"Why Canīt America Build Any New F-22 Raptors?" Topic

"The U.S Air Force has two air superiority fighters in their stable in the F-22 Raptor and F-15 Eagle, but when looking to bolster the fleet with purchases of a new (old) jet for the job, it was the Eagle, not the famed Raptor, to get a second lease on life. That really begs the question: if America can buy new F-15s, a design that's nearly 50 years old, why isn't it looking to build new F-22s instead?

By most accounting, the F-22 Raptor remains the most capable air superiority fighter on the planet, with its competition in China's J-20B beginning to shape up and Russia's Su-57 still lagging a bit behind. The F-22 really is still at the top of its game… but that doesn't mean building more actually makes good sense…"
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Armand

Could it possibly have anything to do with the F-22 reportedly being about 4 times the price of an F-15?

And maybe the F-15 is good enough for the job the USA is intending to do with them?

If you don't need the Platinum Standard then you buy the Gold Standard.

F-15 never went out of production, whilst the F-22 did.

US stopped buying F-15s at start of 21st century (and these were attrition replacement F-15Es) but the jet continued to sell to Singapore (40), South Korea (61) and Saudi Arabia (84) (and then 36 F-15QAs for Qatar which are only starting to be delivered).

So USAF can plug back into F-15 line with ease.

Also the new F-15s relate directly to the failure of the F-35. F-35s were and still are scheduled to replace F-15C/Ds in 2 PACAF and 1 USAFE squadrons.

They were also meant to replace 7 F-15 ANG squadrons but this role now seems to be the F-15EX as the F-35 simply lacks capability in an air superiority role.

If you restart F-22 line those ancient early 1980s vintage F-15C/Ds have to continue flying for a lot longer and their replacement is a lot more costly.

Because morons in the Defense Department allowed all the tooling to be destroyed.
I wouldn't be surprised if they required it.

It is more than just the tooling John. When they stopped F-22 production, they also lost the expertise, that now were reassigned to other projects, left for other companies, or had their specific expertise atrophe from non-use.

Damon.

Garand hits a nail on the head.

So it's like, "Well, we have all we need. Don't need any more. We'll just use what we have for the next 30 years."

TMP link I thought this topic looked familiar.

I'm beginning to think that we don't really develop these planes/plans for our own use. We simply spend our billions and let the Russians and Chinese steal them.

We should "develop" a super high tech plane with flux capacitors, ionic induction deductors and hyper dilithium crystals. Put a team working on the plans, fake up some production and test flight reports from a secret underground airbase and then "accidentally" let the plans leak. Then sit back and watch as other countries try to actually produce copies.

Of course, we may end up with a Galaxy Quest situation where they actually develop a real one because they didn't know it was a fake.

We should have gone with the better fighter -- the YF-23, but the DoD chose the F-22 for defense industrial policy purposes…just like the decision to cannibalize the F-22 production line in favor of the F-35 multi-role (which means does nothing particularly well) fighter. Defense industrial policy -- not national security.

Thanks!

Armand