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February 5, 2005
Raptor Ready to fly
The United States' newest superfighter will be flying in active US units in December 2005, according to Lockheed-Martin.
Click here for official info on the F-22 Raptor.
Coupled with the Joint Strike Fighter YF-35 and the announcement that the new Marine One Helicopter for US Presidents will be Lockheed project, it seems that Lockheed is taking a big role in our Military Industrial Complex. Some people are complaining about these contracts, especially the Marine One helicopter procurement because a substantial portion of these platforms will be built in Europe, by European companies.
Is this a good thing? I'm not sure, but I'm not ready to say it's bad. I think that we should reach across financially now and say "Hey look Euros, we don't fight, we may bitch at each other a little, but there's not going to be a shooting war between us, so lets move on OK?" Followed with a series of "Here you go, make some stuff for us, we'll throw a bunch of dollars into your economy and maybe it's slow down the meteoric rise of your Euro." Which they desparately need.
People may not see the connection, but it's there, we're playing politics as usual and passing some economic aid over to the Euros by buying up a bunch of war material from them. It's quite ironic, how they don't want us to go to war in Iraq, but they want the contracts to supply our military. It's all hypocracy, I tell ya. Dollar Bill Diplomacy it seems, same ______, different day.
Overall I like the planes and think they're pretty rad units. Can't wait until more performance oriented videos start popping out.
Don't think that I'm opposed to the purchase of the fighters in any way, I'm not. We've been working on these for a long time, and have a good relationship with the foreign contractors. These relationships go a long way to smoothing out the rough edges in relations with our allies and friends. I'm totally supportive of them, as long as we don't buy too much from the French.
I wished everything could be made here, but that would only cause even more resentment (and that's really all it ever is) from our foreign friends. We need to share the wealth to move this Demo-Capitalist experiment on it's merry way. It's funny that we'll probably have F-22's in operation over Iran and/or Syria in a year's time, and the Euros will just have to lament that they were the ones that sold them to us. I expect they'll be more on board though. They don't want to be wrong three times in a row.
--Jason
Posted by JasonColeman at February 5, 2005 8:28 PM
