Comments about ‘Misinformation spread about F-22’

It seems that James and Orrin are morons. The F22 is an expensive piece of crap which cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $44,000 for every hour of flight time and whose radar system is vulnerable to such things as rain. It's also important to keep in mind that the F22 has never been used in Afghanistan or Iraq as a result of its flaws. This doesn't even consider the cost of building these pieces of crap which is estimated as being between $300 and $400 million and several people have mentioned that these planes can only be flown for approximately 1-2 hours before they incur serious problems that need to be repaired which on average takes 20 to 35 hours to complete so for every hour that these plans fly there is 20-35 hours of maintenance.

These are just a few of the problems with the F22 but Orrin and James have a vested interest in seeing that we continue to place our pilots lives in danger and building these junk heaps. Of course if you only plan on flying them in Alaska air shows then you get what you paid for.

"For example, a primary assertion of the Post's article is the hourly cost to fly the F-22 is far more expensive than the F-15 aircraft it is replacing. In reality, the F-22 variable flying cost per hour is $19,750 versus $17,465 for the F-15."

You are indeed gifted spinmeisters (aka liars). The base cost to fly an F22 is $19,750 but when you add in the cost of maintenance resulting from flying the plane which is part of the hourly cost to fly the F22 or any other plane then the cost increases to at least $44,000 for every hour of flight time.

If you owned a vehicle you wouldn't consider it a good vehicle if you could only drive it for a few hours before you needed to do major maintenance that would take 20 to 35 hours. It wouldn't be a reliable vehicle and you would get rid of it. That is what the F22 is.

A vehicle that you can drive for a couple of hours and then is out of commission for at least 30 hours.

If we stop building expensive war toys, the rest of the world will follow, and then we will have peace.

Want to get rid of nuclear weapons? We need to get rid of ours first. Want to stop global warming? We need to start building windmills and start walking to work.

We need a Department of Peace, not a Department of Defense.

Yeah...the only loss in the Alaska exercise loss was PALIN! After 144 sorties all the money,wardrobe and policies couldnt keep her viable

Billions have gone into research of the F-22. To make only a relatively few of them, means this money is partially wasted.

From statements of the secretary of defense Gates, one would think that he thinks wars from here on are going to be like Afghanistan or Iraq. Where the enemy has no credible air force.

Wish it were so, but can we count on it? We have had air superiority for so long we now take it for granted. Our potential enemies have excellent ground to air defenses and fighter airplanes.

None of which are as good as the F-22, and given the difficulty of coming up with it, it is unlikely our enemies will have something as good for quite a while.

Air Superiority saves lives, it prevents wars by giving the state dept a stronger hand in negotiations.

Given all the research money we have already put into the F-22, we should build enough of them to take full advantage of this research already put into them.

If history is any guide, we will have serious disagreements with high tech enemies in the future, and unless we want hard war, we need to prepare.

Well said, and if we get rid of police and prisons, criminals will cease act in criminal ways.

Yeah -- it's so simple!

All we have to do is unilaterally disarm and smile a lot, Then all the bad people in the world will like us and stop being bad, both to us and to their neighbors. Then we can all link arms and sing Cum-bah-yah, to the tune of accompanying windfarms, basking in the glow of solar energy.

Utopia!

And our Department of Peace will make defending ourselves unnecessary!

Yeah -- keep drinking the kool-aid, dude. You're the reason we badly need a Department of Defense!

Yes, please, let's throw away our arm, throw away our weapons, and preach peace to the world.

That way we can be slaves to the Irans, North Koreas, Russias and Chinas of the world who don't care a whit about peace or us as a nation.

But at least, we won't have the weapons.

Can you get any more ignorant?

Yeah, a Department of Peace would really work well (is this 1984?).

So, how exactly does Utah benefit from producing the F-22? I'm just wondering what Hatch is getting for writing this piece.

The F-22 uses outdated technology such as the programming language ada, and processors that were no longer supported. That is why it failed. Hatch needs to be voted out of office.

