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Pulled this from the "Early Bird" $350 Million per jet and already seeing structural problems.
New York Times
September 28, 2006
Air Force Jet Wins Battle In Congress
By Leslie Wayne
The F-22 Raptor fighter jet, the United States Air Force’s most expensive weapon, is designed for global air dominance. But its biggest battles have not been in the skies, but in the corridors of power in Washington, where it has just taken on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Washington budget-cutters — and won.
Since coming into office, Mr. Rumsfeld and the administration have tried to rein in the costs of the $65 billion fighter jet program, which has been two decades in the making and has suffered one cost overrun after another.
But their efforts were rebuffed this week by the powerful F-22 lobby, a combination of the Air Force, Lockheed Martin, which makes the fighter jet, and their allies in Congress.
The Senate is scheduled to vote this week on the $447 billion Pentagon budget for 2007, which contains a measure promoted by backers of the F-22 that could extend the jet’s production run beyond its 2011 termination date and reduce Congressional oversight of the program.
On Monday, after negotiations in a Senate-House conference committee, the F-22 measure was put into the final Pentagon budget, which the full House passed on Tuesday.
The measure could open the door to additional F-22 purchases above the 183 budgeted by the administration and could extend the life of the program a few years by using a multiyear procurement contract rather than subjecting the F-22 to annual Congressional review.
The Air Force thus far has taken possession of 74 F-22’s, which are being sent to bases across the country. The plane has not been used in combat yet. Six more are in production. Lockheed plans to make 20 to 25 a year between now and 2011.
The plane’s “fly-away” cost, equivalent to the sticker price in a car, is $130 million. But if development costs are included and spread over the 183 planes in the program, the total cost to the government rises to $350 million per plane.
Critics say the F-22 represents technological overkill at a time when United States air superiority is unquestioned and the nature of warfare has changed. It was originally designed for aerial combat against the Soviets. Today, one of its biggest critics is the Government Accountability Office, which in July issued a report saying, “The F-22 acquisition history is a case study in increased cost and schedule inefficiencies.”
Still, even these critics concede that the plane is an engineering marvel, a Maserati of the skies. It can fly at 60,000 feet, twice as high as any other plane. Its cruising speed is Mach 2 and its top speed is a Pentagon secret. And its radar-eluding stealth technology allows it to fly at supersonic speeds — invisibly.
The plane, however, has suffered embarrassing glitches. This year, an F-22 pilot became trapped in his jet and had to be rescued from the cockpit with chainsaws. The landing gear failed in another instance, causing the aircraft to fall on its nose. Structural cracks have also been reported.
Even as strong a critic of wasteful Pentagon spending as Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, who will become the next chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as well as the committee’s current chairman, Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican, could not defeat the F-22 lobby.
The two senators were able to extract some concessions in the closed-door House-Senate conference committee. But they could not muster the support to defeat the multiyear contract, in which F-22’s would be acquired in a series of three-year contracts rather than annually.
“The F-22 lobby is an extraordinary juggernaut and they fought to the death on this one,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington research group. “It is astonishing in that the lobby can take on the most powerful in Washington, including the president, and win.”
Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research group, added that “the Air Force is dominated by fighter pilots and they would give up anything to keep the F-22.”
The Air Force would like to see scores more F-22’s than the 183 it has been promised — it says it needs at least 381.
Originally, the Air Force wanted 750 planes. Even though that number has been cut sharply, the Air Force has continue to push for more, aided by what Washington insiders call the Iron Triangle — a politically powerful combination of military contractors and their allies inside the Pentagon and Congress.
For instance, the multiyear contract was passed by the Senate in the summer, 70 to 28, before being sent to conference committee. The language in the Senate measure was identical to a draft proposal written by a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin and given to members of Congress.
Before the Senate considered the issue, an e-mail message was circulated by Lockheed to Senate members, saying, “Please vote ‘yes’ on the proposed Chambliss Amendment” to permit the multiyear contract. After the e-mail message was sent, the amendment was introduced by Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, whose district includes an F-22 assembly plant.
“What happened was predictable,” said Christopher Bolkcom, a military specialist at the Congressional Research Service. “Everyone could see the opponents of the measure were swimming upstream. The Air Force is still chipping away, trying to get more planes.”
In fact, Senator Warner accused Senator Chambliss and Lockheed of doing an end-run around his committee, where such important measures are typically decided. The Armed Services Committee opposed the measure.
“We are facing here a rather interesting chapter of a very significant and important defense contractor trying to get through this body a decision, which is in violation of statute and overrides the judgment of the majority of the members of the Armed Services Committee,” Senator Warner said on the Senate floor.
Senator Warner said the multiyear contract would take away Congress’s annual oversight. The G.A.O. estimated that the multiyear contract would increase total F-22 program costs by $1.7 billion over the president’s 2006 budget.
F-22 supporters point instead to a report from the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally financed research group, which said a multiyear contract would save $225 million.
Yet even that report has fallen victim to controversy. The president of the institute, retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair, resigned from it this month amid conflict-of-interest accusations. In July, Mr. Blair was criticized by Senator Warner and Senator McCain for his role in drafting the F-22 report while also holding a seat on the board of the EDO Corporation, an F-22 contractor.
The institute’s trustees asked him last month to resign from his corporate boards. He chose instead to leave the institute. Mr. Blair’s dual role is also being investigated by the Pentagon’s inspector general in an inquiry initiated by Senator Warner and Senator McCain.
Another measure sought by F-22 supporters, the lifting of a ban on sales to foreign countries, easily passed the House in July on a voice vote but failed to make it out of a House-Senate conference committee. Backers of the measure said that overseas sales would help reduce the overall costs of the F-22 program.
Opponents fear that it would permit other nations to gain access to the Pentagon’s most advanced weaponry and technologies.
That measure was offered by Representative Kay Granger of Texas, a Republican whose district includes the Lockheed factory that makes the F-22 midsection and employs 2,640. A spokesman for Ms. Granger, Caitlin Carroll, said it was too early to tell whether Ms. Granger would resubmit it in another Congress.
But Ms. Brian of the Project on Government Oversight has no doubt this issue will come back. “This was a short-term win for the opponents of overseas sales,” said Ms. Brian, who puts herself in that camp. “But this issue will live to fight another day.”
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