Wednesday Lockheed Martin delivered the last of 187 F-22 Raptor fighter jets to the U.S. Air Force at a ceremony at the company's plant in Marietta, Georgia. The roll out -- attended by Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz and Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) -- prompted Lockheed Martin executives to describe the plane as "the baddest bird on the planet" and "an icon of American power." The facts suggest otherwise.
On the same day that Lockheed and the Air Force were singing the praises of the F-22, ABC News ran a piece that pointed out that the aircraft is so dangerous that some pilots are refusing to fly it. At issue is a problem with the system that gets oxygen to the pilot during flight. As ABC noted in the piece -- produced by the network's investigative unit, headed by Brian Ross -- the flaw in the plane could cause "hypoxia-like symptoms" which can result in "a lack of oxygen to the brain... characterized by dizziness, confusion, poor judgment and... loss of consciousness." One controversial incident resulted in the death of Capt. Jeff Haney. The Air Force blamed his death on pilot error, while Haney's family is demanding an investigation to determine whether it was caused by the faulty oxygen-delivery system.
While the F-22 is a danger to its pilots, it has little use in the real world. Despite coming on line nearly seven years ago, the plane has never seen combat -- not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, and not in the recent NATO air campaign in Libya. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a long-time critic of the plane, has suggested that its main use may be at air shows, where it can do stunts at low altitudes -- low enough that the oxygen problem is not an issue.
At $412 million a pop -- the final price tag once a new round of upgrades is completed -- the F-22 is the most expensive fighter plane ever built. That's an unbelievably high price to pay for a show plane.
It could have been worse. It took a concerted campaign to kill the F-22. If Lockheed Martin and its allies in Congress had had their way, we'd still be buying F-22s, ending up with nearly twice the number the Air Force has now. It took a veto threat from President Obama, a series of devastating critiques by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a bipartisan effort in the Congress spearheaded by Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-MI) and Senator McCain, and a public education campaign by a network of peace, arms control and good government groups to end the program at its current level of 187 planes.
But the budget battle is far from over. The plane that Robert Gates touted as a next-generation replacement for the F-22 -- the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- has serious problems of its own. It is overweight, overpriced, underperforming, and unnecessary.
The F-35's current unit cost is "only" $133 million, more than twice the original estimate. And because the U.S. government wants to buy over 2,400 copies of the plane -- over twelve times as many as the number of F-22's it purchased -- the F-35 program will be the most expensive weapons program in the history of Pentagon procurement, costing at least $380 billion. And that doesn't count an estimated $1 trillion or more to operate the planes in the decades to come.
These immense costs are destined to buy a plane that has no clear use. It is second-rate at each of the major tasks it is meant to fulfill, from bombing, to aerial dogfights, to close air support for troops on the ground. And at a time when most current and potential U.S. adversaries barely have air forces worth the name, upgraded versions of current planes are more than up to the job. As for the alleged "Chinese threat," Beijing is more than a generation behind the U.S. in fighter plane technology, and the notion that the United States would ever find itself in a war with a nuclear-armed China involving battles in the sky between dueling fighter planes is preposterous.
At a time when deficit pressures are forcing a second look at programs throughout the federal budget, the F-35 is a logical place to cut. A series of independent groups, from the Sustainable Defense Task Force to the Domenici-Rivlin Task Force to the chairs of President Obama's own deficit commission have suggested canceling or scaling back the F-35 program as a way to reduce the Pentagon's bloated budget. Let's hope the F-35 doesn't become the next generation's F-22 -- a plane we don't need at a price we can't afford.
William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
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The 1st thing Israel does when they get any of our planes, is fix them.
We need to reinvigorate our cynicism. The Russians were masters at disseminating disinformation, which the liberal press could get enough of. Now that same press is deriding (again) the US military. US official have learned a valuable lesson. The ability and potential of the F-22 has become lost in the debate. Opposing forces now have to reevaluate their intelligence. Would the Air Force announce that the plane has been used in operations? Let’s not be so gullible. There can be no doubt that he US military uses advance technology that supposedly doesn’t even exist.
USA needs to focus on making products and services the rest of the world would buy. That should be the focus of attention.
The article has factual errors as well. F35 is not meant to replace F22, but rather to complement it. It is an international project with many other nations as partners. USA is not alone in financing it.
The Russian S-37 and MIG 142 may be already be superior to the US f-22 and f-35, but the Russian also spend money on totally useless systems, that have no possible application....
Mr Hartung will also sell you, personally, a bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn dirt cheap.....
Plus, you've got a lot of zipper-suited sungods (fighter pilots) out there who would never let it happen ;)
I get the feeling that the people at the Arms and Security Project, Center for International Policy would rather have us with our skirts up and our panties down when it comes to defence.
Makes perfect sense.
Gee, thanks, military industrial complex! I feel sooo much safer now!
Oxygen to pilots is an after-market option, evidently.
As if Al Qaeda has an air force.
The ABC segment was excellent.
The military itself has chosen not to fly the F-22 in combat. EVER.
Not that preemptive defense--a.k.a. Imperialism--is actually defense.
Americans with guns assure me the military either will not participate in a political takeover of the country, or cannot overthrow the millions of Americans with guns if they did. (So it's a stand-off between all the privately armed factions and the hesitant public forces?)
So that leaves foreign threats, and other than nukes, what real threat is there?
Terrorists, who can travel to virtually any country as long as they keep a low profile? What use are fighter jets for that, especially with drones and cruise missiles around?
The greatest danger we face is economic, and this kind of spending only deepens that wound.
It would be one thing if we were developing technology that would be relevant 30, 40 or even 50 years from now, but technology that is problematic from the get-go can never be cost effective.
Further proof all politicians politicize all things, taking straightforward concepts and turning them into nightmares for those they are supposed to be helping.
How can this be anything but a public need versus a private want issue?
The question I have for you is that since 'stealth' technology is imperfect, should we be spending hundreds of billions on semi-stealthy airplanes, or should we be spending our money on improving our ability to detect stealthy airplanes and improving the missiles that will shoot them down? I ask this because it appears air combat of the future will be conducted a distances of 100 miles, where the performance of the aircraft is much less important than the performance of the radar system and anti-aircraft missiles.