Deep-Sixing the F-22

I'll believe it when it finally happens. But the news that Congress might actually stop production of a high-tech, job-generating and, most of all, high-profit weapons system because it fills no legitimate national security function is a considerable victory for President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as well as for logic.

You wouldn't think it should require great courage to conclude that the 187 F-22s already authorized are enough when the plane has yet to fly a single combat mission in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else. But if usefulness was the criterion for defense spending, it would not have ballooned since the 9/11 attack, accounting for more than half of the federal government's discretionary budget. Trillions wasted -- ostensibly to defeat a terrorist enemy armed with an arsenal that can be purchased for a couple of hundred bucks at any garden-variety hardware store. We would not be spending as much on the military as the rest of the world's nations combined, friend and foe, if defense spending was anything more than an elaborate political slush fund.

Just check the spectacle of supposedly enlightened Democrats like California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, joined by Connecticut's Chris Dodd, treating yet another $1.75 billion F-22 allotment for war profiteers as a progressive jobs program. Los Angeles couldn't find $50 million to keep its summer schools open, but a supposedly liberal senator like Boxer has voted for hundreds of billions over the years for exquisitely expensive military junk. Having lost the courage to make the swords-into-plowshares argument, they act like craven hustlers for the Daddy Warbucks types that support their re-elections. And once again, when it comes to being rational about military spending, John McCain, a Senate co-sponsor with Michigan Democrat Carl Levin of an amendment against funding the F-22, distinguished himself in the very moment when so many of his presumably less hawkish Democratic counterparts failed.

Gates failed to halt further production of the F-22 during his tenure in the Bush administration, but this time the bipartisan military-industrial complex clique was beaten back. The incredibly intricate and therefore expensive plane was designed to defeat an ultra-advanced Soviet air combat ability that was never realized. And it obviously has no purpose in fighting irregular wars against terrorists, as Obama has pointed out. But those who support the plane make the same "the Chinese are the new Soviets" argument that Sen. Joseph Lieberman uses to such great effect to get his $2 billion submarines built in Connecticut to combat an enemy holed up in caves. The absurdity of borrowing money from the Chinese at a furious rate to be able to afford to build weapons to counter weapons that the Chinese have no intention of building rises to the level of a Madoff scam.

The end of the Cold War, with its potential for human extinction, was greeted with a great sense of relief by most of the world's citizenry. For the U.S., as the first President Bush pointed out years ago, it was an opportunity to "look homeward even more and move to set right what needs to be set right -- for half a century now, the American people have shouldered the burden and paid taxes that were higher than they would have been to support a defense that was bigger than it would have been if imperial communism had never existed. ... Two years ago, I began planning cuts in military spending that reflected the changes of the new era."

He and his then-secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, did cut defense spending by 30 percent. President Bill Clinton, ever mindful of triangulating with the hawks, did less. Now we are reduced to being grateful that Obama halts an extremely wasteful F-22 program, even as he makes the claim that this will free up money for his disastrous war in Afghanistan.

That's not good enough. We don't need a more "rational" use of defense dollars to fight yet another irrational war. Combating terrorism should never have been thought of in military terms, but rather as a matter of international police work that has very little to do with most of the items on our bloated defense budget.

But terrorism is not the major threat to our security; that threat is rather to be found in the failure of public schools, the decay of our economic institutions and the corruption of our politicians. All of those failures combine to produce politicians like Boxer, Dodd and Feinstein, whose idea of looking homeward is not to create a vibrant peacetime economy, but rather to hype high-tech weapons systems as the only viable jobs program.

Comments

[wallyone]

What job producing project has more lasting value, a new school/hospital or a new weapons platform? Especially a platform that will likely never be used.

[Sarastro]

Our military history has been rife with examples of being slow to respond to changing conditions. In wars where there was time to adapt or we were forced to adapt by losses [e.g. Pearl Harbor 1941] we came up with killer equipment that finally fit the job requirements. In this century due to the increasing rate of technological and political changes we may not have time to adapt. We have lost lives due to the mismatch between equipment and threats. We need to be proactive and fast-smart, not reactive and slow-smart as in the past. When a weapons program obviously doesn't fit our needs it should be scrapped immediately to allow better use of limited funds. There is no longer wiggle room for pork barrel programs filling only political needs. On the philosophical side, wouldn't it be better to let police work be done by police [terrorists are criminals, not military combatants]. Ignoring the Truth and playing games with words were the first acts of our government after 9/11. We will be paying a price for that stupidity for a long time. I am thankful we have elected an apparently honest and smart President who may finally be making some progress in bringing our military equipment closer to matching the actual threats and not wasting as many lives as in the recent past.

