Regardless of the vote in the Senate, “ The F-22 funding termination this week doesn’t change a thing [about the tactical advantages offered by the stealth fighter’s advanced systems] and I think history will bear out the F-22 advocates’ position when all the dust settles,” a senior U.S. Air Force intelligence officer tells Aviation Week. “ The F-35 [Joint Strike Fighter] is not an F-22 by a long shot,” he says. “There’s no way it’s going to penetrate Chinese Air Defenses if there’s ever a clash.”
The intelligence official was referring to the fact that penetrating the latest surface to air missile defenses is something only the F-22 can do. China and Russia have variants of the the S-300/400 family that includes the SA-20 which is being sold in Asia and the Middle East. The F-22 can stay ahead of SA-20 because it it flies about a half-mach faster, two-miles higher and has a smaller Radar Cross Section than the F-35.

Are you effing kidding the Volgi? Confucius* says, I thought the whole point of the F-35 was to go in and take out radar and air-defense systems and the like. I know the F-22 was originally classified F/A-22, but I didn’t know that it was our best ground-attack system as well as air-superiority system. Holy crap. If this is true, how much dumber does this make the Senate and Administration look?!

Via Aviation Week.

*For those who came in late: Confucius is the Gormogons’ Œcumenical Volgi.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.