"This thing is a turkey," Pierre Sprey says of the Air Force's Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor fighter.

Sprey, one of the designers of the successful Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter, has been presenting a litany of F-22 criticisms alongside author James Stevenson at the Center for Defense Information in Washington D.C.

In a series of slides, Sprey and Stevenson accuse the F-22 of being slow, gas-guzzling, vulnerable and expensive.

Their last point is indisputable. $65 billion buys the Air Force just 183 aircraft -- an average cost of around $350 million, versus around $50 million for a new F-16.

But the men and women who operate the F-22 from Langley Air Force Base in southern Virginia say their new mount is worth every penny.

"We'll use the F-22 to clear a path for other aircraft," says Captain Phil Colomy, a Raptor pilot with the 27th Fighter Squadron. He describes how Raptors would come in high and fast, sneaking up on enemy air defenses with its radar-absorbing and -reflecting airframe and its hard-to-detect radar, then drop satellite-guided bombs to take out radars and surface-to-air missiles. On the same mission, Colomy adds, a flight of F-22s could shoot down enemy fighters.

Recent exercises corroborate Colomy's enthusiasm. At Northern Edge in Alaska recently, the 27th Fighter Squadron simulated 108 kills against other fighters for no losses of its own. And at a weapons test in Utah, the squadron dropped 22 bombs for 22 hits with better accuracy than any other aircraft.

Sprey contends that these awesome capabilities are unnecessary in conflicts such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there are no air defenses and no enemy aircraft.

But the commander of the 27th Fighter Squadron's parent wing says that the future is uncertain. "One thing we've done really well in the United States is not predict the next war," says Brigadier General Burton Field of the 1st Fighter Wing. "We look at all the capabilities that exist in the world and imagine how we fight against them."

A Wing presentation on the F-22 lists potential threat systems including European Typhoon, French Rafale and Russian Sukhoi fighters and Iran's dense surface-to-air missile network.

Sprey insists that the Raptor isn't as "hot" as the Air Force claims. He cites the aircraft's weight and size as disadvantages in aerial combat. Colomy counters by pointing out that the aircraft's massive control surfaces and sophisticated flight control computer afford unprecedented maneuverability. The Raptor's single-piece fin is as large as an F-16's entire wing and its elevators dwarf those of the similarly-sized Boeing F-15 Eagle.

"I don't know what people have been reading, but this thing is a monster," Field says in praise of the advanced fighter. He says he's concerned only that budget cuts have reduced the Raptor force to just seven operational squadrons. The Air Force says it needs 381 F-22s in at least 10 squadrons to outfit all of its rotating Air Expeditionary Forces.

In light of the reduced number of F-22s, Field says the force has to do some creative thinking. "We're going to have to figure out how to use this thing in the right way.”