Arguments against the F-22 Raptor all fall apart when the aircraft’s prodigious capabilities in collecting information are considered, according to USAF’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Lt. Gen. David Deptula. At a Capitol Hill seminar, Friday, Deptula decried the “myopic platform price logic” that suggests that if there’s no direct analogy to the F-22 in an adversary’s air force, then it isn’t needed. “The F-22 is not just an air-to-air platform,” he said. He went on: “It’s an F/A/B/E/EA/RC/AWACS-22. It’s a flying sensor that will allow us to conduct network-centric warfare inside adversary battlespace from the first moments of any conflict, in addition to its vast attack capabilities.” Deptula added that if the Raptor doesn’t have to spend much time wiping out enemy fighters, so much the better; it will be available more often as an ISR platform because “there’s no place it can’t go.”
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.