Posted on 07/21/2009 5:36:56 PM PDT by Kaslin
Defense Spending: The TARP bailout may hit $24 trillion, but the Senate says the F-22 is too expensive to build and maintain. So why are the Japanese so desperate to buy this "unnecessary" Cold War weapon?
After some hope the production lines would be kept open, the Senate succumbed to arguments by the administration and others that the fighter was too expensive, too hard to maintain and not built for the wars America is fighting these days.
President Obama welcomed the Senate vote, saying he rejected the notion that the country has to "waste billions of taxpayers dollars" on outdated defense projects.
Well, the inspector general in charge of overseeing the Treasury Department's bank-bailout program now says the massive endeavor could end up costing taxpayers almost $24 trillion in a worst-case scenario. Yet we can't afford to build just seven more F-22s?
Keeping the F-22 production lines open would be a real stimulus saving real jobs. Lockheed Martin, the main contractor, says 25,000 people are directly employed in building the plane, and another 70,000 have indirect links, particularly in Georgia, Texas and California. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., a supporter of the program, says there are 1,000 suppliers in 44 states. That's wasteful?
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Ping.
Remember who voted this down!
I wonder how many of those unionized workers at L/M voted for “0”?
This is really simple, the F-22 is a first strike weapon. Muslims get scared of this, especially Iranians and othe nuclear aspirants.
ZERO said her would defang America.
What wrong with the Japanese throwing their money away, good for them. Has nothing to do with the united states not buying the over priced garbage.
Everyone should remember
HS. Trident missiles are our first strike weapons. Part of the reason why the guys who push these systems lack credibility is that they try to justify them with nonexistent missions like the argument that we need them for nuclear strike.
The Cold War is so over and no serious defense analyst argues that we don't have far more nukes than we need.
The reasons in the childish so-called editorial, you are pissing away billions on Tarp, whine, cry, burp, why want you piss away a few more million on a plane that has no useful purpose and costs millions in upkeep. Damn that is really clear thinking.
Yeah, my senator is one of them. I will definitely remember when he runs for reelection
Yes, but there were legitimate arguments to shut it down. If nothing more, the savings can go to the unexpected maintenance costs.
I disagree however, with the argument stating that it meeds to be cut because it hasn’t even been used in IZ or AF. That is intellectual dishonesty.
Why in the heck would you wheel out this technology for your enem(ies) to study, in a fight where the technology is irrelevent?
If you need to check the performance of the F-22, go out to the Mojave desert.
Or practice on Venezuela. Something.
Now how much money was given to Acorn again? $6-8 billion if I remember correctly.
China, Russia, Venezuala, NoKo, Iran all still exist & are gunning for us.
I guess people forget what deterrent means.
tahDeetz
Gates et al seem to think that if we need an air superiority fighter next time we have a war, they'll just order one up. The F35 certainly will not do the job, if it ever gets off the groound and goes into production.
So begins the first stage of the Obama/Gates unilteral disarmament program.
The F-22 is waste of resources on many levels.
It’s 6X as expensive as Russian/Chinese 4.5 Gen Fighters.
It requires 70 HOURS of maintenance for every 1 hour of flight. Russian/Chinese fighters require 10 hrs for 1 hour of flight.
SU-35s/J-11Bs are already coming off the production line with reduced RCS, AESA radars, and updated Infrared and Visual range missile targeting systems.
We simply cannot win the attrition game with such a platform. It would be a better allocation of resources to build effective delivery systems which would destroy enemy air bases and complement that effort with updating the entire fighter fleet to 4.5 Gen technology. And money left over really should be plowed into unmanned, autonomous fighter development.
Hopefully all those union stooges at defense contractors lose their jobs. I knew someone who worked at one of them and they found out they were not a Dem. They pushed them out in less than a month.
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