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Originally Posted by Pangloss62
I post the below for Maggie because I know she's into jets and stuff and would likely have a thing or two to say about the F-22.
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Well..as cool as manned fighter aircraft are, the basic story seems to be that the future of air-to-air combat is unmanned aircraft. ACM is all about high-G maneuvers, and that's not very compatible with actually having somebody on board. It's quite possible that USAF's desite for the F-22 isn't completely rational; aircraft systems drive entire careers these days...and testosterone (not exclusively a male motivation) may be part of the picture too.
That said, I dunno about this "High-speed advanced radiation missile"...I assume Ms. Talmadge may be referring to the AGM-88. I'd be wary of a "PhD candidate in security studies" writing about military tech who doesn't seem to be able to get their nomenclature right. Her other writings online seem to be more about politics; perhaps this one actually is too.
One of the most wasteful ways to spend on weapons systems is to do an entire development program and then cut back on the number of units produced; this drives the cost per unit up; once you tool up to produce something you should bake a bigger batch rather than a smaller one; the economy of cutting back inflates the per-unit cost that's the bloody shirt she waves earlier in the piece.
Talmadge points out the "we may need this to fight the Chinese" argument but then starts blowing smoke about how "it won't happen soon enough" and how much more we spend on defense than the Chinese do....the relevance of that last escapes me.
I'd also say her numbers need some looking into. 89 additional planes for 1.7 billion isn't $289 million per each.