The wisdom of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on creating ever more advanced warplanes has come under even more doubt today, with the announcement that the F-22 fleet is going to be restricted to flights within a close proximity to airfields for the foreseeable future.
The move is a response to questions over the warplanes’ oxygen systems, concerns which have led pilots to refuse to fly the advanced planes. The exact same concern grounded the entire fleet for several months last year, and nothing was ever resolved.
Rather, officials seem to have waited for the media furor to quiet down then simply sent the fleet back up. The oxygen systems have reportedly been failing, causing serious breathing problems and in one case even a pilot’s death.
The F-22 program itself cost $66.7 billion, and though officially the “unit cost” is listed as about $150 million, government auditors say that the actual per-unit cost is closer to $400 million. That fact is moot at any rate, since the planes can’t even safely be flown from the factory to an airfield anymore, and all F-22’s are going to have to be removed from Alaska’s air patrol duty. There is speculation that the F-22’s even more expensive successor, the F-35, is going to have the exact same problem.
F22s who's pilots die of asphixiation, F35s whos budget blows out exponentially, go back to the F15 at least it works! the B52s flew for over 50 years, the C130s Ditto.
Of course the way that these new aircraft are funded it pays to have aircraft so advanced that the technology for them still doesnt exist yet!
It's all a big con game played by Isarel and the MIC on the US taxpayer . The only reason more advanced aircraft are contantly needed, is because the Pentagon gave the latest designed operational aircraft to Israel who sold them (at a clear profit) to potential enemy countries, thus guaranteeing a never-ending arms race for a more advanced designed aircraft.
lol Funny how Israel is thrown under the bus at the slightest excuse. Upto the breaking of this news the F-22 was everyone's beloved plane and now suddenly from there to Israel. lol go figure.
Are we sure its the oxygen system thats failing? It maybe the stealth technologies or the radar absorbing paint that is leaching into pilots bodies and making them sick.
LOL! Even their own airplanes are turning in on them. Can't wait till the drones start acting up and coming back to their launching point and bombing it to smithereens.