Its stealth, speed, agility, and advanced sensors are such that in a 2006 exercise against F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s, the F-22, its pilots scarcely accustomed to it, scored 241 kills to 2. Famously, before its opponents know it's there, their aircraft are exploding. Former USAF Lt.-Col. Joseph Sussingham, F-16 Experimental Command Pilot, put it best: "To face a flight of F-22s is to face a wall of death."
The average age of Air Force fighter planes has more than doubled from 1960-1990 and is fast increasing. As the number of combat wings was nearly halved, and the U-2 and F-117 were eliminated in its anticipation, the F-22 became the keystone of American air power. With no new fighter on the horizon other than the F-35, it was as well a guarantee against placing every egg in one basket....
...The death of the Raptor is encompassed in the 2009 Posture Statement of the Air Force, with what irony one can imagine, that "The Department of Defense provided guidance . . . to eliminate excessive overmatch in our tactical fighter force." In a triumph of international cooperation, China, which will field its own fifth-generation fighter in 2018 or 2020, is eager to help us eliminate excessive overmatch, as are Russia and even India....
We have thrown away our best aircraft, as we have—directly or by attrition—discarded good ships, armor, and fighting echelons. We have closed production lines, dispersed the skilled people who run them, and weakened the defense industrial base to the point that in a national emergency it cannot revive. Even the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, hardly a hawk, called the death of the F-22 "ill-advised and premature."
Given that the administration and Congress throw panicked trillions at programs thought up in the spur of the moment, their parsimony in defence of the United States is unjustifiable, even if our brilliant elites simply refuse to contrast the supposed savings to the costs of future wars that otherwise might be prevented. Though the price may be steep for the times, the price of war undeterred, should it be lost or even should it be won, will perhaps be unbearable.
And because it is a price not only in dollars but in the life of a nation and the blood of its sons and daughters, it is necessary to speak without embarrassment for the defense of the United States and for the rightful preparation to deter war or to win it.