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Major General Lewis: Welcome everyone. As Program Executive Officer, that means I write the checks there, you know, and Brigadier General Thomas J. Owen does all the work. He has the team out there working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. I, in essence, do all the work here in the Pentagon area.

The F/A-22 ... What does it do, what will it cost? A lot of controversy... As you know, the program has its ups and downs. It's been cut multiple times, but I'm going to show you why the nation needs this airplane.

First, we need to talk about what it does and actually what we've demonstrated here in the various tests.

The big picture…we need to look at the types of aircraft the F/A-22 needs to replace and the missions. In the past, when we’ve talked about the F/A-22, we've talked about the air-to-air mission. Then you have the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) mission, that we've really never talked about for this platform, but now we do because it's key to the future, it's key to the joint force commander and joint warfighting and joint air dominance.

If we get 381 or 240 combat-coded F/A-22s, we can replace three sets of aircraft—the F-15, F-16 and F-117. Now the new F-16s, they’d just do a different mission. Their primary mission would no longer be SEAD because those are the newest F-16s in the inventory. But we can retire the older aircraft, certainly retire the F-15s, F-117s, and then the older F-16s.

We have already started fielding the Raptor at Edwards Air Force Base. That’s where the main operational test is. Last year, that's where we did Initial Operational Testing and Evaluation (IOTE). At Nellis Air Force Base, we started Follow-on Operational Test and Evaluation (FOTE) two weeks ago. We really need to see if we're ready for operations on the air-to-ground side. IOTE last year focused on air-to-air. FOTE focuses on the air-to-ground.

Down at Tyndall Air Force Base, that's where we stood up our pilot training. They had most of their jets. They had some loaners up at Langley Air Force Base. Langley is bringing on the aircraft. By December 2005 they should have 17 aircraft.

I'll talk a little bit about IOTE. Certainly there's been press on it. On the mission side, it was overwhelmingly effective as evaluated. Its mission is to help establish joint air dominance. That's what the evaluation is all about. It's highly survivable.

We even had to go into the most advanced combat simulator that Marietta Lockheed Martin has down there. We flew against the Aggressor pilots and the Red GCI controllers in a 2010 environment and did exceptionally well. The mission was to escort V-2s in the day time across a threat area that was ten times more dense than the recent conflicts in Iraq were.

The point is the F/A-22 is highly survivable, highly effective, and able to help establish joint air dominance.

It was potentially suitable in the Air Force evaluation. In a March 2005 report by the Pentagon’s Office of Operational Testing and Evaluation, they said “operationally unsuitable.” But you have to remember this airplane has very high requirements in its Operational Requirements Document, the ORD. Those aren't required to be “suitable” until the end of Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) in December of 2005, or until 2,900 hours. If you compare this against the legacy aircraft that we're replacing, we're better than where the average fighters are out there today.

It's a paperless maintenance concept on this airplane and that's important to consider as we transform the Air Force. It's not only on the aircraft side, it's also on ground maintenance.

We demonstrated performance on the air-to-air side. What's important to point out is that the F-14, F-15, F-16, all of those, and the EuroFighters and the SU-30s and the F-35—none of them had the envelope, the maneuver, the acceleration or the speed that this platform has.

This airplane likes to be in supercruise at greater than 50,000 feet and greater than Mach 1.5. It's a tremendous asset for survivability and mission success.

The F/A-22 is the world's best fighter even if you take the stealth out, and that's important because if we get into the future threats as the fourth and fifth generation fighters come out for the enemy, performance-wise they're all about the same. Avionics-wise they're all about the same. So really you don't have that air-to-air advantage that we've had in the past.

Let's talk about supportability just a little bit. This is next generation stealth. The reason we were “unsuitable” wasn't the stealth. Consider the Low Observable (LO) maintenance man hours per flying hour as the aircraft first came into the Air Force. The F-117 was around 66; the B-2 was over 150. At this stage of the game, the F/A-22 was predicted to be around 10 in the early stage, but we actually met the ORD requirement which shows it's less than 1.4 LO maintenance man hours per flying hour.

