Giving us that old time military-industrial congressional pork barrel
The more things change the more they stay the same; as in the military-industrial congressional pork barrel. As evidence one need only look at the current debate over Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ decision to stop producing the F-22 fighter. Gates and President Obama have threatened to veto Congress’ entire 2010 defense spending bill if it contains a single F-22 over the 187 now authorized.
This should not be a hard decision. After all, how often does the Pentagon actually try to kill a program it does not need? Keeping unnecessary weapons in the military budget is usually par for the course, thanks to the influence of weapons manufacturers and senators and congressmen who receive credit in their home states and districts for managing to save some jobs for constituents. Usually the Pentagon goes along because it is more trouble to fight it than it is worth.
But on the rare occasion that the Pentagon does not want weapons that it did not ask for it is clear that something stinks to the high heavens; higher even than the F-22 can fly.
Gates’ decision was in response to votes by the House and Senate armed services committees last month to spend $369 million to $1.75 billion more to keep the F-22 production line open were propelled by mixed messages from the Air Force; including a quiet campaign for the plane that includes snazzy new Lockheed videos for key lawmakers and intense political support from states where the F-22′s components are made. The full House ratified the vote on June 25.
But, contrary to the claims made by the various legislators on the Lockheed Martin payroll there are many excellent reasons to kill it. As the Washington Post reported earlier this month, the F-22 -22, has recently required more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces, confidential Pentagon test results show. The aircraft’s radar-absorbing metallic skin is the principal cause of its maintenance While most aircraft fleets become easier and less costly to repair as they mature, key maintenance trends for the F-22 have been negative in recent years, and on average from October last year to this May, just 55 percent of the deployed F-22 fleet has been available to fulfill missions guarding U.S. airspace, the Defense Department acknowledged.
The F-22 was created for a world that no longer exists. It was designed during the early 1980s to ensure long-term American military dominance of the skies andconceived to win dogfights with advanced Soviet fighters that Russia is still trying to develop. Its troubles have been detailed in dozens of Government Accountability Office reports and Pentagon audits. But Pierre Sprey, a key designer in the 1970s and 1980s of the F-16 and A-10 warplanes, said that from the beginning, the Air Force designed it to be “too big to fail, that is, to be cancellation-proof.” In classic pork barrel tradition Lockheed farmed out more than 1,000 subcontracts to vendors in more than 40 states. Sprey, now a prominent critic of the plane, said that by the time skeptics “could point out the failed tests, the combat flaws, and the exploding costs, most congressmen were already defending their subcontractors’ ” revenues.
Labor groups, including the United Steelworkers and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, recently sent letters to lawmakers urging continued support for the F-22. They cited the 25,000 high-wage, high-skill manufacturing jobs that could be lost across 44 states.
The F-22 is such a glaring piece of pork that Sen. John McCain has joined with the Obama administration in seeking to remove the 1.75 billion recently inserted into the proposed 2010 defense budget for seven more F-22s. McCain, along with Sen. Carl Levin, offers an amendment to restore the $1.250 billion in readiness-related spending that Lockheed, Senator Chambliss, and 12 other SASC senators thought should be raided from the Military Personnel and Operation and Maintenance accounts to pay for the seven F-22s. It also undoes a “management savings” of $500 million to pay for the rest of the F-22 cost — a savings that both Levin and McCain properly found unjustified; “bogus” would be a better word.
It is more than a little ironic that legislators who call themselves pro-defense would vote for more F-22s when doing so consumes money that would be far spent better elsewhere, like giving the troops now fighting in Afghanistan the equipment they need to detect and neutralize the improvised explosive devices that are killing American troops in Afghanistan.
President Obama got it exactly right when he wrote in a letter to Mr. McCain and Mr. Levin on Monday. “To continue to procure additional F-22s would be to waste valuable resources that should be more usefully employed to provide our troops with weapons that they actually do need.”
Some reasons being offered in support of the F-22 border on the bizarre. Army Maj. Gen. Bob Lee, the head of the Army and Air National Guard in Hawaii, said “The No. 1 priority is homeland defense, and to meet that mission, more F-22s are needed.” One can only wonder what he thinks will happen. Will Al-Qaeda develop its own advanced fighter fleet?
Is there a single reason to buy even one more F-22? Consider this excerpt from recent commentary by Pierre Sprey and Winslow Wheeler.
Instead of being such a close call, further production of F-22s ought to be laughed out of court. The F-22 is outrageously expensive. The 187 are costing just over $65 billion, about $350 million each.