Peace at any price.
Walk softly and carry a big stick...Teddy Roosevelt.
The Raptor is the Big Stick.

Instead of pork-barrel loving politicians making the decisions about the equipment the military needs, maybe the Pentagon should be listened to. I would bet that if the F-22 did not have a Utah connection, like most major weapons, or if political donations were not involved, Hatch would not care or even oppose the F-22. Spare me the sanctimony. It's all about greed.

What is it worth to be free in America? $44,000 an hour? The Defense Budget for 2009 is between $515 and $650 billion dollars. The cost of one hour flying time for the F-22 is 0.0000085% of the budget. To put that in perspective, that would be the same as a family fighting over the expenditure of $0.003 (1/3 of one cent) from a $40,000 yearly salary.

The question is what does that airplane buy America. Does it safeguard the lives of soldiers? Because that plane is in the air do we need fewer soldiers on the ground? If so, what is the worth of a soldier's life in battle? If your son or your daughter were sent into battle because some Senator convinced his fellow Senators that his State needed a bicycle path more than this country needed the F-22, what would you think?

The F-22 is part of our defense. Until a better plane is built, leave it alone. If it was worth developing, it is worth keeping - no matter how much some liberal Senator wants that money for his pet pork-barrel project.

re: Department of Peace 4:21 a.m. July 14, 2009
"If we stop building expensive war toys, the rest of the world will follow, and then we will have peace."
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Give me a break, do you REALLY believe what you stated above??!!

I'm a hard core tree-hugging Liberal and do not even believe such a thing.

Can our Leaders choose do something else...certainly! By all means, as they should.

But to claim that the rest of the world shares your flower-child mentality is ridiculous.
Go back to your sit-in.

Peace-out.

With the money spent paying off the media,ACORN,Unions, big DNC contributors (100s of billions)... You are worried about the F22??

Keep in mind, the military is getting cut. The enemy isn't. Training is getting cut. The enemy isn't. Military Equipment is getting cut. The president's czar count (and the accumulated staff) is increasing!

Subsidies from the DNC to the DNC/Media are increasing...

Obama wants soldiers with limbs lost as a result of war injuries, to pay their OWN health insurance or bills...

While he eats $100/lb beef with his friends in the White House.

Every word said by any Republican is scrutinised by 1,000s of DNC contributing lawyers...

Defined ILLEGAL acts by Acorn and 'new' black panthers are forgiven....

I guess you want the military to have wooden guns and cardboard tanks, like before WWII...

So, worry about the F22, and your wallet, because your monetary value is going out the window, too...

And you are worried about the F22... Guess who you voted for??

An interesting defense of indefensible pork.

Nothing objective in this article.

Let's use these to patrol and secure the borders.

Folks, do your research! The F-22 is the biggest waste of tax dollars since the New Deal. This plane will guarantee our military's long, slow decline into mediocrity.

Don't believe Sen. Hatch, he has an agenda and it's not to protect America or save the taxpayer money.

Any criticism of the F-22 needs to be paired with a proposed alternative. Saying it uses ADA and processors designed when it was designed (i.e. late 80s to early 90s) fails to acknowledge what is used in the F-15 that it is supposed to replace. Weapons SYSTEMS have both a long development timeline and a long deployment lifetime. The F-15 ruled the skies for ~30 years after being designed in the 60s. It was also very costly when new. Systems like the F-15 are the reason that the US stands as the lone superpower in the world today (sorry, but Pres. Reagan really doesn't deserve the credit). If we will just combine superior weapons with consistently just and fair behavior, then we will enjoy a semblance of vigilant peace.
Having said all that, we need to apply some yankee ingenuity to figuring out how to operate the F-22 more cost effectively.

I flew several missions in the Gulf War under George Bush Senior. From a pilot's perspective, the F-22 doesn't have very much upside from the old and outdated F-15 or even the F-16. I'm surprised that the F-22 has been christened "America's Future Fighting Plane". Surely we can do better than this!