The New York Times Takes on the F-22...Sort of

Over the last couple weeks, the New York Times has, with seemingly increasing frequency, put out opinion pieces that fail to live up to the most basic standards of argumentation. By that accusation, I don't mean that I disagree with their partisan talking points or that there are subtle flaws in their writers' logic. Rather, the articles lack basic cohesion and organization, making them nearly unreadable. In the title of another post of mine last week on this subject, Krugman Needs to be Reminded about Argumentative Logic...Again, I suggested that individual writers were the problem. I'm beginning to wonder if there's some secret editorial directive at the Times that is guiding writers toward mediocrity. The latest article of evidence pointing to that conclusion is an editorial from yesterday's Times entitled "We Don't Need the F-22".

This editorial is remarkable for several reasons. First, and most egregiously, there is literally only one fact in the article about the performance characteristics of the F-22. Before we compliment the Times for taking the time to find out one fact, let's see what that fact is: "The Air Force’s new high-performance F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which begins production in 2012, uses stealth technology to elude enemy radar like the F-22, and should be sufficient." The F-22 and F-35 do both use "stealth technology", but that hand-waving explanation does not constitute a meaningful comparison between the two in terms of stealthiness or effectiveness. One could truthfully say that every U.S. fighter since the seventies uses "stealth technology" because all that really means is that the designers incorporated one of a myriad of different stealth-enhancing techniques to reduce the plane's radar cross-section (how large the aircraft looks on an enemy radar screen) into the design process. "Stealth technology" runs the gamut from internal and external airframe design to special paints to theoretical active electronic emissions. In fact, the F-22 is five to ten times more stealthy than the F-35 . To say that both aircraft use stealth technology and leaving it at that is like comparing a Model T and a Toyota Prius and saying they are roughly equivalent because they both use internal combustion technology.

Why might the New York Times make such a broad and careless statement about the F-22 and F-35? Perhaps the reason is that even the most rudimentary investigation would show how absurd the suggestion of the F-35 replacing the F-22 would be (despite the Times' laughable framing of the issue pitting the "high performance F-35 against the F-22.) The F-35 was designed with multiple missions and a lower price tag envisioned. It tries to be many things, including a ground attack plane, a stealth bomber, an all-purpose naval aircraft, and, finally, an air-to-air fighter plane. The result is numerous design compromises that make it much less effective at any particular mission. The F-22, on the other hand, was designed with one clear mission in mind: destroying enemy aircraft. It can, in addition, serve as a stealthy ground attack aircraft, but the integrity of its design philosophy produced an aircraft far more effective for the important roles envisioned for it. As already mentioned, the F-22 is five to ten times more stealthy than the F-35. The F-35 has a larger internal weapon capacity (meaning it can carry more bombs), but the F-22 has a large enough capacity that the difference does not substantially change the number of planes necessary for, say, bombing Iran or North Korea's nuclear facilities. In terms of performance, the F-22 exceed the F-35 in nearly every category. The F-22's top speed is forty percent higher. Unlike the F-35, the F-22 can cruise (consuming fuel efficiently) above the speed of the sound. The F-22 has a larger range, which would also be a vital operating characteristic for long-range missions against Iran or North Korea. The F-22 is also far more maneuverable (due to its thrust-vectoring technology) than the F-35. In fact, pilots say the F-35 is less maneuverable than several planes already existing in the U.S. military's inventory.

All of those advantages have made the F-22 an incomparably better fighter plane. In U.S. Air Force exercises, the F-22 has, while fighting against the best aircraft in the U.S. and Russian inventories, regularly accumulated kill ratios such as 105 to 1 (meaning 105 kills before a single F-22 loss was recorded.) In stark contrast, there was a scandal a few years ago when it was discovered that fairly old (and far cheaper) planes already in the Russian and Chinese inventory could reduce the F-35's kill ratio to 3 or 4 to 1. In sum, the F-35 is, in the absence of any technological advances by our potential enemies, susceptible to heavy losses. The F-22, on the other hand, enjoys near invulnerability against aircraft much more advanced than anything our potential enemies have now or are likely to field in the foreseeable future.

I freely admit that I have an amateur interest in defense policy, so it is perhaps unfair to assume that the Times would know any of those facts. However, a cursory investigation such as reading the two planes Wikipedia pages would have revealed all of those details. The Times is displaying shoddy journalistic standards by making airy, arrogant recommendations on the basis of just one broad and contextually meaningless fact.

In addition to a paucity of relevant information, the Times article exhibits bizarrely poor timing for its complaint. The debate about the F-22 is no longer about whether to buy the system at all (over a hundred are already in the U.S. inventory) but how many should be bought. The title of the editorial suggests that we are still trying to make a categorical yes or no decision about purchasing the aircraft, which is decidedly not the case. Also, in the past week F-22 fighters were deployed to U.S. bases in Asia as a precautionary measure in the ongoing Korean crisis, a move instantly criticized by a fearful North Korea and taken as a vote of confidence by allies like Japan. Did Kim Jong-Il break into a sweat and Japan breath easier because the F-22 was a "useless, redundant" weapons system? Given that recent example of the F-22's usefulness, the Times' decision to pick this week to complain about the F-22 seems naive and out of touch.

The other miscellaneous facts carelessly tossed out in the Times editorial are also seen to be irrelevant by even the simplest examination. The F-22 has not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan because those wars are not particularly demanding of aircraft. Insurgents do not have air defense networks to overcome, so the use of the ultra-sophisticated F-22 would be wasteful. It is cheaper to use old, unstealthy aircraft and low-cost UAVs for the very basic missions of air support in a near-totally safe flying environment. The Times also cites the cost of the F-22 as a prohibitive issue, but in reality the F-22 is a proven quantum leap in technology and all of the fixed costs of the system (research, development and testing) have already been paid for. The Times is complaining about two billion dollars being set aside to purchase another dozen F-22's. Meanwhile, the estimated waste from the pork-laden stimulus bill is being conservatively estimated at fifty billion dollars. If the Times took off its ideological blinders, it might see that meaningful fiscal savings require responsible social spending, not penny-wise, pound-foolish defense policy.

What really offends about this article is not that the Times is wrong in its recommendation (though it most certainly is), but rather that the Times seems to have done no meaningful research into the issue before opining on it. This issue should not be partisan at all. Most defense policy issues are not based on philosophical or ideological considerations -- they are a matter of technical detail and hard-headed quantitative cost-benefit analysis. This is merely the latest example of the Times' partisanship destroying what was once a first-rate news organization.

This post can also be seen on the New Madisonian, where I'll be posting exclusively starting this Wednesday.