Air Force Insiders Foresaw F-22 Woes

[Flaxbee]

KADENA AIR BASE, Japan (AP) — Years before F-22 pilots began getting dizzy in the cockpit, before one struggled to breathe as he tried to pull out of a fatal crash, before two more went on television to say the plane was so unsafe they refused to fly it, a small circle of U.S. Air Force experts knew something was wrong with the prized stealth fighter jet.

Coughing among pilots and fears that contaminants were leaking into their breathing apparatus led the experts to suspect flaws in the oxygen-supply system of the F-22 Raptor, especially in extreme high-altitude conditions in which the $190 million aircraft is without equal. They formed a working group a decade ago to deal with the problem, creating an informal but unique brain trust.

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[jody]

1. Untried technology pushed beyond normal mission environments compounded by cost estimates based on

bull shit models.

How can any program succeed with that baggage?

[daybranch]

2. Many years ago

before the F-22 had moved into production, the United States General Accounting Office issued an unclassified report entitled"F-15 Replacement Is Premature. In that report they said the F-15 is more capable than any other aircraft as an air to air fighter within the foreseeable future. In other words the F-22 would not be needed within the foreseeable future. Yet the Air proponents in Congress could not be stopped and they went ahead to waste many billions of dollars on an unneeded and now unreliable system.

[msongs]

3. the F-22 is designed to attack the wallets of American taxpayers nt

[MrScorpio]

4. You didn't have to be an insider to see the problems with that weapon system

During development I read story after story that reported a host of problems with that thing.

If I didn't understand how the military procurement process actually worked, I would have been completely incredulous about the actual appropriation approval of the thing.

Spending some time in the Pentagon was an eye opener to me.