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NYTimes
October 27, 2004
Air Superiority at $258 Million a Pop
By TIM WEINER
After two decades of struggle, the most expensive fighter jet in history is ready to become part of the American arsenal.
The F/A-22 fighter, nicknamed the Raptor, is being billed by the Air Force as a new chapter in the annals of air power, the most technologically advanced warplane ever built, a stealthy flying antenna that can capture enemy intelligence as it drops smart bombs while soaring at 1,000 miles an hour.
Designed at the height of the cold war to penetrate Soviet radars without being detected and to shoot down Soviet jets in the event of World War III, the Raptor has taken 23 years to move from the drawing board to the assembly line and into an Air Force fighter squadron.
It is being born into a world far different from the one in which it was conceived. American air power is unrivaled; the enemy looks far different than it did back in 1981. The Raptor program has already survived one bitter dogfight, five years ago, when Republicans in Congress tried to kill it. Not until now was it a done deal in the minds of its makers at Lockheed Martin, the nation's biggest military contractor.
Dain Hancock, Lockheed's executive vice president for aerospace programs, said the biggest question confronting the Raptor was very basic: "Could you really make this thing work the way it was supposed to work?"
The other question was money.
At the moment, the Raptor costs $258 million apiece. That is far more than any fighter jet ever built, nearly four times the cost in today's dollars of the price tag originally advertised by the Air Force, and about five times the cost of the F-15, the plane it will replace.
Like many major weapons programs, the Raptor was built on a "cost plus" contract, meaning the taxpayer, not the contractor, pays for cost overruns. More than 1,000 subcontractors in 43 states helped build both the plane and a political constituency for its production.
That $258-million-a-plane figure is based on an overall cost of $71.8 billion and the Air Force's plans to buy 277 Raptors. The price per plane will go down if the Pentagon buys more Raptors. It would go up if the military bought fewer, or if the plane needed fine-tuning in the future.
"This was an airplane designed under the cold war environment," said Jacques Gansler, a former under secretary of defense in the Clinton administration in charge of buying weapons. "Maximum performance. Push the state of the art. And, by the way, see how much it costs."
The Soviet jet that Raptor was built to conquer never got off the ground. No nation now threatening the United States has an air force capable of fighting the F-15. So "people have questioned whether this is the right airplane for the future," Mr. Gansler said.
Over the years, the Raptor moved "from the airplane the Air Force was going to buy in large quantities to a plane too expensive to buy in large quantities," he said. "It took so long, in part, because it was meant to be the state of the art in the future."
Lockheed executives said the plane took so long to build because of its technological sophistication and Congressional fits and starts in paying for the plane. Twenty years ago, the Air Force planned to buy roughly 760 Raptors, based in part on an original cost estimate of $35 million a plane. A decade ago, that became 438 planes, then 339 at the end of the 1990's, then 277 today. Military experts call this the "death spiral," when passing time and rising costs cut the number of weapons the Pentagon can afford.
Now, Lockheed executives say, the Raptor has pulled out of that plunge, which in 1999 caused the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee to threaten to kill the program outright.
They say they had already breathed a sigh of relief earlier this year, when prototype planes passed some crucial flight tests. Nevertheless, the debut of the Raptor, scheduled for today, will be toasted happily at the Air Force and at Lockheed Martin, which yesterday posted a third-quarter earnings increase of 41 percent and is set to reach sales of about $35 billion this year.
Lockheed - which also makes the F-16 and is building the F-35, the next generation of fighter aircraft intended not only for the Air Force, but also for the Navy and the Marines - is now poised to shoot for "world domination" in the field of fighter jets, in the words of one of its aerospace executives.
The Raptor faced a number of technological hurdles this year and last. The most crucial concerned its avionics, or on-board electronics, designed to detect enemy fighters far beyond the pilot's field of vision.
The avionics are "orders of magnitude more complicated than any other plane's," said Ralph Heath, a Lockheed executive vice president and F-22 manager in Fort Worth. The Raptor's electronic brain is based in part on a 32-bit Intel processor, made in the 1990's and now discontinued.
The avionics "did not work as planned and that took us a while to figure out," Mr. Heath said. As late as last year, the on-board software was crashing roughly ever two hours in flight tests. Air Force officials said the unpredictable computer crashes were no surprise, given the complexity of the systems.
In March, the Government Accountability Office, Congress's budget watchdog, said flight tests showed that the Raptor "was not meeting its requirements for a reliable aircraft." Nonetheless, after additional tests, Air Force officials now say they are confident in the plane's capabilities.
Though testing is still incomplete, "today all the technological challenges are behind us," said Rob Weiss, a Lockheed deputy vice president for F-22 development. "There's a growing recognition of the need for this plane."
After rolling out of Lockheed's plant in Marietta, Ga., at a precisely chosen time - 9:27 a.m. today, Oct. 27 - a new Raptor will join the 27th Fighter Squadron at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. That will be the moment when the Raptor becomes reality.