[Kyle Anderson]

Cont...
And while our missle defense program is in need, think about the Air Defense Artillery guys in the military...I'm sure if you were to talk to one of them, they could tell you a few things about shooting down rockets and missles. It's not an easy thing! And they have been dealing with scuds for the past few years.

However, I do agree with the opponents of this funding when we are talking about education, health care, national debt, etc...we need a solution! But again, we can't just cut off military technology progress completely.

[Kyle Anderson]

With all do respect to everyone here, I too believe that cutting spending needs to happen...just in other ways. While the F-22 is a very, very expensive weapon system, we are comparing it to its use in our current wars! Our current birds are becoming outdated. They are good for bombing missions and softening up ground targets for the ground pounders but we really need to look to the future when considering cutting funding for this jet. The JSF is already basically null and void within congress and yes, as someone mentioned earlier...drones only work if radio frequencies/radar/satcomms are clear...but in a war against a large enemy such as Russia, China, perhaps even N. Korea, we cannot rely on the ease in which we have used our comm/weapon systems in the Middle East.

While I, nor any other military member that I know condones war, our level of prepardeness is never one to joke around with (and I say this without supporting or rejecting anything that has happened in the past). Sure, using F-22's in the Middle East would be like bringing a grenade to a water balloon fight...but just because we aren't using them doesn't mean we should scrap the whole program!

[AbstractionAction]

"The absurdity of borrowing money from the Chinese at a furious rate to be able to afford to build weapons to counter weapons that the Chinese have no intention of building rises to the level of a Madoff scam."

There can only be one inevitable end to the continuation of this policy: we will be the instigators of a war with China. It is classic big military industrial complex...you beg/borrow/steal enough money to build a big ass military, and when that military is big and the money is drying up, you attack.

I do hope the human race has gotten past that stage in civilization, but that would mean we have broken the bonds of thousands of years of cyclical war/political history. And every other time we've said, as the human race, that we are beyond war, we've been wrong.

[TJCole]

30 hours maintenance for every hour of flight is a serious detriment to availability, and maybe why we needed so many, 1/3rd to 1/2 would always be down for servicing...

[Boyaca]

And 45,000 dollars an hour to fly. Now thats rich. A totally impractical airplane.When nations and empires have run their course and are beginning to fail they stop producing anything except weapons. That is where the USA is right now. What else do you make that the world wants?

[cmaurand]

Yes, well, the F-22 is an air to air weapon. It'll never fly in ground support missions. The F-35 is for that. The real weapon that needs to be killed is the $2Billion per copy B2 stealth bomber. That's also a cold war relic and relatively useless. Less expensive A10's work much better for ground support. It flies low and slow and that's what's needed for places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

If we ever do get into a war with the Russians or the Chinese (neither of whom are exactly our friends) the F22 will be real handy, but then so will a lot of drones. Oh, wait, drones won't work if the radio frequencies are being jammed.

[cheesewhiz]

Spot on comments. The Air Force actually wanted to kill the A-10, and it turned out to be invaluable. Enough of these over complicated useless weapons systems. Give our guys better armor, RPG protectection and a new battle rifle.

Great article, but it's not Obama's war Robert. No argument it's a disaster.

[Kyle Anderson]

Completely agree! Even more ironically than wanting to scrap the A-10, they were concerned about it being primarily subsonic when attacking and it's ugliness! I have heard more stories about A-10's getting shot up and damaged by AAA and surviving than I have any other bird. Like I said...we simply cannot end spending for military technological progress all together, lets be smart about it!

And if/when that day comes when we are fighting another superpower (I pray that day never comes!) we will be wishing we had more 22's, 35's, stealth, armor plating, ballistics protection, etc, etc, etc.!!

[TJCole]

But Robert; Joe Biden is in the Ukraine and Georgia starting WWIII right now...!

[MikeDu]

I recall back in Gulf War I (Kuwait war), when all the stops were pulled out and nothing held back, the U.S. used *only* about 150 of their F16 fighter-bombers in the fight out of an inventory of more that 1600 aircraft. My memory on the exact numbers may be off but not the proportions.

