possible cancilization of the F-22

www.ajc.com...

what is everyones thought on this? the article says that the F-35 could perform both roles as air suppirorty and bombing ground targets. but which confuses me is that how the raptor was mainly designed to fight air to air and not air to ground missions? why would they want to cancel a project that took so long to develop and produce? this is the future of air to air combat. why would they want to throw that away? yes the F-35 is going to have great capabilities but also with the F-35 it is over budegetd as well. the govt. needs to be thinking about the possible future major conflicts then the "little low tech ones" that we are in now. i dont know just my opinion. whats everyone elses?

I don't think the recent F22 crash help any at least it wasn't a good selling point.
I heard they will divert some of the F22 funds to the F35 program.
Of course the F35 is much cheaper.

Here's a thought, maybe the last F22 flight was sabotaged for the puepose of canceling the project?

yea maybe.i still cant see the raptor being canceled though. its such a beautiful plane and advanced. our military stands for the most powerful and advanced, the raptor would fulfill that by being the only legit 5th generation fighter out there right now. that would give us that most advanced and powerful... yea thats not a real proven fact but the USA is renounced as that mainly

They're not canceling it, they're stopping production. There's a difference there. They're still going to be in inventory and flying their missions, but once they have 187 in inventory, then they won't be getting any more, even if they crash.

The F-22 was designed as an air superiority fighter, but they're doing incremental improvements that will give it a limited air to ground ability. They're going to upgrade the radar and give it a SAR capability to pick out ground targets, and carry the Small Diameter Bomb.

The recent crash had nothing to do with this decision. It was an accident during a test flight. They push the envelope, and sometimes the envelope pushes back. This time it did.