What the Death of the F-22 Really Means
Ending funding for an outdated project showed that the military industrial complex can—and should—be beaten on wasteful spending.
By Daniel Strauss
September 8, 2009
The near-extinct F-22 fighter.(Department of Defense)It’s no accident that the military’s budget has reached $515.4 billion (that makes it 21 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States), because military spending amendments are usually met with little to no opposition. But this July, the Senate voted to cut $1.75 billion for the F-22 fighter. It may seem like a small thing—less than 0.3 percent of the total military budget—but by killing the F-22 program, it gave hope that seemingly impossible-to-kill wasteful or unnecessary military projects are actually beatable.
Fred Kaplan, who writes the War Stories column for Slate, called the Senate vote to kill the program "a substantial step" for President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other military budget hawks, who had pledged to streamline the military and cut wasteful spending. "The vote might also mark the beginning of a new phase in defense politics, a scaling-back of the influence that defense contractors have over budgets and policies," Kaplan wrote.
This is not to say that the F-22 is a useless fighter. It’s not. It’s just not a suitable aircraft for the types of unconventional warfare the United States and its Western allies are engaged in today. Though that fact has been obvious to many military experts for some time now, Congress continued to fund the production of the F-22 since the 1980s. There are 187 F-22s currently in use by the military today—that’s more F-22s than some countries have commercial jets. The program’s survival is a testament to how strong the military industrial complex’s stranglehold has been over the U.S. military.
Gates, a Bush administration appointee, explained his opposition to the F-22 program at the Economic Club of Chicago in July. "It simply will not do to base our strategy solely on continuing to design and buy—as we have for the last 60 years—only the most technologically advanced versions of weapons to keep up with or stay ahead of another superpower adversary—especially one that imploded nearly a generation ago," Gates said.
But even with Gates’ support, ending the program took significant effort. In a Washington Post recap of the F-22 budget cut, they reported that, "For years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has argued strenuously against the F-22s as Cold War relics, too inefficient and expensive to warrant building any more than the 187 already in the fleet. He cut the Air Force’s F-22 funding request of $400 billion, for 20 more, to zero."
The “20 to zero” part is key. The real trick to reforming defense spending is ending them completely. But the program didn’t get an immediate cutoff. Gates had to concede construction of four additional F-22 fighters in fiscal year 2010 before ending the program the following year, which will bring the total of F-22s in use to 187.
But despite setbacks, William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, thinks canceling the F-22 program is a good sign. "I think for one thing it shows that the military industrial complex can be beaten," Hartung says. "I also think in Congress it sort of shows that you can do this. Not everyone has to buy the arguments of the industry."
One of the primary arguments in favor of the F-22 program was that it provided jobs for Americans. Lockheed Martin, the primary defense contractor behind the F-22, values the jobs argument so much that the last page of its brochure reads, "The F-22 industrial base is a national asset of thousands of highly skilled workers and suppliers in 44 states who manufacture parts and subsystems for the Raptor." A Lockheed Martin representative declined to comment for this story.
The Senate vote shows that the jobs argument has been effective—even some senators who opposed authorizing the war in Iraq voted to keep the program. Political partisanship did not appear to be a significant factor; rather, senators whose states had high Lockheed Martin employment were more likely to vote against eliminating the F-22s.
Plant distribution and state-by-state voting on the F-22.For instance, both Democratic California senators and both Republican Georgia senators voted against the amendment—and Lockheed Martin has more than three dozen parts plants between Georgia and California alone.
While the job creation argument may have effectively at garnered Senate votes, experts note that defense spending is far from the best way to create jobs. "If you’re going to talk about jobs from government spending, defense is the least efficient way to do it," says Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who specializes in defense. "The job thing became more salient this year because of the stimulus package." According to Korb, by using the jobs argument to keep the F-22 alive, Lockheed Martin and other defense lobbyists weakened such arguments for future defense bills.
A good analogy for looking at effective stimulus might be by comparing defense spending to public transit spending. The difference between using defense programs as stimulus and, say, using public transit as stimulus is that defense have an extraneous effect—it doesn’t get any additional people jobs in the process. Transportation, on the other hand, can get riders to places where they might spend money or find work.
Another reason military budget hawks won on the F-22 is because it can be replaced by the F-35, a similar, single engine aircraft that’s more up-to-date and cheaper, but slower and able to carry a wider array of weapons. This means that the jobs for the F-22 can be replaced by the development of the F-35 as well. David Axe, a defense journalist who writes for Wired‘s Danger Room blog, says that in addition to the fact that the F-35 is more fitting for what the U.S. military needs today, those same manufacturers that helped build the F-22s can switch over to building the F-35. "Here’s the thing with aerospace workers: they don’t just build one airplane," Axe explains. "It’s like a car factory—they build the same trucks in the one factory but they build different models of the same truck."
But the defeat of the F-22 program doesn’t necessarily result in a slam dunk for future cuts to the military budget. There are no other major programs currently on the horizon that might compare to the F-22’s situation, and if it is any indication of what is to come, the battle might not be as easily won next time.
