According to Sprey, a founding member of the so-called “fighter mafia” group that during the 1960s and 1970s ramrodded the F-15, F-16 and A-10 programs into being despite fierce internal opposition, “The day they send the F-16s to the ‘boneyard’ is the day the service becomes a non-Air Force.” From The F-22 Raptor is said to be invisible…until it isn’t:
Sprey said his briefing focused on the time-tested factors that define an effective fighter plane: (1) See the enemy first; (2) outnumber the enemy; (3) outmaneuver the enemy to fire, and (4) kill the enemy quickly.“The Raptor is a horrible failure on almost every one of those criteria,” Sprey said.
Can it see the enemy first?
The stellar attribute of the F-22 — its invisibility on enemy radar due to a computer-aided stealth design — is a “myth,” Sprey said. That is because in order to locate the enemy beyond visual range, the Raptor (like every other fighter) must turn on its own radar, immediately betraying its location.
Will it outnumber the enemy?
“Hitler had 70 Me-262s in combat,” Sprey said. “They were crushed by the force of 2,000 inferior P-51s that the United States had in the air.”Early reports from mock deployments of the Raptor also show a major shortfall in the fighter’s sustainability in combat, Sprey said.
“The F-16 costs one-tenth of the F-22 and flies three times as often due to the issues of stealth, complexity and maintenance affecting the Raptor,” Sprey said. Sustainability and the number of aircraft available to fight on any given day, he added, are “vastly more important” than the quality of the F-22. “You have to have numerical superiority to win.”
Evidently it won’t outmaneuver the enemy either.