An F-22 Demonstration Team Raptor flies over Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., March 3, 2023.
Update: As of this morning there have been other interpretations of Andrew Hunter’s comments. The F-22 is a sensitive topic for the Air Force which is trying to satisfy competing constituencies which alternately want to divest of current platforms to free up funding for future manned/unmanned aircraft or which recognize the need for more combat power now.
Less than a year ago, the Air Force was asking to cut 32 early model F-22s from its meager 183-Raptor inventory. On Thursday, the fighter was dubbed its “highest priority”.
Referencing the pacing military competition with China at a McAleese Defense Programs conference in Washington DC on Thursday, Air Force acquisition chief, Andrew Hunter, said, “F-22 is a critical capability. So what’s my highest priority in the near term for that great power competition? I’d probably put F-22 at the top.”
Hunter’s remarks suggest that the door has opened to keeping and upgrading an unknown number of the older F-22s which rolled off the Lockheed Martin
How many of the aircraft could be updated is not known. Hunter said the Air Force will discuss with Congress the possibility of revamping “some” non-combat-coded Raptors. As Breaking Defense noted, he appeared to suggest that some unspecified funding from could be used to modernize other Raptors in the fleet.
Later Thursday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin offered a comment on upgrading older F-22s, saying “we’re looking to be able to take those that are the most combat-capable, keep them in the fight, and then leverage some of the resources for those that are going to be cost prohibitive and time prohibitive.”
Exactly which F-22s Allvin was referencing was not clear but his comment suggests that he may be looking to older, combat-coded Raptors which have not received a full slate of updates as part of a 2021 contract awarded to Lockheed Martin to modernize much of the fleet.
Nonetheless, the comments above appear to be a reversal of the Air Force’s years-long position on the 5th generation air superiority fighter.
In September of 2020, former Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper affirmed that a full-scale Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) demonstrator - the 6th generation air superiority follow-on to the F-22 - had made its first flight, signaling that a successor to the F-22 was at least experimental hardware, not just a concept.
In May 2021, Lt. Gen. Clinton Hinote, the service’s deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements told Defense News that development of the fighter was moving along at an impressive pace, indicating the aircraft could be ready around the early 2030s timeframe.
“Some of our best airmen and joint partners are very impressed with the progress that the primes have made, and all of the other subcontractors have made,” he said. “Probably the biggest part of it is going to be this idea of digital design and then integration of the systems on the government reference architecture. If we can do those things well, we’re going to field it earlier”.
Whether such optimism on the schedule for fielding NGAD still holds in 2024 is hard to say.
What is clear is that in its fiscal 2024 budget request the Air Force intended to divest of 32 Block 20 F-22s, an early variant of the Raptor that lacks updates in communications, weapons and electronic warfare capabilities made to the rest of the fleet. The aircraft have been used for training purposes for pilots transitioning from other fighters and for developmental purposes.
A U.S. Air Force F-22 maneuvers after being in-air refueled April 25, 2014, over the U.S. Central ... [+]
The money saved in shedding the airplanes - estimated at roughly $485 million a year and $2.5 billion across the five years following the 2024 budget request - was to have been plowed into funding NGAD development. The service was adamant about its desire to retire the 32 Raptors.
“They will never be a part of the combat force” Lt. Gen. Richard Moore, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs for the Air Force told Defense One in April 2023. He added that if Congress blocked the service from divesting the fighters, it would be short approximately $500 million in planned savings.
“Perhaps it'll be in NGAD, perhaps it'll be munitions, perhaps we'll stand down the F-22 fleet—but no matter what, there'll be a half a billion dollars-worth of something that doesn't get done unless the restriction comes with an accompanying appropriation.”
Congress did block the divestment and no accompanying appropriation was forthcoming. At the time, Moore said the Air Force figured it would cost approximately $3.5 billion to bring the 32 F-22s up to combat capability.
Now the comments from Hunter and Allvin indicate that the F-22 fleet is high importance to the Air Force. Their comments elicited mixed reactions.
“My general reaction is ‘Hallelujah’,” Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and retired USAF Lieutenant General, David Deptula, told me in a late day phone call.
Mark Cancian, senior adviser, international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told me via email that, “It's hard to believe this is one of the Air Force's highest priorities. I think the B-21 and Sentinel are higher priority.”
“Retiring F-22's early and investing in upgrades is consistent with the Air Force vision of divest to invest,” Cancian added. “That said, they would be retiring aircraft that are not very old, which raises questions about how sound the [F-22] program was.”
Whether the idea of refurbishing some quantity of F-22s is an Air Force idea or one driven by Congress is an interesting question. However, Hunter’s assertion the Raptor is a top near term priority reflect some comments he made last September during the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) annual Air, Space & Cyber conference.
An F-22 Raptor assigned to the 1st Fighter Wing, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. lands at Royal Air ... [+]
In his comments yesterday, Hunter referenced the Air Force’s effort to “reoptimize” for competition with China. The phrase was also used during AFA. At the conference Hunter explained that the Air Force’s previous acquisition priority was on controlling costs. However, it had shifted to getting new gear fielded rapidly to deter China.
He emphasized that speed “is absolutely foremost” among the priorities of schedule, cost, and performance.
Reoptimization reflects the Air Force’s recognition that it has shrunken to what compares to a pre-WWII level of combat power and size. The alarm bells are ringing. Airplanes and pilots in cockpits are needed now.
The rock and the hard place between which the Air Force currently sits is the result of chronic underfunding Deptula points out. “They have insufficient resources to meet all the demands the combatant commanders are placing upon the Air Force. They are the oldest, the smallest and the least-ready Air Force in history.”
In 2022, the Mitchell Institute released a report detailing the degradation of the Air Force through three decades of underfunding. I wrote about the report and its stark conclusions. The realities it described may be forcing the Air Force to re-prioritize speed in acquisition over cost and performance.
Air and Space Forces Magazine reported that an Air Force re-optimization review announced at AFA was expected conclude in January and shift from an analysis of alternatives to execution of recommended changes.
That may explain the timing of Hunter’s comments. I asked Gen. Deptula whether they might also be tied to slower than expected progress with NGAD? “I think that’s highly unlikely,” he replied while acknowledging that outsiders still know little about the program and its trajectory.
NGAD may not be operational until 2035 even if on schedule so the air superiority gap facing the Air Force is obvious. China has been assessed to be preparing to move on Taiwan in the 2027 time-frame (if not earlier). A few more combat capable F-22s on a flightline somewhere is unlikely to change its calculus but it is a start.
Lt. Col. Richard Turner, commander, 40th Flight Test Squadron, and Lt. Col. Jacob Lindaman, ... [+]
And if the Air Force is willing to throw some money at the F-22, what about the F-15EX? Deptula asserts that after the Air Force restores some F-22s, the nearest way to add more combat capacity would be to buy more F-35s, problems with the JSF’s hardware and software development (TR3/Block 4) notwithstanding.
“You’re talking about appropriating monies today for airplanes that won’t be coming off the [assembly] line for another two or three years. In two or three years, you’ll have those TR3/Block 4 challenges fixed.”
After getting more F-35s, the service “ought to buy as many F-15EXs as it possibly can as quickly as it can,” Deptula added.
Despite the Air Force’s “Accelerate Change or Lose” mantra as trumpeted by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. C.Q. Brown for the last few years, it has no near-term practical alternative to the above “legacy” aircraft.
In that light, it’s no surprise that the once “past its prime” F-22 is now Andrew Hunter’s “highest priority”.
