Senators Shelve F-22 Procurement Debate
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John M. Doyle john_doyle@aviationweek.com
A parliamentary dispute in the U.S. Senate has temporarily sidelined a measure that would cap at 187 the number of F-22 Raptors the Air Force is authorized to buy.
Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) this morning pulled his amendment to the Fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill - which would undo authorization of seven more Raptors that the Obama administration says it does not need - or want.
Levin said on the Senate floor that he was pulling the amendment temporarily because Senate leaders could not agree on when to bring it to a vote, and the issue was being waylayed by an unrelated, controversial move. Levin said the delay to a vote on the F-22 amendment was apparently precipitated Democratic leaders' efforts to insert hate crimes legislation as another amendment to the defense bill, to which several senators objected.
"Why that should result in a denial of an opportunity to vote on the Levin-McCain amendment escapes me, I must say," Levin said on the Senate floor. "We're going to come back, obviously, to the Levin-McCain amendment," he added.
Levin and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, introduced the amendment July 13 as expected as the Senate began debate on the $680 bill defense policy bill. It would delete a measure narrowly approved by their committee over Levin and McCain's objections to divert $1.25 billion from military personnel and operations and maintenance programs to help pay for seven additional Raptors.
The balance of the expected $1.75 billion to fund the additional Raptors was to come from $500 million in expected department-wide savings from a recently enacted defense procurement reform bill, according to Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), an advocate of the F-22, which is assembled at a Lockheed Martin plant in his state.
In debate earlier this week, both Levin and McCain said little if any savings - but certainly not $500 million - was expected in the first year of the reforms, which were crafted as institutional changes to how the Defense Department acquires goods and services.
Meanwhile, the White House issued a statement that may amplify its veto threat over prolonging the Raptor program. President Barack Obama's Office of management and Budget said "if the final bill presented to him contains this [SASC] provision, the President will veto it." The statement was more absolute than the usual language proffered when OMB levies a veto warning, i.e., "the President's senior advisors would recommend a veto."
Indeed, the President, the Defense Secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top general and civilian in charge of the Air Force have all weighed in this week with new letters to the Senate in support of ending the program as planned at 187 Raptors. But Raptor supporters, such as the Air Force Association and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), have maintained a steady drumbeat of opposition and counter-arguments.
Today, AFA's magazine claimed conversations with Pentagon top spokesman Geoff Morrell that indicated research cited in defense of the 187 level - presented in congressional testimony this year as definitive analyses - were actually a melding of two "work products," and were little more than recycled briefings in the end.
JCS vice chairman, Gen. James Cartwright, told Congress last week that a study the JSC and Air Force partnered on recommended 187 Raptors instead of the 243 that the Air Force earlier stated was a minimum.
Despite assurances by Cartwright to Levin that studies would be provided, AFA cited Morrell and said they have not been dispatched to Capitol Hill. Further absent is a response to a 2007 demand - that was to be provided within a year - for a comprehensive tacair plan that would specifically explain how the number of F-22s had been determined.
With David A. Fulghum in Washington
Photo credit: USAF
