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<i>This opinion comes from the home town paper of the F-22 System Program Office. Blah Blah</i>
Editorial: <b>'If Not F/A-22, Something's Got To Give' </b>(Posted: Wednesday, April 14, 2004)
[Editorial Opinion, Dayton Daily News, April 14, 2004]
The Raptor is the Air Force's intended fighter jet of the future. After almost 20 years of discussion — after it was first proposed as a Cold War system — it is under limited construction in Georgia. Full-scale production awaits.
The program is managed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where it employs more than 200 people.
It has faced many political difficulties because of its massive and growing cost. (It's now officially a $71-billion program.) In 1999, the U.S. House of Representatives actually voted to put it on hold for a year.
But this Cold War idea has managed to survive the Cold War. That's in part because air power — of one sort or another — has been so crucial to a string of recent American military successes: the Gulf War of 1991, the Kosovo war of 1999 (which entailed nothing but air power, and saw no U.S. combat deaths), the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war (proper) of 2003. The message came through loud and clear to policymakers that air power is not a concern of the past.
Now, however, the United States is engaged in a military effort in which its overwhelming air superiority is bringing no quick victory. The Iraq war is costing monumental amounts of money. And many observers believe it is underfunded at that; they say the Pentagon needs to send more troops, which would probably mean expanding the overall number of people in uniform.
When the Raptor ran into political problems in 1999, those problems came not from congressional doves skeptical of defense spending generally, but from people who wondered whether the Pentagon should be concentrating so much money in one combat system, given potentially cheaper alternatives.
Then came 9/11 and all manner of new defense expenditures, some under the rubric of Homeland Security, and some in the Pentagon, including the war in Afghanistan. Then came Iraq.
Now Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., an out-and-out hawk on Iraq, is saying that the Raptor may have to give way to on-the-ground needs in Iraq. That has shaken things up politically, because he's an important, knowledgable player with a lot of respect in both parties.
He's right about one thing, at least: The government needs to face up to some difficult choices. It can't add war expenses to pre-war expenses, while cutting nothing substantially except taxes. That just doesn't meet basic standards of common sense. Yet President George W. Bush has proceeded precisely on that course.
He has not wanted to make any of the difficult trade-offs that war can reasonably be expected to bring in the realm of taxes, domestic spending, troop strength or pending weapons systems.
That raises the prospect of Congress making them. And that raises the prospect of the process being done haphazardly and short-sightedly.
The Raptor, as envisioned, is an incredible instrument. It can fly higher, faster and more nimbly than its competition, while avoiding radar detection while targeting successfully.
Moreover, the repeated use of air power in the recent past suggests that it will come in handy in the future.
Even though the United States already has air superiority over everybody, and it faces no arms race with the Russians, two post-Cold War administrations decided before 9/11 that development of the Raptor was in the national interest. They had good reasons.
What's needed now is a systematic assessment by both Congress and the White House of what's changed, and what has to give. Simply lopping off the Raptor because it is a highly-exposed, big-ticket item would not be the responsible way to proceed. But the Air Force cannot object to a general reassessing of the big picture.
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