NYT:
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted 58-40 on Tuesday to strip $1.75 billion for seven more F-22 fighters from a military authorization bill, handing President Obama a crucial victory in his efforts to reshape the military’s priorities.
The victory came after the president had placed his political capital on the line by repeatedly threatening to veto the $679.8 billion bill if it included any money for the planes.
The F-22, the world’s most advanced fighter, had become a flashpoint in a larger battle over the administration’s push to shift more of the Pentagon’s resources from conventional warfare to fighting insurgencies.
The plane’s supporters, who ranged from hawkish Republicans to Democrats close to organized labor, also voiced concern over the possible loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs at a time when the economy was in turmoil.
[..] Critics have long portrayed the F-22 as a cold war relic. The plane was designed in the late 1980s, when the Air Force envisioned buying up to 750 of the planes to dominate dogfights with Soviet jets.
A couple weeks ago, the
Post reported:
The United States' top fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-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.
[..] 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 this week. The F-22 has never been flown over Iraq or Afghanistan.
[..] "It is a disgrace that you can fly a plane [an average of] only 1.7 hours before it gets a critical failure" that jeopardizes success of the aircraft's mission, said a Defense Department critic of the plane who is not authorized to speak on the record. Other skeptics inside the Pentagon note that the planes, designed 30 years ago to combat a Cold War adversary, have cost an average of $350 million apiece and say they are not a priority in the age of small wars and terrorist threats.
A ridiculous boondoggle, through and through. As Gates wondered in a Chicago speech last week:
“If we can’t get this right, what on earth can we get right?”
Well, in terms of unwarranted defense spending, it seems we're getting quite a bit wrong. But at least we finally got this 'no-brainer' right (as Cheney would say).
In the big scheme of things, I no longer care one way or the other regarding these military programs but that won't keep me from commenting.
ReplyDeleteThese programs are all political and all pork, anyway.
The Defense budget is $700 billion (in round numbers) and this particular action cut $2 billion. Whoop-de-doo. And the writer of the article said that the outcome "placed his [Obama's] political capital on the line." Wow, talk about hyperbole. Obama must not have much political capital to spare if he has to worry about $2 out of $700. I can't deal with big numbers but even that is pretty easy to see this doesn't amount to anything.
As an investor, I am happy to see this. Aircraft manufacturers will trim costs by laying off workers. This is a two-fer.
First, those laid off will remember who shut down the program at the next election.
Second, aircraft manufacturers and suppliers will be able to send out pink slips to those associated with this program but they will also be able to let go many others at the same time under the umbrella of losing the F-22 contract.
Share prices will drop in the near term for these companies, allowing an opportunity to buy more, but trimming employees at a time when health care is going to get more expensive will eventually lead to a more profitable (on a per share basis) company.
Meanwhile, Obama/Congress had no problem doling out $787 billion in a stimulus program that included buying ham at twice the Food Lion spot price ($1.50 vs $0.79/pound). And something tells me the Food Lion deli ham was a better product than what the government bought. I wonder if the total amount of ham purchased under that program equaled the amount for the F-22 program (I can't remember).
As usual, the F-22 vote/outcome got a lot of press, but at the end of the day, it did not matter, except to the employees losing their jobs, and to the states in lost revenue where this program was located.
By the way, Obama is increasing the size of the US Army (by 22,000). That's a drop in the bucket but I assume his supporters never envisioned that he would increase the size of the military.