Pentagon Budget Asks For $600 Million For Planes It Doesn't Use

The Nation:

Matt Yglesias, Matt Duss, and Robert Farley have all done a great job of critiquing this embarrassing crush note to the F-22 in the latest Atlantic.

Read the whole story: The Nation

Comments

[layman]

12:24 PM on 02/18/2009

What a loot all you can country wide fiesta !!!!!!!

[imsosure]

11:00 AM on 02/18/2009

Generally the mindset when preparing a budget request for the government is that you never ask for less and always over-estimate even if it means riding the edge of becoming fraud, waste and abuse. The one's approving these things never really look into what's going on. It's sort of like when your on active duty, if you get enough rank you'll be required to write your own letters of recommendation for medals and promotions and someone else just pencil whips an OK on it and then you get your medal. It's been like that for decades.

[stargazer13]

10:22 AM on 02/18/2009

the pentagon needs to go find the 25% of there budget that they can,t account for

[RightWingMarine]

09:44 AM on 02/18/2009

So many people on this page want things both ways. Keyens is regarded as a demigod and his answer that govt spending is the only way to save us is holy writ. But apparently that doesn't work if the govt spending is to buy fighter jets. Keynes himself even said that war could be used to create jobs and suggested that building pyramids would be a way to reach full employment.

So because the current conflicts we are engaged in have not used this jet means that we should no longer maintain them or build newer ones? Should we mothball everything that doesn't get used in every conflict?

[BlackWidowPilot]

01:30 PM on 02/18/2009

Yer barkin' up the wrong tree, Marine. The F-22 on the evidence is not working as promised, and the number of actual potential threats it *may* ever have to address can be written down in a small matchbook with a very big crayon.

better to spend the money on mineproof vehicles, body armour that actually works, and proper medical care for our veterans.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[RightWingMarine]

05:17 PM on 02/18/2009

as much as I like to stir the pot I like all the things you mention but we are still using some equipment that we had in the Vietnam war. Just because we don't have an enemy to point this plane at today doesn't mean we won't in 30 years.

[1differentdrummer]

06:12 AM on 02/18/2009

Uh, doesn't the USAF prioritize?

[BlackWidowPilot]

01:31 PM on 02/18/2009

They do, it's just not what We The People would recognize as *valid* priorities... just ask The Barstoolers...

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[mommadona]

03:25 AM on 02/18/2009

You know something?

This is getting really, really, really old.

This isn't the Department of Defense.
This is the Department of Corporate Welfare Queens.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Custer_Battles

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021200732.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801871_pf.html

[foreffectivegovernment]

01:44 AM on 02/18/2009

The place to save money is on Strategic Defense Initiative, (SDI), Star-Wars, Regean's Wet Dream, or whatever it is called.
Even the people who designed and built it know it won't work. You can't hit a bullet with a bullet.
The Russians act like they are afraid of it so we will continue to pour money down a rat-hole and end up like the USSR did.
What a sham it has been just because Ronnie wanted his own "John Kennedy moment" in history.
Russia has reinstated its long range bomber fleet and we need to maintain fighters to defend against them as the F-102s and F-106's did in the 60's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

[totalliberal]

01:13 AM on 02/18/2009

If we don't buy them, what are all those up-tight, freaked out sky-pilots in Colorado going to fly up and see God with.

Reagan loved battleships cuz he was a silly old man. The days of fighter-jocks are gone.

[Charlie Wright]

12:54 AM on 02/18/2009

"F-22 Raptor fighter jet"
Park them in the desert, much cheep er.

[drkazmd65]

11:48 PM on 02/17/2009

How many elementart schools could be funded with $600 million? How many students could be given Pell Grants enough to stay in school & finish a degree?

[Ping]

10:55 PM on 02/17/2009

How many Predators can $600 Million buy?

[Manny Otiko]

11:56 PM on 02/17/2009

I just did some research on the Air Force's Web site and each Predator cost about $30M. For $600 M, you could get 20 of them, which is practically a fleet.

[KCinBK]

10:17 PM on 02/17/2009

Well if there was another super power with sophisticated weaponry that we were engaging in battle this would make sense in these economic hard times or any time for that matter. However, the cold war ended twenty years ago and this type of spending should have also.

[xriv]

11:20 PM on 02/17/2009

...so you are not scared of "Islamists"?

[BlackWidowPilot]

02:22 PM on 02/19/2009

"Islamists" don't engage in air superiority missions, as they don't make use of an air force of conventional supersonic fighters.

Theirs is the realm of asymmetric warfare. A fleet of F-22s will not address this sort of threat, anymore than Claire Chennault was able to stop the Japanese ground offensive in China through the use of airpower, no matter how much he insisted it would work.

The solution to the Wahabbist heretical fanatics whose religious stronghold and main source of support is *Saudi Arabia* BTW, is a multi-layered strategy that swamps their perverted little agenda by breaking our dependence on foreign oil with energy independence utilizing sustainable sources, encouraging moderate Islamic regimes through support material and political, using their own Wahabbist heretical dogmas against them (they haven't a leg to stand on in any honest evaluation of the Holy Quran), and engaging these vermin at the front end with spec-ops forces rather than trying to sledgehammer them into submission with massive conventional efforts.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[Manny Otiko]

10:15 PM on 02/17/2009

The F-22 is a great piece of technology, but I wonder how much it will be used.?The future of warfare is unmanned planes such as the Predator and its big brother the Reaper, which are much cheaper to use. And right now the government does not have the money to be wasted on weapons that never get used.

I find it amazing that GOPers complain about government spending, but say nothing about defense contractors which are essentially kept alive by government money!

[kid5rivers2]

09:00 PM on 02/17/2009

For nigh on forty years we've been singing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b7qaSxuZUg

Now! When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

[layman]

08:48 PM on 02/17/2009

The working class can not keep more of their pay check. They are being taxed to death, not being able to afford health insurance,to pay for this no defense phoney baloney defense spending. American democracy at work !