Not a single F-22 has flown in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be foolish to deploy them since there is no enemy air force to fight against. To send F-22s as a bomber – at three times the operating cost of F-16s that are already bombing over there – would be just another drag on the war effort.
Even more important is the question of whether the F-22 is a good fighter. The truth is that the F-22s weaken US air power. Study after study show that pilot skill dominates all other factors in winning or losing air battles. The F-22′s maintenance costs have the Air Force to slash in-air pilot training. In the 1970s, fighter pilots were getting 20 to 30 hours a month of air combat training. Today, F-22 pilots get 10 to 12 hours. High tech theorists claim flying can be replaced by ground simulators. Experience teaches that simulators can be used for cockpit procedures training but, by misrepresenting in-air reality, they reinforce tactics that could get pilots killed in real combat.
If the F22s are kept in the budget it will be one more sad sign that it is business as usual for the military industrial congressional welfare queens.
As veteran military correspondent George Wilson recently wrote, “persuading the pols to kill F-22 jobs Lockheed Martin has spread around most of the 50 states will be a big test of how strong Obama can be when pitted against the military-industrial complex President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about as he left office in 1961.”
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Comment on July 22, 2009 @ 1:17 am
Although it is lovely to blame the Military-Industrial complex for contriving a demand for something that is totally useless, it is simply not true. The F-22 Raptor program has supporters in Congress, the Pentagon, and the general public for a litany of reasons beyond being victims of a Lockheed PR conspiracy, or for reasons relating to self enrichment. While, I agree with Mr. Isenberg that “giving the troops now fighting in Afghanistan the equipment they need to detect and neutralize the improvised explosive devices” is an absolute necessity, I don’t view the two programs as mutually exclusive. By my reckoning, if our nation is willing to spend over 800 billion dollars on a stimulus package going to infrastructure, alternative energy projects, and oh yeah, a whole lot of pork, and it is also willing to spend the untold billions which President Obama’s Healthcare policy will cost, then I think it care spare a few billion to defend our nation.
And defend the nation the Raptor will. As Mr. Isenberg correctly points out the F-22 was designed to be an air superiority fighter jet. It is likely the most advanced fighter jet in the world and is the first operational 5th generation fighter. Going along with recent US military strategy, the raptor’s real strength is its stealth, and its makers boast that it gives off the radar signature of a small bird. This is combined with high tech computer targeting system and radar systems which allow the F-22 to find, lock on, and destroy opposition located well beyond the horizon. The basic concept was that raptor had to have the first sight, first shot, and first kill in any dog fight. So with all due respect to Mr. Sprey, it is absolutely absurd to believe that there is any pilot skilled enough to overcome an adversary which is for all practical purposes invisible.
The question of whether the Raptor is a better plane seems quite absurd to me as well. In a test dogfight the Raptor helped put up a record of 0 losses and 144 kills. These were battles in which raptor squadrons did not have numbers advantage. Further, the F-22 interfaces with F-15’s, 16’s, and 18’s in order to amplify these jets understanding of the battle space, making the entire force more effective. To date there has been only 1 F-22 ever lost in a simulated battle. Although the there have been many more kills, even assume that the F-22’s record is 144-1, that gives enemy fighters a .69% of destroying a raptor and a 99.3% chance of being killed.
Now why is this relevant at all? After all Mr. Isenberg’s argument focuses around the assertion that this plane is irrelevant to the modern world. He employs sarcastic questions like “Will Al-Qaeda develop its own advanced fighter fleet?” to bring this point home. After all, we are extremely aware that Al-Queda will not be bringing 5th generation fighter jets online. But, Russia, China, and India will, not to mention EU’s Eurofighter and the 8 (9 with the US) nations which are part of the Joint Strike Fighter program. Makes you wonder when the military-industrial complex went international, and how all of these nations, enemies and allies alike, managed to get the wool pulled over their eyes by corporate greed and special interests.
The fact of the matter is that unfortunately, the world has not achieved peace and harmony yet, and the US military must be full spectrum military. This means the US must be able to respond to threats emanating from the unconventional terrorist, to the more conventional nation-state.
