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Revolution in the balance: budget cuts threaten F/A-22 programme
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| 08 July 2005 |
By Bill Sweetman
It is the best and worst of times for the Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptor fighter. Last year, the fighter emerged from a long and arduous development programme with a successful initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) programme, which demonstrated that the F/A-22 represents a vast increase in survivability and lethality over any other fighter. The aircraft was proceeding towards full-rate production at a unit cost which, although high, was at least stable. Avionics problems which had crippled flight testing in 2001-02 had been largely solved and the aircraft was well on its way to approval for full-rate production, which was attained in April.
At the end of the year, however, a leaked memorandum - Program Budget Decision (PBD) 753 - from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) threw the programme's entire future into jeopardy, by planning to terminate production in Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08), after the delivery of 178 aircraft. Before that, the programme had been working with a fixed total cost cap and a flexible production number; OSD budgeteers expected to see 279 aircraft produced, while the USAF hoped for more. The lower number has several implications, all of them negative.
Ironically, though, one of the biggest impediments in the path of efforts to save the programme is the security regime that was established to protect it. One consistent theme through the life of the F/A-22 project is that the fighter's classified capabilities are beyond what they are generally understood to be.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics president Ralph Heath remarked at the Paris Air Show in June 2005 that USAF pilots flying the F/A-22 are "discovering and inventing" new ways to use the fighter in combat, "things we never imagined before", says Heath. "The word back is, 'Holy smokes, this thing is very, very different,'" he adds. Programme officials predict even more innovations once the aircraft is in service and the 422nd Test & Evaluation Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base (AFB) can focus on developing new tactics.
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