Our problem for generating sorties is not with the material itself. The problem is that we have immature parts on this airplane, so we’re opening up more LO panels than we should be right now, which keeps the airplane on the ground longer than it should. That's typical. Like I said, this is a 2009 requirement in the ORD, and we're going to get there.

This is paperless maintenance. The key is, it starts out with diagnostics software on the airplane and you take that cartridge to debrief. Then everything is done on the computers there and at Langley they're going to have a wireless system which takes it right out to that laptop that the maintenance guy is going to use to fix the jet. There's no 781 form. Every aircraft in the aircraft inventory right now, the pilot writes up what's wrong in the forms and does as much as he can. That's no longer there now. It's done pretty much all electronically. On the laptops they also have the tech order data. Typically, you could have a pile of tech order data manuals this high out there in the flight line when things get really tough trying to fix airplanes. That's all in the laptop.

So by 2009 we mature the system as we mature the diagnostics and all those kind of things. We expect at least four times less maintenance on this airplane than what's out there today, and that means less Operational and Support (O&S) costs and less personnel. The savings between an F-15 squadron and an F/A-22 squadron is about 180 folks there.

The aircraft fighters out there with 2,500 fighters, they are getting old. Mission capable rates, that's the percent of aircraft that are ready to go to combat on any particular day. The F/A-22 IOTE demonstrated 78 percent as compared to the average, but the ORD requirement's 85 percent. That's why we're unsatisfactory.

The mean time between maintenance is flying hours per maintenance event. Again, the age of the fleet's coming down. We demonstrated .45. We'll probably in FOTE a year later demonstrate somewhere between .6 and .7. By 2009 we'll be at 1.5. This is fully funded on the maturation process here on this platform. We did demonstrate wartime sortie generation rates, and that's important to point out. But we had very tough ORD specifications and we're going to fulfill those.

Let's talk about what this airplane can do as far as threats…

First, its integrated avionics. There are a lot of people who think that an F-15 with an AESA radar, the most advanced radar on the F-15, is good enough for the future. We disagree. It's unbelievable, the situation that we're in is the difference between the pilots in the F-15 and the F/A-22. Some of the examples that were in IOTE, for example...typically, it's four versus eight out there at the Nellis ranges. And the altitude differential, 100 mile setups, is a problem for the F-15. Speed is a problem. And the stealth characteristics are a problem. And it's a problem even with the F-15 with AWACS. Even in that situation the F/A-22 had no problem taking care of the adversary four versus eight. Part of that is because the radar warning gives combat ID out to basically a tremendous range, much beyond radar. It has other sensors, but at the unclassified level this is all I can talk about.

The bottom line is it picks up aircraft and it picks up the Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs). So it's like a mini-AWACS Rivet Joint. And it's key in the future to off-board this capability into the intelligence world. We have plans to do that. Within a year of Initial Operational Capability (IOC) we should be able to at least get the air picture out there.

It's important for AWACS to understand what the F/A-22s are seeing, if anything, to pass on where all the F/A-22s are. The F/A-22s share all this information between aircraft. They have an in-flight datalink that's within a four-ship and within another four-ship and up to basically four different four-ships out there. They can be up to 100 miles apart and they're all sharing the same air picture, they all know what everybody's doing, they have all the aircraft, enemy threats, and the SAMS.

So this datalink is unlike anything and gives that situation awareness and mutual support which really has changed the advanced tactics on this platform. No longer do you have to stay within visual range and have mutual support in a two-ship or a four-ship. Now you're out 20 miles apart. Now you're out 40 miles in a spread. It doesn't matter, you have mutual support. Everybody knows when somebody's out of missiles, out of trouble, more people coming in at that guy. Somebody can always get there in time. We had multiple trials in the air last year and in the simulator and the results are unbelievable.

Let's talk about homeland defense, why you would want this airplane in the future. This platform is fast and responsive. You'd buy this airplane for speed. Also, sensor coverage. We had a 9/11 scenario and took off out of Langley. If all three jets, F/A-22, F-15, F-16 launch in full afterburner to get there as quickly as possible and defend the capital, the F-15, F-16, would basically be out of fuel and be 20 miles behind and have to land. F/A-22 arrives and has 41 minutes of loitering time and tremendous sensor coverage.

