F-22A Raptor - Bad timing

Posted on: Dec. 20th, 2005 || Source: flightinternational.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

F-22A Raptor - Bad timing

There’s something discomfiting about spending tens of billions of dollars more on a weapon that virtually everyone realises is useless in the ongoing war against faceless insurgents and terrorists.
It is with some relief then that the US Air Force announced the Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22A Raptor’s operational debut without resorting to the overstated marketing campaigns that have sometimes characterised the programme’s development.

The F-22A is many things, but it is clearly not part of the solution for coalition commanders trying to keep order on the streets of Baghdad and Bagram. The F-22’s design role was air superiority, not ground attack. USAF Chief of Staff Gen Michael Moseley agrees. “In the role that we’re in now with [Boeing] F-15Es carrying 2,000-pounders and [Lockheed] F-16s carrying 500- and 2,000-pounders, does the F-22 bring something significantly different to this fight this afternoon? The answer is no.”

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