With their obsession over Obamacare and the supposed inability for government to deliver on large expensive programs, you'd think Republicans may want to consider directing some of their righteous anger at the F22 fighter jet program. Ladies and Gentleman... feast your eyes on the amazing Lockheed Martin F22 Raptor. It's only $350M per jet, or possibly as low as $175M (rollout cost) or as expensive as $687M (total operating cost).
Not only is this amazing machine inferior to Russian and Chinese fighter jets in
close combat... nobody can figure out exactly what's wrong with it... but they think they've discovered the problem!
Is it true it can't fly in the rain?
is it true it can't fly above 44,000 feet?
Who cares about close combat anyway, that's unlikely?
Descend below the orange squiggly, titled 5 degrees for some reason... and we'll find out for ourselves whether or not this bad boy should be scrapped altogether or fixed and made to work as it was intended (like Obamacare) and then compare the cost to the outrageous cost of the healthcare website!
Mission Control
Star Date 2024
Your Mission: Chinese jet fighters have engaged Nato forces over a set of small islands off the coast of China and are engaging fighter aircraft in close combat. Enter the air space from the East, engage the Chinese jets and destroy them.
Mission notes: In case of light rain or dense fog abandon hopes of remaining stealth. Also, don't fly above 44,000 feet. If the Chinese jets attack from above, retreat. Also, bring some liquid O2 in beer hats in case you can't breathe for some reason. And lastly, don't tell anyone how much these Fifth generation jets costs.
Okay... let's get serious.
THE RAIN ISSUE
First, while it's true that F-22's seem to lose their stealth ability in the rain, that doesn't mean they can't fly in the rain. Here's a video of one flying in the rain. And, there was a TOP GUNworthy incident with a message from uncle Sam:
“He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home.’”
IS IT SAFE ABOVE 44,000 FEET
Because of the incredible g-forces it's capable of and oxygen suits worn by pilots it's been reported that they suffer what has been described as "Raptor cough"...
From wired.com:
"Maj. Jeremy Gordon, a Virginia Raptor flier who blew the whistle on the Air Force last year, described a typical room full of F-22 pilots where “the vast majority will be coughing a lot of the time.” One Air Force widow claimed her F-22 pilot husband’s coughing contributed to his suicide."
While critics of the jet fighter abound, there are some positive aspects as well. This jet fighter owns the skies when it comes to long range combat and the likelihood of close range combat with other jets is extremely unlikely.
Like the Obamacare website and the Affordable Care Act in general there sure is a lot of criticism over the F22 Raptor, but where liberals want to shut the program down (and basically have) Republicans want to keep this bad boy running. How do the costs compare?
The estimated cost of the Obamacare website, from the Washington Post:
"A conservative figure would be $70 million. A more modest figure would be $125 million to $150 million. Or one could embrace the entire project, as outlined by GAO, and declare that it is at least $350 million."
The estimated cost of one F22 Raptor, from wired.com:
"Haters cite “unit cost,” which includes development and production spending divided by the number of jets built. F-22 production and development, including currently approved upgrades, totals $74 billion, resulting in a unit cost of $377 million."
Fly away costs for the jet are as low as $177M per unit and the total program costs plus planned upgrades can put the cost per jet as high as $687M per jet.
If we take the median estimated costs for the jet fighter and the highest estimated costs for healthcare.gov we have a close race for 'government products that are extremely expensive and require a lot of fixes'.
What do you think?