And it's not just homeland defense. Really, that's just an example of how speed buys decision time, whether it be for NORTHCOM and homeland defense or for the joint force commander overseas who is defending his own territory.

An example for NORTHCOM ... In 9/11, out of the blue, you've got an airliner or potentially if there's cruise missiles in the future, who knows what the threat might be, but the point is that whatever fighters are out there have got to do a BID. They have to give the opportunity for a friendly platform to land. If it's a threat, they have to destroy it. So the quicker you get there the more important it is.

Defensive counter-air. There are lots of studies out there. We provide them for the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) analysis and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Wherever you defend overseas, any type of defense, defensive counter-air against the fourth and fifth generation threats, against cruise missiles, force structure-wise, the F/A-22's three times more effective than any other platform. So what that means is you can draw down the force, and we talked about 800 fighters down to 381 or 500 down to 240 combat-coded. That's why you can do that and still have the same combat capability.

Let's talk about SAMs. We haven't talked about them much. We've enjoyed joint air dominance for a long time. We did in Kosovo, we did in Iraq. And that's because the enemy was not as sophisticated as we were in defeating the SAM threat. You had third and fourth generation aircraft, they had the SAMs, single digit 2, 3, 6, 8s, and they're short range, no home-on jam. We were easily able to establish air dominance because we have effective command and control, we know where things are, we know what's happening, we had E/A-6Bs, a tremendous wide area jammer, and self protection—chaff layers, decoys, all sorts of things like that, and effective pilot maneuvers. We always thought if you could see a SAM, since Vietnam, you could out-maneuver it and defend yourself and live to survive and talk about it.

But we've learned now, unfortunately, in the last Iraq war, the future threat is going to change. A pilot maneuver is not going to be as effective in the future. A Patriot accidentally shot down two aircraft in Iraq. The pilots knew what was going on and they did everything they could to defend themselves and yet they still got shot down. The double digit SAMs will have the capability of the Patriot in the future. So we're concerned about that.

Let's talk about Kosovo. Small country, big threat. We were able to suppress the missiles themselves, we could survive in there, but a tremendous number of missile shots. The greatest day was like day 39. So we never really solved that problem, over 845 missiles shot, because they're mobile, it's a persistent threat, it's a cat and mouse operation. We don't know where they are. We still don't today, even in Iraq. We demonstrated that. We had Joint Stand-off Weapon (JSOW), Tomahawks. It doesn't do any good unless you know where they are and they can't move on you. You have a time of flight problem. They denied airspace. They denied drops of Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) in there. Fortunately we could drop in Afghanistan on day one, but not here in Kosovo. It was a different kind of threat.

So for this notion that the legacy fighters in the future can take care of this mission ... The problem is if we have to go into enemy country or enemy airspace, you've got fighters and you have SAMs, and that's a lethal combination for the launch platforms. The B-2 wouldn't be able to penetrate. He'd have to do standoff. And if it's ten minutes time of flight for his weapon, that gives the SAM operator time to move. In Kosovo they demonstrated that. In Iraq they demonstrated that. It's a huge problem.

They also require precise locations, and even with all the things we have out there fielded today, when it does come up and you don't have a weapon that's in the area that can kill it, then they disappear on you and you can't find them again. So the SAM’s operating, moves to safety, he can destroy the in-bound weapon, or he can turn on a radar decoy. Very cheap radar, turns down his main array, puts that out there and it's a great decoy.

So we're worried about the future when you've got double digit SAMs. Combine that with fourth generation, fifth generation fighters. It’s a very lethal environment.

Let's talk about Iraq. We established the joint air dominance that we had to establish before we started the campaign. We had 193 targets, most of those were mobile. Look how long it took us to clean them up—nine months. And we still didn't get all the targets. Ten percent are still uncovered.

So the SEAD mission takes time because we can't locate them and we can't kill them before they move or some other tactic that they have. We need a weapon system that once they come up can be in the area and kill them.

The important thing is how important joint air dominance is to the ground maneuvering forces. This is what is important to the land component commander. You have to establish joint air dominance quickly for him to do everything he wants to do. This is what joint air dominance means. It means you control the airspace, you move in the command and control assets, so you can direct those strikes in support of maneuver.

