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В. Кашин
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Исаев Алексей
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11.01.2008 16:00:38
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ВВС;
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Вот лоббистская статейка как раз на эту тему
Добрый день!
Типа флот F-15 разваливается, в 2005 г 2 F-15 сбиты в ближнем учебном бою одним еврофайтером и т.п. Типа пора вернуться к вопросу о производстве 200 дополнительных F-22 чтобы заткнуть дыру до поступления F-35, тем более что при массовом производстве самолет выйдет дешевле. Но все равно вопрос с источниками бабла неясен, особенно учитывая борьбу с бюджетным дефицитом, расходы на Ирак и т.п.
Только непонятно, какое это имеет отношение к российской обороноспособности: наши т.н. "ВВС" или что мы там попытаемся создать в этом роде и 183 Рэптора при поддержке всего остального порвут без проблем.
On the Wings of Eagles, Or Not
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
December 28, 2007
On November 2, Major Stephen Stilwell of the Missouri Air National Guard was taking his F-15 Eagle through its paces when the plane did something for which it hadn't been engineered: It cracked into pieces.
Maj. Stilwell survived the accident, but the F-15 fleet -- America's signature fighter for 30 years -- may not. This isn't just some maintenance issue, but goes directly to the question of whether the United States intends to deploy the world's best Air Force or one that (fingers crossed) is good enough.
The Air Force has since discovered significant stress fractures in at least eight other aircraft, and ordered that 442 of the older-model F-15s be grounded through at least January. Those 442 Eagles, or about a fifth of the total number of fighters fielded by the U.S. Air Force, are mainly responsible for homeland defense.
In an alternative universe, the F-15 problem would not be significant, because the Air Force would already be flying large numbers of its designated replacement, the F-22 Raptor. But the Raptor -- a fifth-generation fighter that outclasses everything else in the sky -- was deemed too costly and too much of a "relic" of the Cold War. The Air Force currently has orders for no more than 183 of the planes, though there is now talk of keeping the production line open for as many as 200 more. We think it's an investment worth making.
Before the F-15's problems became so glaring, it was plausible to argue that the plane was adequate to meet current defense needs until the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- still in its testing phase -- comes into service sometime in the next decade. But while the Air Force will surely engineer whatever patch the grounded Eagles need to make them airworthy again, it cannot patch the fact that it may be six months or longer before the fleet is back to full operational readiness. This is hardly trivial for a force already strained by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and threats that stretch from the Korean Peninsula to the Horn of Africa.
Nor is there any getting over the fact that the F-15 first flew in 1972 -- long before many of the current crop of pilots were born -- and that the plane is now outclassed by its competitors in the export market. In 2005, a British Eurofighter reportedly defeated two F-15Es in a mock dogfight. Simulated dogfights have also shown that the F-15s are somewhat inferior to Russia's more modern Su-35s.
Some defense experts claim the era of air-to-air combat is over, but similar erroneous forecasts have been made before. It's also far from clear that the single-engine F-35 can be considered a genuine replacement for the twin-engine F-15 or an adequate substitute for the (also twin-engine) F-22.
As for cost, there's no doubt that at more than $100 million per additional plane, the Raptor is an expensive aircraft. But estimates of the plane's price tag typically factor in research and development costs, meaning the price per plane actually increases the fewer that are built. And with a defense budget at roughly 4% of GDP (compared with a mid-1980s' peak of more than 6%), the U.S. has a long way to go before any weapons system is more than it can really afford.
We cannot predict what kind of adversaries the U.S. will face in the coming decades, but we do know that part of the responsibility of being the world's "sole remaining superpower" is to be prepared for as many contingencies as possible. One prudent way of reducing the threat is to discourage potential adversaries from trying to match America's advantages in numbers and technology. Replacing America's faltering Eagles with additional Raptors may be expensive, but allowing U.S. neglect to be exploited by those who wish the country harm would be ruinous.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119879344837553827.html
С уважением, Василий Кашин