"John Cook" wrote in message
...
IF F-35 ever gets ready...and it can't really replace F-22 in any case.
Unless given more money...

There's several tens of billion dollars if the F-22 is cancelled,
the JSF price just took another hike, I'm on the record as saying
something's got to give as the numbers don't stack up,

Oh, they will, when you increase the budget a bit...

5. Buy foreign?

Not a hope, but out of interest - if forced to which would the US
prefer Typhoon, Rafale, or a Russian jobbie.

It would never happen in a million years. No, make that a billion. However
should the decision come to that I don't see why they would choose anything
else than Typhoon; French have too many systems totally unique to them, to
say nothing about Russian planes. Whether Typhoon is the best available
plane, is totally another can of worms...

I'm on record saying in 1997 or so that cancelling F-22 would be
gigantically stupid because the program is too far advanced. Cancelling
it
now would be...well, something.

Its only development money:-) , hopefully the JSF will be better
managed, canceling the F-22 only means a red face for the US, but its
the lengths they will go to avoid canceling it, that's the real
question, if the reports of the F-22 being a bit of a lemon are true
how far will they go to defend it.

At some point, programs will proceed to point where you just have to soak it
up even if things are not progressing 100%, because cancelling it will be
even more expensive (in the long term). In case of F-22, that point IMHO has
been reached years ago.

Of course it doesn't mean that it CANNOT be cancelled...