You've got Joint Stars, Rivet Joint, AWACS, all those things, and look how close they got to Baghdad in order to do that—within 60 miles.

The number of SAM launches. Fortunately they're all unguided. 190 on Day 15. A pretty tough environment. It's going to be a lot tougher against double digit SAMs in the future. The SAMs move daily. Sixty percent were unlocated and they had High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) counters.

So we've done well against the SAMs in the past, but it's going to be a huge problem in the future is what we estimate.

Why are we concerned? Well, for a billion dollars you could take pretty much any country and buy it S-20s, S-400s in the future. S-20 is like the killing capacity of the Patriot plus longer range. S-400 is double that range. And for a billion dollars you can buy a whole battalion—that's eight launchers and 32 missiles. It's a huge problem for us to gain that airspace in the future if there's any kind of fighters in the same airspace.

It's that lethal combination. Contested airspace as we like to talk about, and we're not going to be that competitive in the future. Sure, we can do it sequentially over time, just like we showed in Iraq, where it took us months to get control of that airspace, but it's certainly going to be a lot higher attrition, unlike what we've experienced over the last 15 years.

Let's talk about F/A-22 and its armament IOC. First of all it's got the air-to-air. There's no problem with that mission. We're demonstrating air-to-ground. We've already launched JDAMS out of it, we've had successful hits last year, we've got them this year in FOTE, and we're actually expanding the envelope so we'll have a supersonic delivery at IOC. At IOC, we expect to be ready. It's Air Combat Command's decision, but if everything falls in place, it should be in December of this year.

Advanced radar actually gets inserted in the 2007 timeframe. We developed that software over time. It will take us about three years. We'll fully have the ability to do both the air-to-air and air-to-ground mission. So this is part of the modernization program for the F/A-22.

When you get one-foot Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), then you have this ability to help you cue targets like SA-20 in the future. You also have the ability to protect yourself, jam for yourself. It can't replace the EA-6B, but it can certainly defend you. It's actually four times better than the EA-6B if he was on your wing, and they won't be there for the F/A-22.

We're also putting a multi-functional radar on this aircraft and that will give us all-weather enhanced air-to-ground capability for SEAD and Close Air Support (CAS). It fits internally so it still remains stealth, and we can do this simultaneously with the air-to-air modes. That's key. This is a tremendous radar that actually can collect intelligence information for the ground components. It will be such a huge collection that when it's out there flying around its area—right now we plan to download it when we come back and land in the 2010, 2012 timeframe. But if all the joint tactical radios work in the future and we have the right wave forms, we're standing by once they make those decisions to off-board this in real time.

So let's talk about why the F/A-22 will have a primary SEAD mission … It will have the ability to geo-locate against SAMs. That's not a new technology. We're doing that today against various platforms. We'll insert that here in the future. So when it comes up we'll be able to track it, we'll get a SAR picture, now we can track it whether it's moving or stationary and we can destroy it with our Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and in the future we can carry eight small diameter bombs. So that's key. This platform will survive in that first day with enemy fighters. That's not a problem for this weapon system. And it certainly has the ability to go out there with the accuracy of today's forces with JDAMs.

In high density, this is not to say the F/A-22 is your primary CAS. A-10's primary CAS, other platforms do CAS, but in a high threat area if somebody gets in trouble on day one or somewhere else, whether it be Special Operations Forces in irregular warfare or whatever, in 2005 we'll have two JDAMs to help out with 22-some-odd-mile standoff. But somebody's got to get his latitude/longitude. Somebody's got to give us the right position which they're confident we can launch from.

By 2012 we'll have more bombs, longer standoff, and we can internally/externally target ID. So it will be a tremendous capability in the future.

Let's talk about force structure requirements ... We had air dominance—this is so key to everything, every conflict we've ever been in. Freedom from attack, freedom to maneuver, freedom to attack ... We've had this advantage for a long time. To help establish this quickly in the future, I'm not saying you can't establish this over time in the future, but to do it quickly, the F/A-22 is going to be key for that. It's critical we get the numbers right. We'll talk more about that.

