I spent some time on DoD acquisitions before my retirement, granted well down the ladder of the final signatures. But I cannot imagine that kind of slight of hand would fly whatsoever. In fact, seems someone could be sent to jail for such trickery. I wouldn't put it past someone to try, but the Program Manager for the Navy and Air Force would be putting their own freedom on the line for something like that.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

That is partly true. The program started specifically as the ATF (advanced tactical fighter) which led to the fly off of the YF-22 and the YF-23. Lockheed won and was granted the contract for the F-22A and F-22B (a two seat version that was cancelled) in 1991. It was still called the F-22 when the first one rolled out in 1997. So really the majority of the funding and planning was based on it being a pretty pure fighter. But they did always have some air to ground capability (with the F-22's speed and altitude giving it some range especially with the gliding SDB). I think around 2003 when the US was spending a bunch of money of wars that needed planes that dropped bombs and not shot down other fighters, it was renamed the F/A-22 to keep it relevant. Then in ~2006 it went back to the F-22A. So there was some gaming of calling it the F/A-22 to protect some of its budget, but that only affected a bit of its budget. That was long after the first flight and pretty deep into development and even production.

I think you would be surprised. Just look at the F/A-18E/F the superhornet. The Navy argued that it was simply a derivative of the F/A-18C/D, when in reality it is basically a whole new airplane that just looks generally the same. Really it was a whole new airplane, but they were able to get it done under the radar because they just pretended it was a derivative. So they had less of budget, but also less oversight because it was not seen as some big new program.

The test pilot told me that one too. "No no, it's still an F-18! (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)"

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War is god

In the post-WW II/late 1940's era, the USAF wanted to buy what was effectively an upgraded B-29. More powerful engines, increased tail surface, reversible props, and a few other things. But Congress wasn't going to pay for more "old" B-29's (the USAF was buying B-36's and B-47's), so the USAF called the resulting airplane the "new" B-50. They ended up getting enough money to buy 370 B-50's.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

That is probably more or less true, but in fact the Air Force did invest in an air to ground capability for the F-22. It upgraded the radar to include high resolution ground mapping capabilities, and the capability to carry bombs internally. In fact, the F-22 has already dropped bombs in combat in Syria.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

What does the A in F/A signify?

"A" for "attack", as opposed to "F" for fighter.

You can sometimes get sort of silly arguments going in the "fighter pilot" community vs. the "attack pilots". The US Navy F-4 pilots counted themselves as "fighter pilots", flying mostly air-to-air missions to shoot down MIG's, to differentiate themselves from the A-4, A-6, and A-7 "attack pilots" who mostly dropped bombs on air-to-ground missions. The US Navy F-4 pilots seemed to think most of us flying F-4's in the USAF were "attack pilots" (or even "bomber pilots") because we spent most of our time doing air-to-ground missions vs. air-to-air missions, but we thought of ourselves as "fighter pilots". Even when I flew A-10's and F-111's, we called ourselves "fighter pilots", although we were 100 percent dealing in air-to-ground missions there.

We had a US Navy exchange pilot flying F-4's with us in one of my USAF squadrons in 1980. He was getting ready to PCS, and he wanted to get back to F-14's vs. going to the then new F/A-18. He wanted to be sure he'd be a "fighter pilot"!

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Which is really a ludicrous attitude. Fighters have been multirole since the dawn of time. It would be interesting to know if that guy was still in F-14s when they turned it into the "Bombcat" with the LANTIRN targeting pod.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Given the lack of "action" for the F-14 squadrons during Desert Storm, I would have thought they'd have been happy to pick up an air-to-ground mission to give them something to do.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

No shit. F-14s finally came into their own as LGB bomb trucks over Serbia.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.