Big fight on horizon over F-22 fighter jet
By BOB KEEFE, DAN CHAPMAN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, April 12, 2009
WASHINGTON —
Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week declared the F-22 Raptor, built in Marietta, dead. The Pentagon will buy only four more of the supersonic, super-expensive jets.
The death knell had barely sounded before the howls of protest rolled forth from Congress and beyond. Gates, a former intelligence officer and CIA director, was prepared.
BOB ANDRES /
bandres@ajc.com
• Cobb County news “My hope,” he said Monday at a Pentagon briefing, “is that the members of Congress will rise above parochial interests and consider what is in the best interest of the nation as a whole.”
U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), echoing comments from solons across the country and across the political divide, vowed later in the week “to fight as hard as I can” to keep the Raptor — and 2,000 Georgia jobs — alive.
Chambliss and others want another 60 jets built, enough planes to keep production lines humming through 2014 — when a new administration, new customers or new conflicts might keep the Raptor flying indefinitely.
A battle royal looms between the White House, which wants to cut the F-22 as part of a major makeover of the military, and Congress, which rarely kills expensive weapons systems, especially if home-state jobs are at stake. Gates says the jet fighter is too expensive and unsuited for today’s low-tech wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — combat theaters where it’s never been used.
But the recession reframes the F-22 argument. Lockheed Martin Corp., which builds the stealth fighter, says 25,000 people in 44 states work directly on the F-22, and their jobs are in jeopardy.
The military giant has stepped up lobbying efforts and is running TV ads featuring the F-22.
Congress will have ample opportunity to save the F-22. A dozen committees and subcommittees on Capitol Hill could slip language into spending bills to restore F-22 funding.
“Secretary Gates is going to get a very strong push back on the F-22,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the conservative Lexington Institute. “It’s going to be quite a fight.”
A recessionary battle
The F-22 is the world’s most advanced jet fighter. It can avoid enemy radar and outmaneuver anything the Russians, Chinese or anybody else can muster. It’s also the most expensive fighter ever built, costing $140 million each. The price more than doubles once research and development costs are added.
Gates said the Air Force will ultimately count 187 F-22s, a sufficient number for U.S. military needs. The defense secretary also said production of the F-35 – the next generation jet fighter — will skyrocket beginning next year adding thousands of new production jobs.
Militarily,
the two jets are supposed to work in tandem, with the F-22 securing the skies and allowing the F-35 to bomb targets on the ground. Critics, though, say the F-35 can handle both jobs.
In all, 38,000 people build the F-35 today, Gates said, adding that the number could jump to 82,000 direct jobs by fiscal 2011. Only 20 Georgians work on the F-35 in Marietta, but the numbers “will increase radically in the next few years,” according to Lockheed Martin spokesman John Kent.
As a result, job losses at Marietta could be negligible. But Georgia legislators don’t want to wait to find out.
U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), whose district includes the Cobb County plant, said the Obama administration’s F-22 proposal would kill thousands of jobs and is “just counter-intuitive” in a recession. He vowed to take up the fight in the House.
“And if they cannot see the wisdom of our ways, hopefully Congress can exert its will,” said Gingrey, adding he’d like at least another 20 F-22s. “We definitely have the power of the purse.”
Congressional victories
That’s a power Congress is loath to relinquish, particularly when it comes to military programs. Time and again, the Pentagon has tried to kill weapons systems deemed unnecessary. Time and again, Congress restores funding.
The V-22 Osprey, half-plane, half-helicopter, is the poster child for weapons programs that never die. Dick Cheney, when he served as defense secretary under the first President Bush, tried four times to kill the Osprey. Congress rebuffed his efforts every time and slipped money into the budget to keep it alive.
The Pentagon has also tried for years to stop C-17 production. Yet Congress perennially restores funding for the cargo plane built by Boeing Co. in California.
Laura Peterson, national security analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan advocacy group, says spending billions on the F-22 and other unnecessary weapons smacks of parochialism and pork-barrel politics.
“We’re in an economic crisis and there’s not just a bottomless pit to draw on,” she said. Lawmakers “need to be thinking about what keeps us safe in the long run, not just what state gets which jobs.”
The F-22, though, has many admirers beyond Capitol Hill. Japan, Australia and Israel have expressed interest in purchasing the F-22.
“Obviously what they’re trying to do is keep the line open until they can either reignite interest for more U.S. sales or get a foreign customer like Japan,” said defense analyst John Pike with globalsecurity.org, a nonpartisan military Web site.
But Congress, via the so-called Obey amendment, currently prohibits overseas sales of the F-22, fearing the plane’s advanced avionics and radar-avoiding capabilities could fall into enemy hands, particularly China’s.
The Pentagon and the State Department must sign off on any overseas F-22 sales. But the same congressional forces seeking to bolster F-22 production could work to rescind the Obey amendment.
Lockheed, in lockstep with congressional supporters, could once again boost its F-22 lobbying efforts. Earlier this year the company plastered Washington with billboards, newspaper and television ads touting the job-saving benefits of the jet fighter.
Lockheed spent nearly $16 million on all lobbying efforts last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, making it the 12th-biggest spender in Washington.
“The question is what are they not going to do?” said Winslow Wheeler, a defense budget critic at the nonprofit Center for Defense Information.
Lockheed, though, might save its rhetorical ammunition for other big-ticket weapons programs. Monday, after the defense secretary tried to bury the F-22, Lockheed Martin’s stock rose 10 percent.
Shareholders might have been pleased that Gates didn’t gut too many Lockheed programs. Or they might have responded to plans to boost F-35 production. Or they may believe that Congress would, naturally, find the money to keep production lines running.
“Lockheed Martin will have to think through how hard they want to push on the F-22, given all of their other irons in the fire,” analyst Thompson said.
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