When we talk about our deployments over the last 15 years, who would have thought we'd have been in Iraq since 1991 and Afghanistan since 2001? We haven't ever left. We've been flying sorties. We're flying there in both countries in support of ground troops today. So we averaged over 100 aircraft and 36 of those were doing the air-to-air and the SEAD mission. We need to replace those 36. In those kind of environment we can go with 24 easily.

People get confused. We say we want ten squadrons of 24, 240 total, but that isn't where the 381 requirement came from. You look at the strategy for an Air Expeditionary Force (AEF) and you figure out what you need to swiftly defeat or win decisively and in that is where the 381 comes from, with 240 combat-coded. You just divide whatever that number is by ten because that's how you can sustain 15 years of deployments for an AEF. One-tenth of the force is always deployed, and right now there's two-tenths of the force deployed. And oh by the way, 25 percent of those are the Guard and the Reserve force. So it's very important for OpsTempo for us to split up our forces into tenths, but when you want to swiftly defeat, we need ten of those AEFs and all the F/A-22s. A typical deployment package is 24x24. We certainly could replace those with one F/A-22 squadron.

Why don't we want to replace legacy for legacy? That's one of the arguments, that well, it's cheaper, but we're worried about the future threat. There are unique capabilities for the F/A-22 and the F-35 and new platforms and for the old platforms it's just cost prohibitive to upgrade, or they don't have the characteristics to do supercruise, stealth, integrated avionics. It's just too costly and the airframes are old, and by design they're getting worn. Design limits are getting worn out.

So this just shows you that the platforms have limitations. The F-35 is limited against advanced air-to-air threat. As I told you, it's a three to one. It takes three F-35s to replace one F/A-22 in that mission. Primarily because the F-35, to maintain stealth, only has half the weapons load and it doesn't have that speed differential or altitude differential that the F/A-22 enjoys which is a huge problem for the adversary.

The F-35 as a result of that can't do the SEAD mission quite as well. It certainly can complement the F/A-22 on that mission. Every airplane, fighter, on day one until whatever it takes can complement and do that SEAD mission, but the primary one against future threats needs to be the F/A-22.

We're concerned that we're going to have a specialty force for the F/A-22. Only four squadrons are funded. Our objective is to get 23 dedicated squadrons to those missions as listed, replacing those with ten F/A-22 squadrons. In the 21st century, ultimately we want to get the configuration of F-18EFs, F/A-22s and Joint Strike Fighters. That is the right combination for the future threats.

In some missions, like SEAD and air-to-air, the primary platform is the F/A-22, and the other two support, and all the other missions, the attack, the strikes, all those kinds of missions, the primary is the F-18, Joint Strike Fighter and the F/A-22 is there to help support.

Let's talk about costs. We understand the cost of this platform. They're understood. We're 99 percent development complete. EMD will be over for us in December. We always play to have production to go up to 381 and get into a steady state. If we shut down early it jeopardizes the industrial base, it jeopardizes the cost of the Joint Strike Fighter, and certainly increases overhead costs, increases supplier costs. We feed on each program.

The first go-around between the Block 60s and the Joint Strike Fighter and the F/A-22—we feed on each other. It's really done well. Lockheed Martin's done a great job bringing technologies both directions. So we're concerned about that.

When we talk about costs, a lot of people always try to include the $28 billion sunk cost in the price of an airplane. They include the R&D which is already over, they include all the hangar space, the trainers, and all those things. That's why you would see, “hey, the F/A-22 costs, you know, $250 million.” That's dividing all those costs by the number of aircraft, but that's not how we buy today. Those are sunk costs, the nation's paid for those. What is the cost now? So you're going to make a decision on what does it cost now as compared to anything out there today. We gave up our cheapest aircraft when they cut us back in December.

When we say “cost of airplane,” you should only consider the fly-away cost, which is the avionics, the engines and those kinds of costs. Not all that infrastructure and R&D in the past because we've already paid for those. So the first 100 cost $172 million. This is what we reported to Congress in January for both the F/A-22 and F-35. We've already paid for the 172 in essence. They were pretty much on contract, some form of contract, through Lot 6. But for Lot 7 and beyond, and they cut us off at Lot 8, the average for the next hundred is about $113 million fly-away cost, as compared to the Joint Strike Fighter which eventually we want as many as we can buy when we get them down after they get into full rate production.

