This post was inspired by our trip to the CNE this year, where we always make a point of watching the air show I love watching the acrobatic prop planes as well as the vintage war planes which are always featured.
These fighter planes are history, retired, part of a past that can't be changed. Like the career of Mohamed Ali. Or my once brown beard. And I can also look at contemporary fighter planes and admire their design, the skill with which they are made, but I still can't forget that they are flying guns.
Then you see something that makes you pause. That makes you think beyond the pretty plane and the skill of the pilots who fly it. At the CNE air show this year, it was the Raptor.
This is one of the scariest airplanes I've ever scene. If an F-14 is a flying gun, the F-22 is Flying Armageddon. At the air show, the young airman who did the commentary was positively drooling when he told us about this airplane's lethal capabilities. I've never seen an airplane, especially one the size of the Raptor, do the things that it can do. It hovers, lifts vertically, it floats like a leaf, it flies backwards .. not even a Harrier can do this.
The thing is loaded. Bombs. Missiles. Cannon. Nuclear capabilities. All at supersonic speeds, flying the way it does, with stealth technology, this thing can sneak up on you from another continent and vaporize you back to a molecular level. Not just you. Your city. Your country, your world. It is a killing machine, so advanced, the pilots don't really fly it, they manage the computers.
I understand they have ceased production on this plane but at the time, they cost about 146 million per plane. One. Hundred. Forty six. Million. Per airplane. Stop right here for a second One hundred and forty six million to make a gun. A big, fast, sneaky, deadly gun. The USA is the only country in the world that could manufacture these things. Think about that: Right away, the most powerful country in the world goes ahead and grabs itself the .44 magnum Desert Eagle of jets, ensuring once more that it's the biggest baddest Dirty Harry nation in the game. As if it wasn't already.
This is like the schoolyard bully going home, wrapping himself in body armour and stomping back to school with a pair of brass knuckles, a spiked baseball bat and a chainsaw. All the kids already on the ground, nursing their bruises and bloody noses would look up and say "Really? What the fuck?"
I'm not going to go into a long discussion of a nation's need to maintain a standing army. I'm not unrealistic. We don't live in a soft marshmallowy world where no one needs to defend themselves... lots of countries have been served evidence in the last few years, that we don't live in that world. But my American neighbours have been the best armed cowboy in the corral for a long long time. It didn't save them from a home based terrorist attack. So what does going out and inventing a whole new six gun going to do for you?
Listening to the airman speaking about this weapon, his enthusiasm about its terrifying lethal potential and his joy at the Raptor's ability to "single handedly alter the course of events" brought home what this thing is all about. I can't condemn this soldier for promoting this weapon; he's a soldier, that's his job. But the course of events the Raptor is designed to alter is the enemy's well being. The enemy's army, his culture, his civilization, his life. Whatever enemy that may be. People of different cultures, religion, race, people who had something, or threatened to take away something, that the Raptor's owners need. Want. Desire.
Why does this bother me so much? Why does it scare me? One hundred sixty million per plane, about 65 billion for the whole program, a weapon so advanced, and so expensive, no other nation can compete with it. Yes, the program has been scratched, in part, due to this titantic expense. But they built them. When, like other nations, the US had people starving, homeless, begging for healthcare, education .. they build them. They're still flying. Right now, people in the US gov't are planning and dreaming and designing even more deadly, unstoppable weapons. Regardless of cost. Because they can.
This one plane, this one weapon, is designed to defeat all defenses, via its stealth and its speed and its incredible vector based flying ability, and with its impressive weapons systems, wipe out bases, soldiers, towns. People. Sure, the argument is that one plane replaces perhaps hundreds of ground troops, thereby preventing many casualties. No argument there. I am all about keeping soldiers out of harm's way. But it still scares me. This huge, "silent" air plane, floating through the sky, apparently unstoppable, its laser guided munitions set to fly .. are they up there now, somewhere? Circling? Who's in the cross hairs?
It's a humbling thing, this Raptor. When you get past the amazing and groundbreaking engineering you see it as it is: The flying gun. The weapon. Designed to destroy. To kill. Nothing else. It's not a rescue aircraft, not designed for reconnaissance or observation. Designed to kill. Someone.
Anytime someone shows you a gun, no matter how beautiful, ask yourself this question: Who's it aimed at?
2 comments:
I agree with you - I was unaware that they are out of production, but I guess when a country runs a war at 70 billion a month, they can't be making more planes and doing long term training of pilots.
Actually it is the very nature of the high tech which makes the Raptor rather like the other mega-cost plane (the one which flew at mach 8 or something the nighthawk, I think it was, long black plane made during Vietnam), it perpetuates the very nature of the thing it tries to destroy.
Because there is no equal footing for it in the air, no one bothers to try. However, a Russian scientist made a nice little device that makes all those expensive guided point to point computer controlled armament useless within range of the device - which costs $500. Jam the computer, jam the airplane.
During one of the more prolonged engagements which took over a month, the 'insurgents' (I am sure THEY think they have a name, but I guess like 'Charlie' the US denies people that too) used semaphore to avoid the way the US locks down on electronics. Yup, guys jumping out and waving flags co-ordinated attacks which kept the high tech, night vision, air supported US forces at bay for weeks.
When it is pointless to go out and face a Raptor in a tank, it is a lot easier to blow up the pilots' quarters in a mortar or suicide attack. Which is why the Raptor is being used, right? To stop these kinds of tactics? Except what other tactics can be used against it? Or the country that funds it.
Also, the more you talk about costs, the more I think about the low literacy rate in the US, the so many children left behind, the incest loophole, the country which is number one in human slave trafficing import, in drug import, in child porn import and realize how much the government must really, really hate the citizens. Of which I am one in exile. Because a recent election, the president called my wife and I a greater threat than what the raptor faces. Odd world.
Very good points, Elizabeth. I do like the idea of using low tech to fight hi tech. One good solid EMP would bring everything to a screaming halt and the kids who took archery at camp (and the fencers) will rule. And the fact that creating an "unbeatable" piece of tech will force your adversaries to find completely alternate ways .. like blowing up all the scientists ... seems to go over the heads of the spenders. But it is the money that really kills me, all that money for a flying gun, and people freezing on the streets of Toronto every year
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