For now, it’s hard to see exactly how the lessons of the F-22 battle will translate into future budgetary battles. Perhaps future program terminations will always come with a "construction tax," either in building a newer model, like the F-35, or in making a few more of whatever is on the chopping block, like the four extra F-22s. The fight to make the American military more efficient is far from over, but at least the F-22 has shown there’s hope that it can be done.
Daniel Strauss is a staff writer for Campus Progress and a senior at the University of Michigan.
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There isn’t a shred of proof to indicate that the F-35 is somehow capable, or affordable. It is behind and over cost.
If you believe that, you must also believe the defense industry wholesale. An industry that is always late and over cost and always over-promises.
As one defense writer put it, “ You say you have something better than Gone with the Wind and Star Wars, yet your track record is Ishtar and Howard the Duck. You will have to provide more proof than some PowerPoint slides and “sorry but its secret”.
— Eric Palmer - Sep 8, 06:29 PM - #“It’s no accident that the military’s budget has reached $515.4 billion (that makes it 21 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States)”
When asserting what you claim are truths, it’s best not to start your article off with a mind-numbing piece of ignorance. The annual gross domestic product of the United States is approximately $14 trillion. I’ll give you a hint: $515 billion is not anywhere remotely near 21% of $14 trillion, unless you think 3.6% is 21%.
“It’s just not a suitable aircraft for the types of unconventional warfare the United States and its Western allies are engaged in today.”
The issue has never been whether the fighter is needed TODAY. The issue is whether the fighter will be needed in 10 or 20 years, when a large number of nations are fielding advanced 5th generation fighters and in large numbers. Russia and India will be fielding their own 5th generation fighter by the middle of the next decade, and in announced numbers which already dwarf the F-22 fleet. The bigger issue here is that by cancelling this program with nothing more than a boutique fleet after such a massive investment in research and development, you are not only wasting that development for an airframe that would perform for several decades, but you are likely killing your ability to produce the plane in the future should the United States find itself needing to do so. It’s not as though the human and materiel production processes are just going to go into a vault. By killing the Raptor today you are betting that future production will absolutely, without a doubt, not be necessary, and you are guaranteeing that either way you simply won’t have the option of producing more.
— MM - Sep 10, 07:28 PM - #“There are 187 F-22s currently in use by the military today”
No, there aren’t. 145 Raptors are currently in service. These are basic facts that are easy to find, even in a simple
wikipedia search.
“Another reason military budget hawks won on the F-22 is because it can be replaced by the F-35, a similar, single engine
aircraft that’s more up-to-date and cheaper, but slower and able to carry a wider array of weapons.”
The F-35 is cheaper, in no small part because it is being procured in larger numbers. If the F-22 had been procured at
even double its current number, its per-unit cost would have plunged. The F-22 cannot be “replaced” by the F-35 in its
primary role of air-to-air superiority. The F-35 requires a significantly larger amount of centralized support to carry
out air superiority missions against advanced opposition, support which is vulnerable, and support which, once lost,
significantly hampers the F-35’s capabilities. The F-22 has greater independence of operation for the assurance of air
superiority. Further, the claim that the F-35 is “more up-to-date” than the Raptor is bizarre. The Raptors airframe and
avionics are second to none. It is simply designed for a different mission, and thus does not incorporate the F-35’s
hive-like systems.
“Here’s the thing with aerospace workers: they don’t just build one airplane,” Axe explains. “It’s like a car factory—they
build the same trucks in the one factory but they build different models of the same truck.”
This is absolutely mind-boggling. These airframes are nothing like automobiles, they are not build-by-template. I find it
hard to believe anyone remotely familiar with defense issues and production would say such a thing.
— MM - Sep 10, 07:32 PM - #MM, just give it up.
This is a left-wing blog, and phrases like ‘the fight to make the American military more efficient’ ‘defense reform’ etc are just codeword to weaken the US military. They’re thinking of the budget war, not future wars.
Funny how the author of this article, a ‘college senior’ thinks he is in such a qualified position to be making judgments on life and death matters like this.
— Jason - Sep 14, 04:17 PM - #Eric, I’ve argued this point to my senator and state reps, but apparently nobody is willing to listen to me.
— Sam Vescio - Sep 18, 10:26 AM - #Typical. A bunch of brainwashed college liberals (oh I forgot, you like to call yourselves “progressives”) think they know anything about the F-22A.
You call cutting key programs making America’s military more “efficient”? It isn’t. It is giving them left to work with. We built thousands of F-15s and F-4s in the past, and we can certainly afford more than 187 F-22 Raptors. But you libtards only pretend to seriously fund military research, development, and production.
We need the F-22A the USAF wants more F-22As, it was SecDef Gate’s short-sightedness and politicians who killed production on this amazing aircraft.
— ReconTeam - Oct 15, 07:31 PM - #