October 27, 2004
Air Superiority at $258 Million a Pop
By TIM WEINER
After two decades of struggle, the most expensive fighter jet in history is ready to become part of the American arsenal.
The F/A-22 fighter, nicknamed the Raptor, is being billed by the Air Force as a new chapter in the annals of air power, the most technologically advanced warplane ever built, a stealthy flying antenna that can capture enemy intelligence as it drops smart bombs while soaring at 1,000 miles an hour.
Designed at the height of the cold war to penetrate Soviet radars without being detected and to shoot down Soviet jets in the event of World War III, the Raptor has taken 23 years to move from the drawing board to the assembly line and into an Air Force fighter squadron.
It is being born into a world far different from the one in which it was conceived. American air power is unrivaled; the enemy looks far different than it did back in 1981. The Raptor program has already survived one bitter dogfight, five years ago, when Republicans in Congress tried to kill it. Not until now was it a done deal in the minds of its makers at Lockheed Martin, the nation's biggest military contractor.
Dain Hancock, Lockheed's executive vice president for aerospace programs, said the biggest question confronting the Raptor was very basic: "Could you really make this thing work the way it was supposed to work?"
The other question was money.
At the moment, the Raptor costs $258 million apiece. That is far more than any fighter jet ever built, nearly four times the cost in today's dollars of the price tag originally advertised by the Air Force, and about five times the cost of the F-15, the plane it will replace.
Like many major weapons programs, the Raptor was built on a "cost plus" contract, meaning the taxpayer, not the contractor, pays for cost overruns. More than 1,000 subcontractors in 43 states helped build both the plane and a political constituency for its production.
That $258-million-a-plane figure is based on an overall cost of $71.8 billion and the Air Force's plans to buy 277 Raptors. The price per plane will go down if the Pentagon buys more Raptors. It would go up if the military bought fewer, or if the plane needed fine-tuning in the future.
"This was an airplane designed under the cold war environment," said Jacques Gansler, a former under secretary of defense in the Clinton administration in charge of buying weapons. "Maximum performance. Push the state of the art. And, by the way, see how much it costs."
The Soviet jet that Raptor was built to conquer never got off the ground. No nation now threatening the United States has an air force capable of fighting the F-15. So "people have questioned whether this is the right airplane for the future," Mr. Gansler said.
Over the years, the Raptor moved "from the airplane the Air Force was going to buy in large quantities to a plane too expensive to buy in large quantities," he said. "It took so long, in part, because it was meant to be the state of the art in the future."
Lockheed executives said the plane took so long to build because of its technological sophistication and Congressional fits and starts in paying for the plane. Twenty years ago, the Air Force planned to buy roughly 760 Raptors, based in part on an original cost estimate of $35 million a plane. A decade ago, that became 438 planes, then 339 at the end of the 1990's, then 277 today. Military experts call this the "death spiral," when passing time and rising costs cut the number of weapons the Pentagon can afford.
Now, Lockheed executives say, the Raptor has pulled out of that plunge, which in 1999 caused the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee to threaten to kill the program outright.
They say they had already breathed a sigh of relief earlier this year, when prototype planes passed some crucial flight tests. Nevertheless, the debut of the Raptor, scheduled for today, will be toasted happily at the Air Force and at Lockheed Martin, which yesterday posted a third-quarter earnings increase of 41 percent and is set to reach sales of about $35 billion this year.
Lockheed - which also makes the F-16 and is building the F-35, the next generation of fighter aircraft intended not only for the Air Force, but also for the Navy and the Marines - is now poised to shoot for "world domination" in the field of fighter jets, in the words of one of its aerospace executives.
The Raptor faced a number of technological hurdles this year and last. The most crucial concerned its avionics, or on-board electronics, designed to detect enemy fighters far beyond the pilot's field of vision.
The avionics are "orders of magnitude more complicated than any other plane's," said Ralph Heath, a Lockheed executive vice president and F-22 manager in Fort Worth. The Raptor's electronic brain is based in part on a 32-bit Intel processor, made in the 1990's and now discontinued.
The avionics "did not work as planned and that took us a while to figure out," Mr. Heath said. As late as last year, the on-board software was crashing roughly ever two hours in flight tests. Air Force officials said the unpredictable computer crashes were no surprise, given the complexity of the systems.
In March, the Government Accountability Office, Congress's budget watchdog, said flight tests showed that the Raptor "was not meeting its requirements for a reliable aircraft." Nonetheless, after additional tests, Air Force officials now say they are confident in the plane's capabilities.
Though testing is still incomplete, "today all the technological challenges are behind us," said Rob Weiss, a Lockheed deputy vice president for F-22 development. "There's a growing recognition of the need for this plane."
After rolling out of Lockheed's plant in Marietta, Ga., at a precisely chosen time - 9:27 a.m. today, Oct. 27 - a new Raptor will join the 27th Fighter Squadron at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. That will be the moment when the Raptor becomes reality.
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