Matt Yglesias makes this analogy about the state of the F-22:

“Instead of finding a cost-effective solution to the problem of aging F-15s — like building new, somewhat upgraded F-15s — the Air Force decided to design an impractically expensive new air superiority fighter. Having done so, the country now can’t afford these planes in the quantity the Air Force deems desirable. It’d be as if the NYPD first insisted that in the future it would only buy cars from Lexus and then wound up puzzled as to why they didn’t have enough cars.”

I believe this to be a flawed analogy. First, this topic has already been analyzed quite heavily, with Matt already conceding worries about an aging F-15 force already past their original allotted number of flight hours, and Steve already pointing out the non-utility of the F-22 in campaigns like Iraq and Afghanistan. But where Matt wants to characterize the F-15 as the standard NYPD police force, he understates their function. Police officers have a multi-role function, participating in a wide variety of tasks, and more analogous to the F-16 and F-35. The F-22 is strictly an air superiority fighter, which I would compare to the SWAT team if anything else. Now, could you imagine sending your SWAT team into an environment where they didn’t have the best equipment to remove the threat of a very serious enemy? As recent war games with India (Cope India) suggest, however flawed the metrics are, it can be argued that the F-22 is no longer the best air superiority fighter in the world in light of marked improvements to Su-27 variants (Su-30, Su-35, etc.). Furthermore, if we are to build a fighter that will last for the next 20-30 (or more) years, these must be able to accommodate future threats such as the latest upcoming Russian variants, lest we want to spend even more R & D dollars on an even newer fighter. Britain’s Defense Evaluation and Research Agency conducted a study comparing the superiority of current fighters. In building an F-22 we go from a 4:5 chance of victory (with the F-15) to a 10:1 chance of victory in a battle with the Su-35.

Now, with my SWAT team analogy this brings the obvious criticism that the SWAT team as a percentage of the overall police force is quite small. I agree, and am not arguing for a massive increase in production of F-22s. If anything, perhaps a greater focus on producing the next-generation but cheaper JSF to complement a smaller number of F-22s is a pretty good argument. But this does not imply that the F-22 should not have been developed, or that an upgraded F-15 could do the job. The F-22 has a specific role: to give the United States an advantage in air superiority against all other fighters. The fact that we may never have to physically demonstrate the superiority of this fighter (i.e. war doesn’t break out with a major power) only represents an ideal scenario to me.