Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan (USN, ret.) is the former commander of the U.S. Second Fleet and heads the military advisory committee of the Priorities Campaign.
Last month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., led a battle in the Senate to stop multi-year production of the F-22 fighter jet. This $72 billion program, launched in the late 1980s, had been plagued with major cost overruns and technical setbacks. But like other Cold War weapons still being built by the Pentagon, and with some crafty political engineering, the F-22 escaped this modest proposal by a vote of 70 to 28.
Ironically, just prior to the Senate vote on McCain’s proposal, the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress, startled Washington insiders by recommending that funding for the jet be put on hold until alternatives are considered. It's long past time for Congress and the president to act on the GAO's advice—as the purpose of the expensive weapons system collapsed with the Soviets.
The F-22 was approved initially to give the Air Force a next-generation stealthy aircraft to evade ever improving enemy air defenses. But a funny thing happened: Our enemies’ air defenses stopped improving.
So, today, even a casual examination of recent air combat involving the United States (the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq) proves that the existing fleet of about 700 F-15s and upwards of 1500 F-16s remain, undeniably, unbeatable, and will remain so well into the future. At $360 million per plane (versus about $25 million for the F-16), the F-22 would be by far the most expensive fighter plane ever built.
It’s a perfect example of the staying power of Cold War weapons that are irrelevant to America's current security requirements, including our ability to fight terrorism.
Other weapons, which like the F-22 should no longer be developed, include National Missile Defense, which continues to fail tests, the Virginia Class submarine—designed to counter a Soviet sub that was never built—and three new aircraft carriers for $33 billion.
Over $60 billion could be saved by cutting these and other weapons backed by defense contractor lobbyists, according to defense analysts like Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary of defense, Lawrence Korb.
What, you say, how could this be? We’re fighting a war in Iraq. How can we afford to cut the defense budget now? It turns out that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are funded by supplemental appropriations, not the Pentagon’s yearly defense budget. The money for Cold War weapons systems is embedded in the regular defense budget.
Political leaders in Washington are so scared of being labeled “weak on defense” that they rarely object at all to defense expenditures, even ones like the F-22 that are widely regarded as wasteful. In fact, it’s an open secret in Washington that tens of billions of dollars are going down the drain at the Pentagon.
At the same time, it’s also an open secret that millions of American kids lack health insurance, public schools around the country are falling down, and our nation continues to rely on petroleum—a national vulnerability that could set us up for a serious economic collapse.
And how much is the federal government spending on renewable energy research? About as much as we’re spending on the F-22 fighter jet. And less than a third as much as we spend on national missile defense. Especially with our nation’s record deficits and other budget woes, it’s obvious that America has much more pressing budget priorities than the expensive and unnecessary F-22. But despite the occasional move toward shaking the F-22, Congress continues to back it and will continue.
That is, unless Americans demand that our military leaders focus on our nation’s real defense needs, not the wishes of special interests, as they decide whether to build new and expensive weapons.
This article is distributed by Minutemanmedia.org.
