koreans have built up an excellent military with modern weapons? Really, do we need a full division equivalent or two as a tripwire force there when a couple of brigades will do the job?
7.)
Eliminate Ballistic Missiles: This means you, Minuteman and Trident. It costs a lot of money each year for the C3I network needed to command SSBNs and Missile fields, and they're becoming more and more obsolete with each passing year as ABM grows around the world. Use the money saved from drawdown of the Missile forces to rebuild our strategic air forces.
"
- PeZook
The F-22 can fill any of the roles that the F-15/F-16 can now; the only problem stopping it from carrying out some of the more estosteric missions is lack of systems integration; because initial F-22 avonics baselines focused on getting air to air capability first (like the very first F-15s).