I quoted Richard Aboulafia last week expressing skepticism that the US Air Force would actually sacrifice the cause of buying more F-22s in order to give the F-35 program a needed funding boost.
This morning, Aboulafia's argument gets an unwitting assist from the Air Force Association.
The air force's main advocacy and lobbying group posted a new presentation to their website today. The brief is titled, "F-22 vs. F-35 comparison", and the conclusions are heavily stacked in favor of the former.
In fact, I'm curious what several foreign governments will think after having invested hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in the F-35's development, largely because of performance promises from a US government that apparently doesn't really like the fighter.
Here's a few examples of how the brief compares the two fighters:
This morning, Aboulafia's argument gets an unwitting assist from the Air Force Association.
The air force's main advocacy and lobbying group posted a new presentation to their website today. The brief is titled, "F-22 vs. F-35 comparison", and the conclusions are heavily stacked in favor of the former.
In fact, I'm curious what several foreign governments will think after having invested hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in the F-35's development, largely because of performance promises from a US government that apparently doesn't really like the fighter.
Here's a few examples of how the brief compares the two fighters:
- The F-22 can turn at twice the rate of an F-35
- F-22A in production...F-35A initial operational capability date is 2013...key in considering F-15Cs need to be replaced now
- 'Apples to Apples' or normalized comparison on unit cost would have to consider equal production quantities. Unit costs based on an F-35 buy of 183 and an F-22 buy of 1763 would result in significantly greater F-35 unit cost than current estimates
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