This is not about the F-22 or McD or LM or anything other than the state of our air superiority capabilities. I didn't say the F-22 wasn't capable, I said it isn't that capable where it can reliably fight 20-1 ratios and be 100% effective.
The point is that the leadership pressed forward with their selling of the farm even when it became painfully obvious that the buy was going to be far less than what was needed. We knew long ago that we wouldn't get all of the F-22's we wanted, but we still pressed forward. The fate of the F-15/F-117/etc was decided when the buy was going to be several hundred, and when the buy became 187 the plans for the remaining fleets were not modified to any great extent. The USAF was not reacting to the world around them - they thought the Senate would save them, and it did not.
When the buy was going to be several hundred, certain decisions were perhaps more prudent. When it became obvious that the buy was going to be substantially less, new decisions and new acquisitions should have been considered and they were not.
Now, we have Gates saying we stop at 187. The generals started off saying years ago that we need 740. They then lowered that to 381, then again to 243 - what changed? It was "different warfighting assumptions". Now, the USAF has decided to attach its future on the F-35. As if we didn't learn the lesson from the F-22. Here's the CSAF's take:
U.S. Air Force Live Moving Beyond the F-22
The F-22 is the best we have, but 187 is not enough - someone in authority needs to say that the emperor has no clothes. Someone needs to say that we need to radically change our plans regarding the drawdown of our existing fleet and the conversion of all of these guard units away from fighters. The common opinion is that air superiority is a mission of the past - even though we have not had bombs dropped on our troops in over 40 years. Instead we have everyone saying that the F-22 is this great airplane that can do it all and save the world even though we don't have enough.
Everyone else can talk about it from the marketing point of view, but I am facing reality. Your experiences in all of those LFE's are no different than mine - a protracted war with those few F-22's will not be the one-sided war I would hope for.