Maj. Dan "Rock" Dickinson, F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team pilot from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., does a high speed pass during Arctic Thunder Open House 2016 at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, July 30, 2016. The team is comprised of an F-22 demonstration pilot and 12 other members including crew chiefs and avionics specialists. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Sheila deVera)
Defense Tech: F-22 Was ‘Too Provocative’ to Send to Mideast: US Air Force
The F-35A will deploy around the world much sooner than the Air Force‘s other fifth-generation fighter did after achieving initial operational capability, the commander of Air Combat Command said Tuesday.
Air Force Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, who announced to reporters at the Pentagon that the F-35A had achieved the IOC milestone, said while the F-22 Raptor did not see its first operational deployment until 2014, a decade after it reached IOC, the F-35 would not face the same obstacles.
“On a couple of occasions, we were going to send [the F-22] to different theaters and we didn’t because there were at least a group of people who thought that it was too provocative to send,” he said. “It was less about us not being able to or at least not wanting to; it was more about the message. … We didn’t send it to the Middle East, frankly because it was considered to be a provocative move to send the only 5th-generation fighter in the world to that environment.”
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WNU Editor: Provocative to who?
5 comments:
"Provocative to who?" If I may, anytime a weapon or weapon system is deployed it is going to inflame tensions. If deployed but not in sufficient numbers, it can only serve to make a tense situation worse. In other words, it only makes an enemy or worse a potential enemy more likely to attack and since the weapon or weapon or weapon system is not deployed in sufficient numbers to actually deter the enemy the situation would then be worse.
What essentially they are saying is they were unwilling to deploy the weapon in sufficient numbers to actually make a difference should the enemy attack because it would cost to much, ant-war groups or the media would howl with rage against the US, etc and hence they chose not deploy the F-22s to the Middle East.
At one time, US officials may have actually been circumspect and thoughtful about they were/are doing. Now not so much.
It would be similar to when the Russian military flys through European airspace without a transponder, or sends little green men into a sovereign country, or China uses a phony document to take over international and sovereign submerged rocks for their own. This is provocative.
WNU Editor,
Provacative to LockMart?
The F-35A is going to be declared IOA, but will be missing many of the weapons systems, software, sensor systems and with reliability issues than ensure that it cannot be deployed to a combat zone,
But the pressure will be there from Congrsss Critters and Potential Foreign Customers to deploy the F-35A, after all, a whole "squadron" is IOC.
The "too provocative" meme is being constructed as an excuse for keeping the F-35 a hanger queen until Tranch C is released, sometime in 2021.
The critics of the F-35 sure are pulling out all the stops to kill this program. If it really is this bad, hopefully it will be killed.
Under President Trump everything is going to be reevaluated. I suspect tge F-35 will be as well.
Provocative to Obama's ego
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