More Raptors on the Horizon?

It looks like the F-22 production line may not fall idle after all. Cracks in the Administration’s attempts to kill it are appearing. First, as Mike Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard notes, the most important thing—preservation of the production line as a surge capacity in the event of war—appears to have gotten a boost from the House Armed Services Committee, who’ve allocated $369 million for parts to keep it active, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Second, the Pentagon’s line that the “we only need 187 F-22s” policy was driven by military, rather than budgetary, concerns appears to have been proven false, which might change the procurement number sooner rather than later. Aviation Week’s Ares blog puts it succinctly: “The USAF did want more F-22s and considered a 180-some force to be a high risk approach, but after the Defense Department provided the service with a new assessment of future wars, the USAF changed its mind. That’s what the service’s top leaders say in a signed piece in this morning’s Washington Post.“

They continue, “Donley and Schwartz concluded last summer that a 381-aircraft force was “low-risk” and that 243 was “moderate risk”. It’s not a huge logical leap to say that 183 was termed “high risk” – that is, likely to prove deficient against future threats.” Ares notes “As we’ve reported before, the USAF in March was saying that it needed more F-22s” and conclude pointedly, “But finally, missing from this piece is the full byline: Michael Donley is secretary of the Air Force. Gen. Norton Schwartz is chief of staff of the Air Force. Both were appointed to their present positions by SecDef Gates last summer, after he fired their predecessors, who had argued in favor of more F-22s.”

The match that might set off the military/political tinderbox around F-22 procurement could well be the June 9 letter to Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA, where the plane is built) from four-star Gen. John D.W. Corley, chief of Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base (home of the 1st Fighter Wing, two of whose squadrons have flown the F-22 the longest of any units in the USAF). In this letter, Gen. Corley stated flatly: ”In my opinion, a fleet of 187 F-22s puts execution of our current national military strategy at high risk in the near to mid term.… To my knowledge, there are no studies that demonstrate that 187 F-22s are adequate to support our national military strategy.” Given that Gen. Corley’s mission as head of ACC is to manage the nation’s fighter force, if there are no studies to his knowledge demonstrating that 187 F-22s comprise an adequate fighter force, they likely do not exist.

Congressional Quarterly, which reported the existence and contents of the letter [here], went on to quote an Air Force Association lobbyist describing the potentially volatile nature of Gen. Corley’s statement. “General Corley’s statement is one of the first clear-cut pronouncements from a senior Air Force official regarding the risk inherent with Secretary Gates’ decision to limit F-22 acquisition to 187. This type of insight from a uniformed commander certainly has the potential to change the political dynamics surrounding the F-22. Members of Congress tend to listen to uniformed leaders when they go on record regarding national-security shortfalls.”

In addition, CQ reports that on June 4, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) aired strategic concerns that killing the F-22 and other defense programs “may send the wrong signal to our friends and our potential aggressors that we are reducing our capability. It also may have a long-term impact on our defense industrial base. It may diminish our capacity to provide deterrents and reduce our strength that we provide to our allies.” At 84 years old, Sen. Inouye is a Medal of Honor winner who volunteered as a medic at Pearl Harbor and did stunningly valorous service in the mostly Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most highly decorated unit in the history of the United States military. One suspects that his memory of the U.S.’s lack of preparedness in the 1930s, the encouragement it provided the Axis to declare war on us, and the high cost in blood of getting the military up to fighting shape in North Africa and the Pacific, make him particularly sensitive to issues of military readiness.

What say we split the difference and buy a “low-to-moderate-risk” force of 312 Raptors? Using the generals’ WaPo numbers (which seem a little high, but let’s stipulate they’re accurate), that’d cost twenty-six billion dollars, which is of course a lot, but, as President Obama famously complained on the campaign trail, we were spending ten billion a month in Iraq. Spend ten weeks’ extra and we receive the fighter force which should keep us ahead of our most innovative rivals for a decade or two. Not a bad return on investment, and we’re still buying fewer than half the original planned purchase of 750—and fewer than 1997’s designated 339.

In defense spending terms, twenty-six billion is a fairly big number. In domestic-spending terms, particularly in the age of TARP and the trillion-dollar “stimulus,” it’s chump change. For example, President Obama wants to spend ten billion on new early-childhood education programs and another fifty or sixty billion on the Department of Education, university building projects, etc.

Which leads me to wonder—have we finally reached that great day when our schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy its fighter force?