Posted on 01/13/2005 7:09:45 PM PST by neverdem
On a clear day at an Air Force base in Nevada, as a test pilot steered his F/A-22 skyward, the nose of the plane inexplicably turned down, pitching the $250 million fighter jet into the ground.
The pilot, luckily, walked away unscathed. But the crash, which took place just before Christmas, was not only a blow to Air Force pride but also, as it turned out, a bad omen. Days later, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld confirmed reports that the Pentagon planned to cut the number of F/A-22's it would buy by about a third, sending shock waves through the Air Force.
There is no plane more costly or more coveted by the Air Force, which has already spent $40 billion to develop the F/A-22 into a fighter jock's dream, capable of outperforming anything else in the sky.
But even though it is the Air Force's No. 1 priority, the F/A-22 tops the list of $30 billion in weapons programs that Mr. Rumsfeld wants to chop from the fiscal 2006 budget and years beyond as the Bush administration seeks to rein in spending while the costs of the war in Iraq continue unabated and a budget deficit looms.
"The conventional wisdom was that the Air Force would sacrifice their grandmothers to keep this program on track," said Pierre Chao, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan research group that analyzes foreign and military policy. "This cut was a clear surprise."
For the Air Force, and the hundreds of military contractors seeking a piece of the lucrative F/A-22 business, the big question now is whether they can overturn Mr. Rumsfeld's decision. To do so will require more than simply pressing their case to lawmakers.
Just yesterday the campaign for the F/A-22 began in earnest as the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. John Jumper, piloted one over the Florida skies - reaching speeds of Mach 1.7 - before returning to tell waiting reporters that the jet is "all that any of us had hoped it would be and more."
Equally adroit maneuvering, however, will take place on the ground. The decision on whether to keep the money flowing to the F/A-22, which is currently in operational trials, or to halt it by 2008, as Mr. Rumsfeld seeks, touches on a number of other issues - some monetary, some political and some personal.
Underlying the F/A-22 cuts is a policy debate between Mr. Rumsfeld and the Air Force over the future of the military air fleet and the nature of aerial warfare. This debate also sets up a political dogfight between the highly advanced F/A-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter, a cheaper, more prosaic fighter that is supposed to replace the venerable F-16 workhorse, starting in 2013.
Mr. Rumsfeld's decision to provide funds for only 180 F/A-22 Raptors, down from a previously planned 277, suggests that the Air Force has become more vulnerable in Washington's endless bureaucratic wars. That is partly a result of a growing political scandal over Air Force procurement practices that contributed to the resignation of Air Force Secretary James Roche, a staunch F/A-22 supporter.
Two years ago, when Mr. Rumsfeld, never a fan of the F/A-22, first attempted to cut it back, Mr. Roche threatened to resign and Mr. Rumsfeld folded. Today, all Mr. Roche can do is raise an objection on his way out the door.
"With these cuts, Rumsfeld has returned to a goal he first tried in the summer of 2002," said Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research group in Arlington, Va., that advocates limited government.
"Rumsfeld didn't succeed because of Roche's threats," Mr. Thompson explained. "Now the Air Force is defenseless. Its political leadership is leaving and its uniformed leadership has been discredited by scandal."
Still, the political forces behind the F/A-22 will not go down without a fight. With the work on the project spread over 43 states and two of its biggest contractors, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, among the most powerful lobbying juggernauts in Washington, backers of the F/A-22 will try to persuade Congress to do what Mr. Rumsfeld will not.
Cuts in the F/A-22 program would save about $10 billion, according to Pentagon calculations, with program reductions in aircraft carriers, landing ships and an Army high-tech combat system making up the rest of Mr. Rumsfeld's projected $30 billion in savings.
The bulk of the cutbacks would fall on Lockheed, which stands to lose $18 billion it was counting on from the F/A-22 and other programs. Also feeling the pinch is Northrop Grumman, which makes submarines and other Navy vessels and could lose over $5 billion.
