F-22 restart might not be beneficial for Lockheed Martin.

• Author: Harper, Jon

Congress recently tasked the Air Force to study the cost and feasibility of restarting the F-22 Raptor production line. But building more of the stealthy jets might not make good business sense for prime contractor Lockheed Martin. And practical and political hurdles stand in the way of such an endeavor, according to analysts.

Early in the Obama administration, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates succeeded in his effort to kill the F-22 program. The assembly line was shut down after the last Raptor was delivered in 2012. Some air power advocates believe that capping production at 195 planes was a big mistake.

"We don't have enough F-22s," said Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, at a conference last year. "That's a fact of life. We didn't buy enough."

Other experts hold similar views.

"There are many people out there, including me, who think it was killed prematurely," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based aerospace and defense market consulting firm.

"It's sort of got a kind of James Dean/JFK died-too-young thing going on," he said. "That's sort of a sinkhole tragedy of the industry."

Carlisle said he dreams that someday the Air Force will buy more Raptors.

Lawmakers could be on the path to making Carlisle's wish come true, having recently directed the Air Force to complete a cost and feasibility analysis for doubling the size of the F-22 fleet.

Advocates for building more advanced aircraft have identified high-tech fighters developed by China and Russia as challenges that must be addressed.

"With threats to America's air superiority growing, it is time for Congress to consider resurrecting the [F-22] or finding a suitable replacement," Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., and former secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne said in a press release.

The Raptor "still outclasses everything else in air-to-air combat," they said.

House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said he would wait for the results of the study before passing judgment on whether the production line should be reopened.

"I don't know that [building more] is the answer, but in my town hall meetings I get asked about this," he said at a recent breakfast with defense reporters.

"I think enough members were getting the question that the decision was made [to] see what [the Pentagon] says about that," he added.

In an official statement provided to National Defense, a Lockheed spokesman said the company would give the Air Force any data that it needs to conduct the assessment.

Perhaps counterintuitively the resumption of F-22 production might not be beneficial for the manufacturer, analysts said.

One reason is that in the current fiscal environment, the plane would likely compete for dollars with the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter, another stealthy jet built by...