calculated the hourly flying cost for an F-22 at $49,808
The F-15 costs less, but more than half as much for a much older and less capable aircraft.
Much of the cost, and the downtime, is for dealing with the stealth coating. The engines, electronics, airframe etc. seem to be very reliable for a new aircraft. While the stealth coating is important, even without it the F-22 is a lot more capable than the planes its replacing. Keeping the older planes as the top line fighter really isn't an option, they won't be capable enough in the future and may even be falling apart from age. More F-35s and less F-22's is a possible response, but the F-35s
1 - Are less capable air to air.
2 - Aren't available yet.
3 - Also have stealth coating and will likely have some of the same problems with maintenance (unless we work things out on the F-22s in which case their cost and maintenance time will go down.
Also ---
The Trend Line is Positive
—Michael C. Sirak
May 22, 2009—Last year, then-Pentagon weapons czar John Young took a jab at the F-22, saying the aircraft was proving overly expensive to operate and its mission-capable rate was too low, in large part due to the efforts needed to maintain the aircraft’s radar-evading skin. He said the trend line was negative in this regard.
Fast forward about a half year to the F-22 program office at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. One hears a different story when discussing the stealth fighter with the officials who are involved day-to-day in its management. In fact, they said the aircraft is holding up quite well.
“Our maintenance manhours per flight hour and our reliability show continual improvement,” Glenn Miller, support contractor in the Raptor program office, told the Daily Report in a sit-down interview last week. Noteworthy is that maintaining the F-22’s low-observable attributes—an admittedly challenging task—is tied to the aircraft’s mission-capable rate and is not viewed as a separate measure of readiness. Even with that, the F-22’s trend line is still positive...
airforce-magazine.com
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...What the Post really missed is that maintenance USAF wide is having challenges and not just one specific airframe. In the past several years with shortages of funds for just about everything, even simple to maintain F-16s have lost up to 10 percent of their mission capable (MC) rates. If one is going to only criticize one USAF airframe they are missing the big picture. Almost all USAF airframes have gone down in MC rates and not just due to age.
Just a few years ago the B-1 bomber was taking huge criticism for only being able to deliver 51 percent MC rate. The fact of the matter was that the pauper USAF was only funding 49 percent of the aircraft systems required maintenance plan to keep it healthy. Dedicated maintenance personnel squeezed out an additional 2 percent through just plain hard work.
Looking at recent history of the F-22 shows a different story than that painted by the Post. Around the 2005-6, the F-22 upgrade schedule was on track. This effort was thrown into disarray when the needs of the Afghanistan and Iraq war—at over $10-13 billion per month— pulled scheduled funds from the F-22 program.
The F-22 reached initial operating capability (IOC) in 2005. In the years 2006-2008, maintenance metrics from real live USAF squadrons came in. This is where real life at the squadron level validates (or disproves) the optimistic planning from previous years of aircraft development. What was shown is that the aircraft was spending a lot of time at the unit level in the low observable (L.O.) maintenance hanger. Consider that the aircraft was designed to be maintenance friendly where only 5 percent of maintenance actions required refurbishment of the low observable components on the F-22. In the end it wasn’t any kind of disaster but a learning curve. It took a while for airmen and NCO’s —the enlisted maintenance force that makes or breaks a flying unit—to get maintenance experience on this new kind of aircraft That process includes everything from training, keeping methods that work, throwing out ones that don’t and filtering all of that into a reliable form of tribal knowledge.
Fast forward to where in one deployment, an F-22 unit put up all of their scheduled missions (350 sorties) for a stunning 100 percent MC rate. This means that the F-22 community has risen to the challenge and put up MC rates that match or exceed current “legacy” aircraft in deployments. Of course none of this was mentioned in the Washington Post article.
More? Maintenance Supers (the lead maintenance NCO in a unit) will tell you a lot of things that are hassle-free with the jet. For example the Pratt and Whitney F-119 motors don’t require a lot of extra work. Still More? The F-22 community has won sustainment awards for its maintenance processes...
f-16.net |
