The Sun News: Debate on F-22s nearing climax
By: Thomas L. Day
When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in April outlined his plans to shut down the F-22 Raptor production line, many Washington observers saw the maneuver as a deal: cap the purchases of F-22s at 187 and buy more F-35s to offset the cuts.
“I really thought when Gates made the announcement, he had bought everyone off,” said Bernard I. Finel, senior fellow with the American Security Project, a Washington-based think tank.
If recent votes from the House and Senate Armed Services committees are any indication, the deal is off. “One of the concerns with 187 is that you may not have enough of these things as you start to use them,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., a consistent advocate of the program in the House Armed Services Committee. “We want to meet the military need.”
Marshall’s district includes Robins Air Force Base, where a software support facility is under construction to service the F-22s.
Last month, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a spending bill that would keep the F-22 production lines open, presumably to produce far more than 187 aircraft. The divide over the program appears to be much wider in the Senate.
The Senate Armed Services Committee narrowly passed its own military spending bill recently that also includes the F-22 funding, with four Democrats crossing party lines to save the program.
The full Senate is scheduled to debate the Defense Department budget starting Monday. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., long-standing critics of the program, are likely to introduce an amendment to strike the F-22 authorization from the bill before it goes to an up-or-down vote.
Once the Senate passes its own military funding bill, the two chambers will reconcile their bills and submit the 2010 Defense budget to President Obama, who has threatened to veto any bill that includes extending the F-22 beyond the 187 aircraft. House and Senate leaders are looking to finalize a defense spending bill by the August recess.
Fifty-six additional F-22s hang in the balance.
A report issued by the Air Force a year ago proposed an F-22 fleet of 243 aircraft to replace the aging F-15 fleet. Since that report was issued, F-22 proponents have marked 243 aircraft as their ultimate goal, though other F-22 advocates have asked for many more.
A legion of defense spending reformists see the F-22 as one of their favorite targets, however. Critics of the F-22 decry the program’s cost and claim the program was designed in the 1980s to fight the Soviets. The F-22 has yet to see combat in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
“It’s a technological marvel,” Finel said. “The problem is the mission. They’re just aren’t many air superiority missions.”
Marshall said he vigorously supports the program as “a platform that guarantees us air dominance against foreseeable threats.”
Marshall met with Secretary of the Air Force Michael B. Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz on Thursday, a discussion he called “robust.” Donley has supported Gates’ proposed F-22 cuts.
Lt. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, director of the Air National Guard, has not. According to a Congressional Quarterly report, Wyatt told U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., in a letter dated June 19 that “the F-22’s unique capability enables it to handle a full spectrum of threats that the (Air National Guard’s) current legacy systems are not capable of handling.”
The letter was seen as an endorsement of keeping the F-22 production facilities open and running.
“I think the retrogression to 187 is being done more for financial reasons than because there is an absence of need,” Marshall added.
Yet, he acknowledges there are other variables at play.
“The principal focus must be on military value,” Marshall said, while insisting that it is “reasonable” to consider the jobs created by the program. “Jobs are provided by the development of these platforms, and right now we are very interested in growing jobs in America,” he said.
This is certainly not a point lost on the manufacturers of the F-22. Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the manufacturers of the aircraft, jointly launched an advertising campaign with the tagline, “95,000 employed, 300 million protected.”
Those 95,000 jobs are spread across nearly every state in the union, with a large number in Marietta, where an F-22 manufacturing plant is located.
To offset the potential job losses, several lawmakers have proposed lifting a ban on exporting the F-22s to Japan. Marshall said he opposes such a proposal.
“It’s too important that we maintain complete control over the technology,” he said.
To contact writer Thomas L. Day, call 744-4489.
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