For the F/A-22, "the game has just begun," said Keith Ashdown, vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a research group that focuses on ways to cut federal spending. "Lockheed has a battalion of lobbyists and they will be spending millions of dollars hiring the best and the brightest of K Street."
Already, lawmakers from Connecticut, Florida, Georgia and Washington State have raised a chorus of objections.
"We can't let civilian bureaucrats under the current secretary of defense make decisions that could harm the protection of our nation," said Representative Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican whose district includes the F/A-22 manufacturing site near Marietta.
Others chiming in included Senator Saxby Chambliss, the Georgia Republican who sits on the Armed Services Committee, and the Republican Senator-elect Johnny Isakson of Georgia, along with 13 other members of Congress, who wrote the White House saying the F/A-22 cuts threaten the nation's "global air superiority requirements."
For its part, Lockheed, the prime contractor, remains cautiously optimistic. Thomas Jurkowsky, a spokesman, termed Mr. Rumsfeld's cuts "a starting point" for the fiscal 2006 budget to be presented to Congress by the White House early next month.
"The White House now has to determine the direction the president wants to take," Mr. Jurkowsky said. "We will want to see what the president proposes and how Congress reacts. Then we will respond accordingly."
Originally designed to take on the best planes the former Soviet Union would have to offer, the F/A-22 has been 23 years in the making and is scheduled to have its first combat-ready fighter wing ready this December. So far, about 25 F/A-22s of about 100 in the production pipeline have been completed.
Responding in part to changing global threats, the F/A-22 was redesigned to allow it to make air-to-ground attacks and not just engage in aerial combat against other fighter jets.
It is the most technologically advanced plane ever conceived - more lethal, more stealthy, more capable of sustaining high speeds for prolonged periods. Able to fly at over 1,000 miles an hour, it was developed to preserve American global air superiority and replace aging F-15's, F-16's, and F/A-18's.
"It's a plane that sends a message to the world, 'Don't even think about competing with the U.S.,' " said William C. Bodie, a vice president at DFI International, a corporate consulting firm in Washington, who was once a special assistant to Mr. Roche.
That is one reason the Air Force still thinks it has a good argument. Initially, it recommended that Mr. Rumsfeld cut the number of Joint Strike Fighters and leave the F/A-22 alone. While not getting into specific numbers, General Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said last month that he was open to scaling back the planned purchase of 1,763 Joint Strike Fighters to spare money for the F/A-22.
Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld did just the opposite.
Marvin R. Sambur, the outgoing head of acquisitions for the Air Force, said the service would make the case for its ultimate goal of 381 F/A-22's at the coming Quadrennial Defense Review, a once-every-four-year Pentagon report to Congress on future military strategy, threats and procurement requirements.
Mr. Sambur rejects the notion that the F/A-22 is a Cold War relic and instead calls it a vision of the future. Early investigations into the Nevada accident, the first for an operational F/A-22, point to problems with the airplane's software and flight controls. While the fleet was grounded briefly after the crash, the planes have since returned to the skies while an investigation continues.
Mr. Sambur, also takes issue with the celebrated $250-million-a-plane price tag, saying it includes all research and development costs to date spread over the number of planes to be made. A more accurate price tag, he says, is around $115 million a plane, the actual cost of making a new F/A-22 today.
"The cost going forward is significantly less than the $250 million everyone is talking about," Mr. Sambur said. "You compare the incremental price to the cost of a new F-15, which is far less capable, and the difference is relatively small."
In a world where inexpensive surface-to-air missile systems can be easily acquired by potential enemies, the F/A-22 is so stealthy and maneuverable that it can shoot down these systems and escape, quite literally, faster than a speeding bullet. Other planes in the Air Force's fleet are more vulnerable to being shot down from the ground while on the search-and-destroy missions that aid ground troops.
"Our air domination is taken for granted," Mr. Sambur said, "but it is the key for everything else on the battlefield."
Besides, Mr. Sambur said, the F/A-22 will be combat-ready by December, while the Joint Strike Fighter cannot be fielded until 2013.