We're replacing two to one for an F/A-22. So $113 million versus replacing what you've got for the same combat capability, F-15Es. If you buy two F-15Es, you’re up around $120 to $150 million. Same thing on the Joint Strike Fighter initially, and they're not even available to us until 2013. So that's why we're saying we can't afford not to buy both and we've got to get the right mix.

That's just the cost of the platform. There are other savings. When you can take down force structure and still have the same amount of combat capability, you save on that second squadron. We can reduce manpower, 780, operations and support cheaper, saves airlift, more airlift available for the joint forces, more tankers available for other services, and so that's why we say that it doesn't make sense to replace legacy with legacy, even if you upgrade them. It's the wrong aircraft for today's threat.

In summary, we've had F-16s and F-15s around a long time and that high/low mix since Vietnam has worked well for us. We've got to get that mix right against the future threat or it creates all sorts of problems. There will be higher attrition, actually more costly, and we've got to get this mix right.

The F/A-22 is to help establish joint air dominance. It costs more because of all the things unique to this platform. We still want to buy 1,700 F-35s to do things right. We have a lot of F-16s and other platforms we have to replace out there in the future. So they complement one another. Both can do the same missions, but not in the same killing capacity.

In summary, the F/A-22 is leading transformation of our fighter force. Everything we want out there is going on this platform, and its sole purpose is to help establish that joint air dominance and be there in that high threat environment for the ground forces, whether that be CAS or whatever you want to call it. That's important. It is the least costly option to replace those legacy fighters dedicated to those missions.

Our concern now is setting down this asset so we have enough to get us through this next decade of threats and then through the 21st century.

That concludes my comments, so I'm open for some questions.

Q: Do you have any idea what it would cost to reconstitute the F/A-22 buy in say 2010 or 2011 if the decision were made to go ahead and shut it down and then try to start it up later on?

Major General Lewis: I think that's too hard to measure. We have not done that, but we know it would be tremendously costly. But one of the key things is it takes a very special skilled labor force to work on the F/A-22. Its stealth, the tolerances to put the nose section on the F/A-22, for example, is unbelievably close tolerance, hundredths-of-an-inch kind of tolerance and that labor force is very unique. So when you shut that down and lose that labor force for any period of time they go off and start somewhere else and they're not coming back. So it would be a huge cost. I'm not sure what that would do as far as building stealth aircraft and the impact it will have in the future.

Q: I'd just mention that cutting the F/A-22 buy could affect the cost of JSF. Has anyone determined what sort of an impact that would have?

Major General Lewis: That's part of the QDR and the cost analysis going on right now. I think they've resolved that, but they actually haven't shared that with me. But they have the Cost Analysis Improvement Group, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines all concerned about increased cost growth just due to the fact that you shut down the production line.

See, the mid-body of the F/A-22 is built at Fort Worth and eventually a lot of that labor force would convert to full rate production on the Joint Strike Fighter.

Q: When you play out these scenarios and you go with the AESA spiral, the capability improves as it gets better, what does that do for your projections?

Major General Lewis: It's still a three-to-one difference in effectiveness between an F/A-22 and an F-15 AESA. The reason is the fact it doesn't have the speed and it doesn't have that integrated avionics. Even in scenarios where it has AWAC support, it still takes three times more F-15s than F/A-22s.

Q: But you do get AESA upgrades with the F/A-22 later on, right?

Major General Lewis: No. One of the biggest reasons why we're putting the advanced radar in there is because of affordability. It actually was cheaper. We leveraged what was going on in the Block 60 and JSF radar world. So we brought that in as actually cheaper radar than what we had originally designed and it gave us the air-to-ground capability.

The AESA is important, but not as important as all those other sensors I have on this platform. Once I get in a certain range close, I already know what's going on before I get within radar range typically. It's just another tool on the platform.

Q: Are the side arrays going to make a difference? Are you thinking seriously about that?

Major General Lewis: In our modernization we'd like to put side arrays on, but that's primarily to do the SEAD mission. It's an enhancer.

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