Arguments against the F-22 Raptor all fall apart when the aircraft’s prodigious capabilities in collecting information are considered, according to USAF’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Lt. Gen. David Deptula. At a Capitol Hill seminar, Friday, Deptula decried the “myopic platform price logic” that suggests that if there’s no direct analogy to the F-22 in an adversary’s air force, then it isn’t needed. “The F-22 is not just an air-to-air platform,” he said. He went on: “It’s an F/A/B/E/EA/RC/AWACS-22. It’s a flying sensor that will allow us to conduct network-centric warfare inside adversary battlespace from the first moments of any conflict, in addition to its vast attack capabilities.” Deptula added that if the Raptor doesn’t have to spend much time wiping out enemy fighters, so much the better; it will be available more often as an ISR platform because “there’s no place it can’t go.”
In his first professional move since retiring from the Space Force at the end of August, former Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman will lead the board of advisors for Voyager Technologies, the firm announced Nov. 2.