Look...
I'm an engineer - many of you know that - and I worked on one of the major subsystems in the F-22. I'm actually pretty familiar with the capabilities of the design. (I did NOT work on the "stealth skin" laminate, by the way!)
I've seen some very interesting test results, which I won't go into in detail here (if you find them online, that's not my concern, of course) describing the results of "mock combat" engagements between F-22s and pretty much every other in-service aircraft.
The F-22 won every single engagement it ever took part in.
More recently, REAL engagements have proven much the same. The F-22 may be expensive, but it's also the aircraft most likely to come home from a combat engagement intact. To me, the cost-of-maintenance (most of which, granted, is due to poor engineering on the "stealth skin" which requires frequent skin-refurbishment) is less significant than the cost of replacing ships and pilots lost in combat engagements with superior craft.
The F-22 should, no question, be put on "standby" until a more robust skin design can be created, tested, and implemented. But that's not the same as "killing" the program. It's a design defect, but it's a SOLVABLE one. Probably at the cost of about 100 lbs or so total mass (assuming that they just apply a stealthy "paint" over the stealthy metal... solving the first problem AND improving stealth on top of that... but, no question, involving a cost in duration and maneuverability, as well as total-weapons-loadout.)
