The F-22's Other Problem

Ethan Heitner

July 27, 2006

What do you do when you've got the world's most expensive fighter jet and its canopy won't open correctly so you have to chainsaw free the hapless pilot?

If you're the U.S. government, you sign up for an extended three-year contract to ensure you get even more of them than you originally wanted.

Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan elucidates the cost of the Pentagon's outdated thinking about defense spending today in an article on TomPaine.com about the bloated and unloved F-22 Raptor fighter jet:

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.

But he's too polite, perhaps, to point to the reason why good money gets thrown after bad on programs like the F-22. It's not just because the defense establishment loves airplanes for their own sake; it's to line their own pockets (you're shocked, I can tell).

Today The Washington Post reports that due to outrage from senators and government oversight groups, the head of the supposedly-neutral federally funded Instititue for Defense Analysis (IDA), Retired Adm. Dennis C. Blair, anounced he will resign from his position on the board of EDO Corp., one of the major subcontractors on the F-22 fighter.

The IDA was the thinktank whose study convinced the Air Force and the Defense Appropriations Committee of the Senate to not only buy more of the F-22 fighter jets, but to lock the government down into three year contracts instead of the standard annual contracts. This over the recommendations of several other groups, including the highly-respect GAO, that the F-22 was a waste of money. And Blair?

Blair holds options to buy tens of thousands of shares of EDO stock, although he has exercised only a small portion, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In an interview, Blair said he was heavily involved in the preparation of the report endorsing the multi-year procurement as the chairman of an internal review committee that approved its final form.

The major credit for the investigation on this actually goes to the excellent Project On Government Oversight (POGO), who gave the info to the Wash Post. Their detailed report on the troubled history of the F-22 is a must read for anyone interested in how wasteful programs that not only don't function the way they are supposed to but which nobody wants end up getting more money thrown at them rather than being eliminated.

Larry Korb, a former assistant secretary for defense under Ronald Reagan, and others have identified the problem as the "iron triangle " of defense appropriations: the military-industrial-congressional complex. Military men with grandiose visions retire from the U.S. government and go to work for massive defense contractors, and can then effectively lobby congressmen to spend the money on unnecessary programs that will be centered in their home districts (Hello, Saxby Chambliss , I am looking at you).

*sigh* If only there was an alternative.