Pentagon: Stealth Fighter is a Lame Jammer, End it Already

Congress and the Pentagon are locked in a battle royale over the future of the Air Force’s $150 million-per-copy F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates thinks 187 of the jets is just plenty. House and Senate panels have moved to buy at least another seven this year — and potentially dozens more, later.
In a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of Joints Chief of Staff, defended Gates’ position — and whipped out a new argument for why Raptor-making should end. Faced with shutting down either Lockheed Martin’s F-22 production line, or Boeing’s competing F/A-18E/F fighter, for cost reasons, Cartwright said he asked the military’s regional commanders what air capabilities they needed most. They chose “electronic warfare,” a.k.a. “radar jamming,” Cartwright said. That meant keeping the Boeing jet, for only it has a dedicated jammer version, the EA-18G Growler.

Cartwright’s testimony might come as a surprise to some Raptor boosters, who for years have touted the stealthy jet’s ability to perform “electronic-attack” missions, including jamming, using its sophisticated, electronically scanned radar. It’s for this reason that a top Air Force official, in 2007, said the Raptor’s “F-22″ designation simply wasn’t comprehensive enough. “It’s not an F-22, it’s an F-, A-, B-, E-, EA-, RC-, AWACS … 22,” then-Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. David Deptula said, adding the letter prefixes for bombers, spy and radar planes and jammers.

But the F-22’s electronic-attack skills have remained dormant, while the Air Force focuses on honing the jet’s air-to-air prowess, and improving vexing maintenance problems. The Raptor won’t be able to jam enemy radars, until 2011 — and then, only half the fleet will have that capability. The Raptor suffers other, serious limitations, that haven’t been widely reported. As many as half of the jets already paid for, lack modern dogfighting systems, such as helmet-mounted sights.

Still, the F-22 is the only jet that can routinely “supercruise” — flying faster than sound, without afterburner — and there are hints it can use this ability to loft AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, high enough to kill enemy satellites. But that wasn’t enough to sway top generals, when asked to choose between the Raptor and the much cheaper F-18. In a recent mock dogfight, an EA-18G “killed” an F-22 — one of only a handful of times any other fighter has managed such a feat, in the air. Now the electronic F-18 has also beaten the Raptor in the hallways of the Pentagon.
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