American doesn't need, and no longer can afford, to field *ten times* more military equipment than it could possibly use! Why not keep five aircraft carrier battlegroups instead of the current thirteen? Why not only a dozen B2 stealth bombers instead of 99? Why not... ZERO ballistic missile submarines? Why not return GITMO to Cuba, why not return 900 of those 1,000 foreign military bases to their rightful owners? To put it bluntly, we can't AFFORD it anymore, especially with the RNC steadfastly refusing to raise the necessary revenues.

[LADawson]

Amen to useless base closures. We need to be asking these countries if they even want us there any longer, and for those few who may want us there, what mission they'd like us to perform there. For some places, like South Korea, we still pose as a significant deterrence to potential Northern aggression... but it really should be entirely up to the South Koreans how many forces we have in their country, where they are stationed, and what their mission is.

Bases in Germany no longer serve any real purpose, aside from giving the US jumping off points to the rest of Europe. This could easily be accomplished by negotiating usage of bases operated by the German military. I don't think we need to worry about the commies storming into West Germany any more.

Guantanamo is a relic of a treaty signed in 1903... occupied territory from the fricken Spanish-American War! A treaty that the Cubans have declared illegal, and experts believe the US has broken the terms of anyway.

The US is like world herpes. Once we show up some place, we just never seem to go away.

[mjc]

Some of the best news I've heard about the present administration and Congress. I may even come to treasure Sec of Defense Gates. Heard about the F-22 on NPR as well and discovered that the "skin" of this airplane is very thin and very vulnerable to bullets, rain, wind, snow, etcetera. It is very fast but keeping the plane in the air is probably more important, especially if ordinary elements can do it in. And they ain't cheap. It is sad that the allegiance of Congress persons is bought by promises of having military weapons and parts in the various districts and states. Certainly is the horror that Eisenhower warned of: the military industrial complex. And agree with you on the way the war on terrorism. Bombing the hell out of Afghanistan and of Iraq certainly hasn't done a damn thing to end terrorist recruitment; quite the opposite.

[Estreet1964]

"But terrorism is not the major threat to our security; that threat is rather to be found in the failure of public schools, the decay of our economic institutions and the corruption of our politicians."

It's sad how absolutely stunned I am when I come across a little nugget of truth like that. Newspapers are going down the tubes and TV news is filled with crap because they don't bring to their audience the truth that you summed up in one sentence.

Well done.

[BobLablah]

Dump it fast and pour the money into missile defense immediately!

[COPerez]

From one black hole to another? At least we know the F-22 can actually fly; there has never been a successful test of missile defense that wasn't tightly and unrealistically scripted.

Pour the money into health care, education and infrastructure. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's way past time to claim our rightful "Peace Dividend."

[Durango]

While continuing to research missile defense is the prudent move deploying a system that doesn't work, and in all probability can never work is the height of folly.

Missile defense is a fantasy. A very very expensive fantasy.

But we can afford these weapons that will never be used or useful but we can't ensure every American has health care?

Anyone else see the connection here?

[BobLablah]

How on earth is anyone other than a rocket scientist qualified to make a proclamation that missile defense will never work? And what test is ever run that is not tightly scripted? Isn't that actually the definition of a test?

I;m a worried about that little Korean dude who's building missiles that can reach the US. How else should we handle his threat? Invasion?

[cheforacle]

Great piece! Gives appropriate perspective on this subject.

[EasyEs]

You guys make a great point we should have gotten ride of the F-15 F-16 because they didn't fire in anger until the gulf war. They never came in handy over the last two decades..nope not once.

[COPerez]

Although they were literally "used" during Gulf War I, they were not vital components of the air-war. F-15s were sent out against the Iraqi airforce, but most ot them stayed on the ground or fled to neighboring countries. The F-16s were used in a ground attack role, a role which they evolved into, originally being the winner of the LFX competition as a "cheap" fighter aircraft. Their ground attack role could have easily been filled by A-10s.

What this really points to is our constant attempts to always "fight the last war," We need a sane weapons R&D, selection and purchasing policy that buys the right number of weapons for the fights we are actually likely to get into. The F-22 is not the result of such a process. That we might later be able to retrofit it (at great expense) to conduct ground attack operations or anti-airdefense operations does not mean that it's the right system to have built.

[Durango]

The F 22 is designed to defend against fighter planes that don't exist.

And it is unlikely that Russia or China will ever develop any planes for the F 22 to be used against.

It would cost them way too much money. And they don't see the threat.