Originally Posted by
GlobalNav
After all the money spent to develop the F-22, I could not understand the urgency to stop production. Perhaps there actually was a valid reason, a short-coming or something behind it.
It was a number of factors that did it in, but it was during the Clinton Administration (when defense budgets were being substantially reduced) that the death of a thousand cuts began. Rummy supplied the
coup de grace.
The USAF originally envisioned ordering 750 ATFs at a total program cost of $44.3 billion and procurement cost of $26.2 billion in FY 1985 dollars, with production beginning in 1994 and service entry in the late 1990s. The 1990 Major Aircraft Review led by Secretary of DefenseDick Cheney reduced this to 648 aircraft beginning in 1996 and in service in the early-to-mid 2000s.
After the end of the Cold War, this was further curtailed to 442 in the 1993 Bottom-Up Review while the USAF eventually set its requirement to 381 to adequately support its Air Expeditionary Force structure with last delivery in 2013.
The 380(ish) is the number I recall from the BUR, (just under 400). And there was a lot of talk about why it was not going to be available for export.
However, funding instability had reduced the total to 339 by 1997 and production was nearly halted by Congress in 1999.
Although production funds were eventually restored, the planned number continued to decline due to delays and cost overruns during EMD, slipping to 277 by 2003
In 2004, with its focus on asymmetric counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, the DoD under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld further cut the planned F-22 procurement to 183rocurement contract was awarded in 2006 to bring the number to 183, which would be distributed to seven combat squadrons; total program cost was projected to be $62 billion (~$87 billion in 2022) In 2008, Congress passed a defense spending bill that raised the total orders for production aircraft to 187.
You might say that the Iraq War finally did for it.
The Viper, on the other hand, was very busy in Iraq.