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Let’s say you’ve got a really expensive fighter aircraft that you don’t use in the two wars you’re fighting. You’ve got 183 of them, but that’s just not enough. Over the years you’ve typically said that you want 381 of them. But then the secretary of defense points out that you don’t use the planes in the two wars you’re fighting, and, to boot, the country is in an economic tailspin. So what do you do?
One option is to set up a PR campaign to portray the jobs created by manufacturing the F-22 as crucial in these dark economic times. But another is to tell reporters that — magnanimously! — you’re going to consider asking for fewer than 381 planes. So said the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Norton Schwarz, as Roxana Tiron of The Hill reports:
Gen. Norton Schwartz said that the Air Force is looking to buy more than the 183 radar-evading F-22s now ordered, but fewer than the 381 planes the Air Force has insisted on in past years. …
The Air Force’s position is “driven by analysis as opposed to some other formulation, and I think it will withstand scrutiny,” Schwartz said.
Um. It’s a savvy move: you’re not going to be so unreasonable as to seek the huge numbers of aircraft that you’re not using in either hot war; you’re just going to ask for some larger number of the F-22. (Schwartz said he wasn’t going to comment on the specific number of F-22s he’ll tell Secretary Bob Gates he needs by March 1.) And it can work! Somehow the Wall Street Journal portrayed the service’s abandonment of the 321-plane dream as a cut to the program, even though Schwartz is explicit about asking for more than the 183 aircraft. Savvy negotiating. But for a more, uh, skeptical view of an aircraft that isn’t used in either Iraq or Afghanistan, read this and this.
Update: Colin Clark at DODBuzz says the Air Force is going to ask f0r 60 more F-22s. That’s via Noah Shachtman.
Crossposted to The Streak.
2 Comments
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Hell, the F15/F16s are better aircraft than the rest of the world is flying. Then there’s the F17.
Never have understood the purpose of the F22 as anything more than a pork product
I’m impressed by the capabilities of the F22, and a bit worried by the age of the F15 fleet (that we’ve sold to almost anyone except the Russkies and Iranians so they can challenge us).
But $350M per is a bit much just to maintain air superiority when our fleet of F15’s is so much larger than anyone elses. Even bigger issue, IMO, is that the F22 is not a carrier-capable plane (although they considered and rejected it).
The USAF will get more, simply because the parts manufacturing is spread all over the US. Eisenhower rolls in his grave every time these issues come up, because the military-industrial complex controls Congress and the executive, not any rational analysis of need or threat or cost-effectiveness.
I’m thinking that the USAF, the Army and the Marines need to be combined into a US version of Israel’s IDF. The Air Force has turned into a rapacious beast looking for taxpayer money and Congressional bodies to feast upon.
In the Red Flag exercises the F22 has conducted in Alaska vs the F16, they win every time, but mixed F22 and F15 fleets do about as well, with the F22s taking out any bad guys that threaten the good guy F15s. The USAF doesn’t want you to know that though.