"That means we have an eight-year delay until the Joint Strike Fighter comes on," Mr. Sambur added. "We'd like to take advantage of having more F/A-22's and delay some of the Joint Strike Fighters."
The Joint Strike Fighter, currently in development, is intended to be a plane for all services and for all countries. It is being developed jointly by the United States, Britain and other European allies and will be produced in versions for the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines.
It will have one engine, where the F/A-22 has two, and with its simpler design and less sophisticated technology, it is expected to have a much smaller price tag of $40 million to $50 million a plane.
But because the Joint Strike Fighter will be purchased by three services and because it, too, has manufacturing spread across the country, it has a lot of political firepower inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.
In the end, the decisions on both planes will probably turn as much on politics as on military policy.
"The F/A-22 program will be cut," said Steven M. Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a research group in Washington that favors transformation of the military into a more flexible force. "But how much precisely is hard to say. Everyone agrees it's a good plane to have. But do we need 300 of them?"
Also, with all the new standoff missiles and smart bombs being deployed today, the JSF will be able to attack targets from 30-100 miles away and avoid the enemy's SAM missiles. Rummy knows what he's doing. We don't need 300 F-22's and I'll bet the final number ends up around 200. Look for the White House to throw a bone to F-22 supporters and bump the final number up to just over 200--I'll say 202 in the final budget. After all the White House doesn't want to seirously irritate Sen. Chambliss. He's a key political ally.
You've logged enough hours in one to know this?
Someone tell that to the Air Force. They're pricing themselves out of the market. The F/A-22 follows Augustine's Law to the nth degree.
(Augustine's Law is named for Norman Augustine, who plotted the constant-dollar cost of US Air Force aircraft from 1947 to 1977. If you extend his cost curve to 2054, the entire US defense budget will buy one airplane, which the services will have to take turns using.)
The Build some new and updated ones then!
Have you!? AND O by the way what line of work are YOU in?!
I'm not the one who's passing judgement, so it doesn't really matter, does it?
Billions and twenty years have been wasted on the Osprey. DOD should go back to the Kelly Johnson way of producing airplanes.
While your at it don't forget the A-12 program either!
You can't forget about the increased lifecycle costs of operating and maintaining older aircraft. It get's cancerous after awhile.
I saw an estimate which showed that the average age of military aircraft fleet(in terms of FLE) increased by six years during the Clinton years. Skipping a generation of aircraft only provides a temporary savings to the taxpayer.
It's now time to pay the piper....
I work DIRECTLY in and with the Defense Industry. So I guess that I know more about this than you do.
nice pic...one of my favs as well...
to be honest, i think the time to call an end of a physical human presence in a plane is fast approaching. I would be far from an expert but from what i have read, one of the main restrictions to plane advancment is keeping the pilot concious. I believe a few companies have prototypes of remote and independent systems working. I would not be recommending we jump now but it is close to beginning. if you look at the cost of a drone over afghanistan, they are roughly 250K. Also, i believ it was a remote drone that fired the hellfire that nabbed one of Bin Ladens bad guys in Afghanisatan. You loose a drone, you slap a guy on the wrist for eating too many doritos in langley! (okay thats a bit of an exaggeration but you get my POV) I realise air superiority is key but as a previous writer said we need a diverse approach. We are looking more towards an integrated battlefield, one where your troops can request air support without delay and one where you dominate the sky and above. I think the expert pilots are needed..but i am becoming less and less convinced they need to be in the cockpit. Also since the pilot would not be physically in the plane, the size and range can be changed dramitically. this leads to a whole range of changes to smaller aircraft carriers with hundreds of planes on huge sorties, right down to battlefield launches by troops. i think this dinstinction between air force army and navy just doesnt fit well with me anymore. i think that has caused a lot of problems for the Hog for example...is it a plane or a flying tank? my answer would be ...i dont care if it works...and you see a marine in falluja smile up after calling in a stirke that makes his life easier...sounds like a good idea to me...nothing i would like more is to see a fleet of drones taking on an airforce where we are doing mach 9....and they are not. i think technology will make huge advances in this area...
just a viewpoint....i am sure there are many...i cannot remember the name of the test drone they have now..anyone remember??