That said, I think Mr. Isenberg’s position which rules out conventional war for the foreseeable future is a testament to current and previous “unnecessary” weapons platforms like the F-22. What Mr. Isenberg overlooks when discussing the “need” for the F-22 is the unbelievable deterrent effect these planes have on our conventional rivals. Perhaps he forgets that nations collect information regarding the force structure, weapons platforms, and overall strength of our armed forces. This is where the relevancy of the Raptor’s technical superiority comes into play. The boasts about being able to destroy massive amounts of planes at no harm to US fighter squadrons, makes every nation understand that in a war with the United States they will be out gunned. But thanks to individuals espousing a belief like Mr. Isenberg, this initial deficit may be overcome. This is because while these rival nations produce an inferior weapon, they can produce these weapons continuously during a war. Unfortunately, if Mr. Isenberg gets his way the US will lose the F-22 production facility because maintaining this facility is financially infeasible for Lockheed Martin. So if we do the math, assuming a 1-144 kill ratio (which is likely very optimistic given that the US would be fighting other 5th generation fighters) with 141 F-22s, we can see that it would take 20,304 enemy aircraft to destroy the current US force. That’s a lot right? Well considering 15,875 P-51 mustangs were built I guess we have a 4429 gap. Gee I really hope it has that good of a kill ratio because if it only has a 1-112 kill ratio our fighters have all been wiped out, and our enemies have achieved air superiority.
Obviously, I am simplifying the process but without the ability to produce more aircraft, the question to adversaries becomes twofold: what is the true kill ratio of an F-22 fighter jet, and how many planes can I produce. If a general determines the F-22 can kill 100 fighters before being destroyed, and he can produce more than 14,000 planes he may feel confidant telling his political leaders to go ahead and invade Taiwan, Ukraine, Georgia, ect. because if worst comes to worst and the US defends these nations, there is the possibility that the aggressing nation may just live to fight again. If on the other hand the US maintains the ability to produce Raptors the scenario is much different, an opposing force’s inferior fighter must go toe to toe with the Raptor and win 51% of the time, no out-lasting, and no overwhelming. That changes the strategic calculus quite a bit, and leaders may think twice about provoking the United States if they think that war means certain death for their polity.
Further think of the difference in attitude these two scenarios bring about. In order to win in the first scenario, all our enemies have to do is increase their budget for aircraft to the point where their numbers trumps our superior technology. This incentivizes spending more on defense, which can lead to arms races, which are very expensive. In an arms race, the US may end up spending well over what it would cost to keep the F-22 production facility running.
In the second scenario, the adversary has two options, begin developing an aircraft which is better than the F-22 and accept the status quo until that occurs, or come to a diplomatic solution. In either event war does not happen. The US has generally opted for this second strategy since the end of the Cold War which has made this one of the most peaceful times in human history, what some have called a Pax Americana.
So if preventing war, deterring adversaries, and creating increased diplomatic flexibility are the “unnecessary products” that the evil military-industrial complex is shoving down our throats, I’m O.K. with being force fed.
Comment on July 24, 2009 @ 9:59 pm
[...] weeks about the inclusion of over $1.75 billion to support an expansion of the F-22 program. As David Isenberg explained last week, this was a defense program that the DoD didn’t want. Rather, its congressional supporters [...]
Pingback on July 31, 2009 @ 11:49 am
I’ll defer to both of your greater knowledge of the individuals of the Defense Department positions on this issue, but I think it is misleading to act as if the DoD is an ideological monolith with no dissenting opinion. There were individuals in the air force who did in fact want this plane such as Brig. Gen. Peter Pawling who made comments suggesting he favored the plane. I am not learned enough to go through the lists of generals with you, but I think it is safe to say that there were individuals in the DoD who would like more F-22s. But my point has nothing to do with whether or not most people in these organizations desired the Raptor, it has to do with the merits of actually having the Raptor. I am perfectly willing to say that a great number of defense officials would rather spend their defense monies on other platforms, but I find it dishonest for this site to act as if there is no legitimate reason to desire the passage of the F-22 appropriations bill. Arguing your point is one thing, calling into question the motives, as Mr. Isenberg implied, of those who disagree with your position is quite another. The Partnership for a Secure America, if I am not wrong, attempts to build bi-partisanship in foreign affairs. It seems to me that an essential element of bi-partisanship is respecting and understanding the ideological differences of those across the isle who disagree. As you scholars of international affairs know, the aisle in foreign policy is not simply republican and democrat but encompasses a wide range of theoretical perspectives. Therefore in order to truly build bi-partisanship in foreign policy perhaps PSA should start practicing what it preaches, refrain from insulting those with a different point of view, and perhaps listen to that point of view. Then we can have an open an honest debate about the merits of the arguments. All I ask is that Mr. Isenberg refrain from implying the corruption (“legislators on the Lockheed Martin payroll”) of those who disagree with him. That is insulting, and that is partisanship at its worst.
Comment on July 31, 2009 @ 9:29 pm