F-22 upgrades in budget crosshairs???

via the Orlando Sentinel...read the whole thing...but a couple of tidbits...

Although the F-35 has had its share of problems, nothing compares with the woes of the F-22, which have made it the poster child for defense critics. And yet the U.S. is still pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into it.

and this...

It is not clear exactly how much the latest contract is worth. There was confusion when the military announced that the deal was a "potential $7.4 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity contract." That turned out to be incorrect; instead, the Air Force deal had actually boosted the potential value of an existing program to $7.4 billion, according to Reuters news service.

A DoD spokewoman told Reuters that the latest deal "cleared the way for funding of further upgrades in 2012, the last year of the program." She did not, however, disclose the value of the latest deal.

and finally this...

In some ways, the upgrade work on the F-22 could be seen as a sort of "bailout" of the problem-plagued fighter jet. Since the first Raptor was fielded in 2005, technical problems have prevented a single jet from taking part in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or in any other conflict.

Among the malfunctions: oxygen problems in the cockpit that caused pilots to lose consciousness, and navigation problems that led to an embarrassing return to base over the Pacific Ocean in 2007 for a dozen jets on a flight to Japan.

For defense proponents, it is an uncomfortable irony that the most-expensive, most-capable jet in the U.S. arsenal has never fired a shot.

The F-22 program confounds.

Its supporters are vociferous.  It is (they claim) capable of shooting down anything short of a Death Star, yet its looking more and more like a hangar queen and its upgrade path seems to indicate that its not as technologically advanced as some 4th gen fighters.

Upgrades are flowing from the F-35 to the F-22 and not the other way around.  Perhaps the real canary in the USAF's coal mine is the F-22 and its actual utility against a 1st tier opponent.