Obama Joins Sens. On F-22 Acquisition Halt
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By John M. Doyle
The top leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), backed by a White House veto threat, are urging their colleagues to vote against continuing F-22 Raptor procurement.
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), took to the Senate floor July 13, as they had vowed to do, to urge passage of an amendment to the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill that would remove a provision to buy seven more Raptors. Levin and McCain last month failed to keep out of the defense bill the measure authorizing $1.75 billion for additional Raptor procurement, in a close committee vote of 13-11.
To support their argument, Levin and McCain, quoted from a letter — rushed to Capitol Hill by the White House — in which President Barack Obama said he would “veto any bill” that continues F-22 acquisition, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Pentagon officials have capped at 187 aircraft (Aerospace DAILY, June 24).
“We do not need these planes,” Obama wrote in his letter to the two senators. In both their floor statements, Levin and McCain noted that President George W. Bush, as well as two different defense secretaries and three chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with the current Air Force secretary and chief of staff, all support closing down the F-22 assembly line. Current law bars foreign sales of the F-22, with its sophisticated radar and other cutting-edge technologies, although both Japan and Israel are anxious to acquire the stealthy fifth-generation fighter (Aerospace DAILY, July 10).
McCain and Levin noted, as Gates has done in the past, that the most sophisticated fighter jet in the U.S. arsenal has never flown in either Iraq or Afghanistan, despite its hefty price tag of about $140 million per aircraft.
But support for retaining the additional Raptor acquisition, led by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), is expected to be strong since Lockheed Martin has parceled out the F-22’s manufacture to 1,000 subcontractors in more than 40 states. Final assembly of the F-22 takes place at Marietta in Chambliss’ home state.
“Right now the votes are not there to pass this amendment,” McCain conceded. He acknowledged support for more Raptors was strong, but he argued that any decision on continuing the expensive defense program “should not be based on jobs.”
Levin said he expected a vote on their amendment to come July 14. The House of Representatives added $369 million to its version of the fiscal 2010 defense bill to begin procurement of 12 more Raptors.
The House defense appropriations subcommittee is slated to mark up its FY ’10 defense spending bill July 16. Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) has said he favors keeping the F-22 line open for a while longer.
The Senate defense spending bill is still being considered by the Senate Apppropriations committee.
Photo: Lockheed Martin
