F22 export ban lifted

July 18, 2006 (by Jeff Hollenbeck) - The U.S. House of Representatives repealed a ban on F-22 Raptor sales to foreign air forces in a voice vote on July 1.The vote, following an eleven minute debate, repeals a nine year prohibition on foreign sales of the world's most advanced operational fighter jet.

The cost of the F-22 has risen over the years to a flyaway cost of more than $130 million per jet (not including research and development) due to dwindling orders from the only customer - the United States Air Force.

The USAF had originally planned to order 750 F-22s to face the Soviet Union but that number slipped to 350 airframes, and then down again to the current planned buy of only 183 Raptors.

Several different nations including Australia, Japan, Great Britain, and Israel have expressed interest in purchasing F-22s and Lockheed is reportedly interested in selling to those countries if the legalities can be resolved. No decision has yet been made as to which systems, if any, need to be modified or removed from export F-22 aircraft.




Im not really surprised by this given the ridiculous cost of these machines. And im sure the export version will be downgraded in some way or another.

When you consider that selling price is often 2-2.5 times the actualy aircraft price, that comes down to 300-375 million an aircraft :coffee: . Providing you go by the very conservative 150 million figure.

The only nation right that now that can afford such an aircraft would probrably be Japan.....I simply don't see anyone else dishing out nearly 400 million an airframe.

Why does it say rise to 130 million each? Isn't the airframe cost in the production runs suppose to be more than that? According to globalsecurity anyways....

There is also Israel...they get stuff for free esentially. Other times they have to pay heavily discounted price. This looks like a counter to the Saudi Typhoons.

Israel won't get them. The US is afraid of them giving the technology to China or Russia. Israel does have relations in the defense sector with both those nations.

DPRKUnderground said:

Israel won't get them. The US is afraid of them giving the technology to China or Russia. Israel does have relations in the defense sector with both those nations.

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yeah, they had to fight even for F-35. F-22 is just out of Israel's reach right now (after the entire China fiasco).

DPRKUnderground said:

Israel won't get them. The US is afraid of them giving the technology to China or Russia. Israel does have relations in the defense sector with both those nations.

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I think you're right. Israel is not a likely copntender to get them. Think UK, Japan, and possibly Australia. And that's about it. At any rate, the Israeli's have learned their lessons I think. Israel transferred China technology for Harpy missiles. China proliferates to the Middle East. And now Iran has an identical missile to use against Israel. Oh, the irony. The Israeli's made a mistake, but they ain't stupid.

Not disagreeing but any evidence on the iranian harpy front?

Taiwan and South korea are other possibles although I think China could effectively veto the latter as has often happened. Canada and Turkey are about the only other countries not already listed that I can imagine getting them.

planeman said:

Not disagreeing but any evidence on the iranian harpy front?

Taiwan and South korea are other possibles although I think China could effectively veto the latter as has often happened. Canada and Turkey are about the only other countries not already listed that I can imagine getting them.

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There's no chance in hell that the US would sell anything that high tech to Taiwan. Considering the high chances of a pro-China President being elected in 2008, the risk of Taiwan's weaponary falling into China's hands would be too high to be worth the money made from the sales. Plus it's way too expensive for Taiwan to afford.

South Korea probably won't be getting them anytime soon either, and probably for similiar reasons. Should unification ever happen I don't see Korea being very friendly with the US either. Basically they're not going to sell to anyone if there's a chance that it could fall into "enemy" (China, Iran, Russia, etc) hands.

WeLL GB has the Thyphon. So the only country that could afford it would be Japan.They are one of the very few countries that could afford it or need it. The Aussies are wrapped up with the Lightning. F22s flying out of Japan would
give everyone in the region a huge (brain freeze), slurpy termonoligie.\(a fresh beverage of frozen Ice)
Also its one of the very few countries the US trusts, not to give away the Tech part.

Japan already has many of the F-22's technologies. Japan had the AESA radar since the mid-1990's. Japan is one of the leader in using composite materials in aircraft manufacturing(the new Boeing 787 passenger airline composite wings are being made in Japan). The autoclaves use in curing the composite parts are made in Japan. Japan has been applying radar absorbent materials since the mid-1990's. So there's very little technology lost when selling F-22s to Japan.:coffee: