The F-22 is a “fifth generation” stealth fighter designed to gain air superiority in a conflict. Built by Lockheed Martin and first deployed in 2005, it is the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft, with unrivaled maneuverability, sustained supersonic flight, and avionics packages. In air combat exercises and simulations, the F-22 has achieved a kill-ratio against “enemy” forces of 221–0.

Despite its overwhelming dominance, the Pentagon decided in April to cap the Raptor program at 187 planes, thus signaling a limited future role for the F-22. That decision was preceded and followed by statements by top Air Force officers, such as General John Corley, commander of Air Combat Command, that 187 F-22s was inadequate to maintain air superiority. Although the Pentagon has stated that the F-22’s role will be filled by Lockheed Martin's other premier airplane, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, critics note that the F-35 is slower, less stealthy, and not designed to achieve the same level of air superiority as the Raptor. Moreover, the F-35 will not be deployed until 2015 at the earliest. Internal Air Force studies have indicated that a minimum of 243 F-22s are needed to ensure control of the aerial battle space (and this is far fewer than the original plan back in the 1980s to buy 750 of the planes, a number repeatedly cut due to budget constraints).

While 187 of the world’s most advanced aircraft may seem like an overwhelming amount of power, that total force figure is far from the actual number of F-22s that could be brought to bear in a conflict.

Last month, the Senate and House Armed Services Committees responded to such concerns by voting to keep production of the Raptor alive after 2009 and adding a minimum of nine planes to the force. This week, however, President Obama has repeated his threat to veto the 2010 National Defense Authorization Bill if it contains money for more than 187 Raptors. Debate thus continues over how to maintain American air supremacy decades into the future.

While 187 of the world’s most advanced aircraft may seem like an overwhelming amount of power, especially when no peer competitors are in skies, that total force figure is well above the actual number of F-22s that could be brought to bear in a conflict. This is an important fact that has largely been ignored in the debates over how many planes to purchase, the types of missions they can undertake, and the power projection needs of the U.S. military.

To begin with, only around 130 F-22s will be combat “coded,” meaning they contain the full set of avionics and weapons packages, and are considered fully ready for combat missions. In addition, a handful of F-22s have already been retired and approximately 60 are maintained for training and testing purposes. The Air Force could upgrade the avionics and capabilities of the trainers and older planes to those of the deployed frontline fighters if they wanted to increase the number of combat-capable aircraft, but that would be an extremely expensive and time-consuming process when more aircraft might be needed on short call.

Policy makers must decide whether denying future war fighters the option of a globally credible F-22 force may well be more costly than continuing to produce the plane.

Even these gross numbers of combat capable aircraft are far from what can be put into a fight. Every military aircraft has a Mission Capable Rate (MCR); the aggregate of these rates indicate the average percentage of planes that are able to fight at any given time in any given mission, due to repairs and upgrading. For the Raptor, the MCR is approximately 70 percent, according to Air Force officials and those with direct experience operating the plane, and lower for missions requiring high stealth capabilities. Factoring in the MCR drops the F-22 fleet numbers down to approximately 100 planes. Before the Air Force has even divided them into squadrons and based them in far-flung locales, then, it has lost close to 50 percent of the “total” F-22 force.

However, the MCR of 100 planes does not mean all of them will be available at a moment’s notice. Operations planners have to build in some leeway in the number of planes scheduled for missions in order to have spare aircraft available in case more airplanes break and to respond to changing battle-space conditions. Thus, prudent schedulers will commit only 75 percent of the available planes to fly at any given time. That drops America’s premier flying force down to somewhere around 75 F-22s ready to fight.

Nor should an enemy expect 75 F-22s to darken his skies in a conflict. Except in the direst emergency, no commander is going to order all his planes in at one time. Air Force planners prefer to carry out operations in at least three to four waves. When one wave is attacking or on station, another wave is returning to base, and a third is preparing to depart. Depending on distances, resupply time, and the like, even more waves may be required to keep control of the air without gaps in coverage. Factoring that in, the Air Force fleet of 75 scheduled, mission capable, combat coded F-22s breaks down to approximately 20 planes globally available to be over the battlefield and in the fight at any given time.

The question for policy makers, then, is whether 20 F-22s is enough to ensure air superiority in a conflict that would call on the Raptor’s services. Our Raptor force is spread thin at bases from Virginia to New Mexico to Alaska, and not all will be able to get to where they are needed at a moment’s notice. Thus, war fighters might have only a handful of F-22s on hand when a conflict starts or they may be required to wait several days before more Raptors can get in the fight. Perhaps that would not be such a concern, but the Air Force will be retiring nearly 250 of its F-15s and F-16s over the next several years, thus reducing America’s overall numbers of available advanced fighter aircraft.

The drawdown will not be happening in a vacuum, for nations such as Russia and China soon will have their own fifth-generation variants with some stealth capability and advanced avionics.

Equally importantly, this drawdown will not be happening in a vacuum, for nations such as Russia and China are deploying hundreds of advanced “fourth-generation” (i.e., post-1980s) fighters and soon will have their own fifth-generation variants with some stealth capability and advanced avionics.

Potential rivals are also deploying increasingly sophisticated surface-to-air interceptors and exploring cyberwarfare that could degrade America’s technological edge, leaving the F-22 as the only U.S. fighter able to operate in such non-permissive environments.

At the end of the day, the decision whether to maintain production of the F-22 and increase the fleet is a political one. Critics of the congressional allocation of money for more Raptors will claim that far more than 20 F-22s will be available at any one time in a conflict. Others argue that the approximately $250 million dollar price tag per plane cannot be justified when the Pentagon must reorient its forces to deal with irregular warfare and is faced with White House demands to trim the military budget. Yet others assert that our air superiority will be ensured by the F-35 when it comes online, even though the slower F-35’s excellence in ground attack roles comes at the cost of achieving the Raptor’s level of air superiority capability.

Policy makers must decide whether denying future war fighters the option of a globally credible F-22 force may well be more costly than continuing to produce the plane. An optimal force structure in 2015 and beyond will have a mix of F-22s and F-35s, but expecting the F-35 to carry the load largely by itself may strain future missions. From a cost perspective, moreover, continued domestic purchases of F-22s and development of an export variant to sell to American allies will drop the price per unit (though it still will be an extremely expensive airplane). Beyond all those considerations, however, debate needs to begin with the realization that 187 is not nearly the number it seems at first glance.

Michael Auslin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This is an expanded version of an article that originally appeared in the Washington Examiner.

Image by Darren Wamboldt/Bergman Group.