Damn spyware and popups. The stuff's everywhere.
I am no Air force expert, but I do not like the idea of a UAV doing CAS. Sure, UAV's are great for recon and some ground attack roles, but CAS is too tricky with friendly's in close proximity.
My biggest nightmare scenario about UAVs is the possibility of an enemy hacking into the command channel. All of a sudden, all your planes have become HIS planes (and "all your base are belong to us!")
Secondary scenario (the "Battlestar Galactica" scenario, for those who saw the pilot episode) is an enemy agent infiltrating the software development team, and planting a bug that can be exploited in battle
Well, since you don't know what I do or know, that statement is, at best, a bit presumptuous. I would recommend that you avoid guessing and/or not make judgements when you don't have all the facts.
With all the pork barrel and unconstitutional garbage the Feds spend money on, why are we cutting defense spending, one of the few things the Feds are supposed to spend money on?
Since this article was about air forces, and not about the size of our infantry, this is a little off-topic. But I was struck by the fact that they are looking for cuts in aircraft carriers. Carriers are key to being able to project force into an area where we have no friends. You need them to be able to seize territory from which to base your Raptors and infantry. I love Rum, but he seems so determined to make his Clintonized military the best it can be that we seem to have given up on any thought of making it bigger.
I realize that the overall size of the budget is beyond his pay grade, of course, so he has to do what he can with what he has. The willingness to fund a larger military has to come from Congress and the President, and I don't see any such willingness. There are too many other pet projects to fund.
Mr. Sambur rejects the notion that the F/A-22 is a Cold War relic and instead calls it a vision of the future.
Something is a Cold War relic if you believe you will never have to confront a modern, industrial-power military force. If we can swear that we will only fight guerrillas, then we don't need Raptor. But our enemies deploy guerrillas because they dare not confront us openly. If we no longer have clear military superiority, if we no longer have clear air superiority, we will find ourselves confronted at that level.
"The F/A-22 program will be cut," said Steven M. Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a research group in Washington that favors transformation of the military into a more flexible force. "But how much precisely is hard to say. Everyone agrees it's a good plane to have. But do we need 300 of them?"
The F22/35 combo is precisely what we had with the F15/16 combo.
While the F35 is capable, it's NOT as capable as a F22. The F15 has the range, kinetic energy, and radar, which makes it the gorilla it is.
The F22 will have more power in engines and for radar while having a smaller yet RCS and greater performance with two dimensional thrust vectoring compared to the F35/JSF. The F22 is what the F15 once was, complete overmatch. A giant gas can with two huge engines strapped on to an all-powerful radar (APG63).
The idiots from the NYTs will be the first to proclaim Rumsfeld failed if in 10 years US fighter pilots are shot down by a highly capable threat like a SU35.
While the threat has gotten less and we don’t need a 1000 F22s, we nonetheless still face possible high intensity conflicts and an evolving enemy in capabilities. The JSF is NOT interchangeable with the Raptor. Their capabilities are different.
The same garbage was said about the F15 years ago when it was being bought. It's to expensive! It'overkill! Government waste! Hmmmm, 30 years and a 83:0 kill ratio later this stupid F15 wasn't such a waste after all.
Fact is, the NYTs complains about cost. If they build more F22s the cost per unit goes down. Right now the biggest enemy of the F22 is small scale production which pushes up the per unit price. Many fixed costs don't change whether you build 1 or 1000.
If you want dead US airmen, cancel the F22.
Red6
In that the F-22 is superior to any current design you have just called America's entire arsenal a POS.
If the Wright brothers had only consulted you we might of had a chance.
Rumsfeld was a lobbyist for the Star Wars, Part Deux lobby before 2001.
He himself made a statement about troop increases, diminishing them saying they'll take money from other programs.
It's not "just" Clinton, Bush II/Rum came into office looking for more troop cuts and blowing up the Star Wars budget.
Soldiers don't recycle part of their paychecks into campaign contributions. We need more feet, we won't get it.
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