Conferees Agree on Way to Keep the F-22 Alive

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Thu Oct 7 01:15:56 PDT 1999


[According to this month's Harper's Index: "Ratio of the cost of bulding an F-22 fighter jet to that of upgrading an F-15 to twice the F-22's effectiveness: 1,500:1 They cite the US House Defense Appropriations Committee.]

[Wasn't this guy Weiner the reporter who was so credulous in the Chinese spy scandal? He's like an industry plant.]

New York Times

October 7, 1999

Conferees Agree on Way to Keep the F-22 Alive

By TIM WEINER

W ASHINGTON -- The House and Senate on Wednesday night struck a

deal that would allow the Air Force's $70 billion F-22 fighter jet

to proceed to the assembly line if it can pass new stringent flight

tests.

The F-22, projected to be the most expensive fighter jet ever built

at $200 million a plane, would receive $2.5 billion in research and

development money this year, but none for procurement, the spending

category usually reserved for buying weapons.

Under the terms of the deal, the plane and its components,

including its crucial cockpit computers, would have to pass a

series of hurdles and milestones before the F-22 could proceed to

full production.

But the Air Force and Lockheed Martin, the giant military

contractor, can use the money to begin building up to six aircraft

labeled as test models in 2000 and to start the initial production

of up to 10 combat-ready F-22s in 2001.

"It's still in for a long-term battle," said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-

Alaska, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and one of

the plane's biggest supporters. "It'll still have to prove itself.

It has to prove it can do what its designers have told us it can

do."

Congress and the Air Force had been set to start full-scale

production of the F-22 as early as this month. The Senate had

allotted $1.2 billion for research and $1.8 billion for full-scale

production of the first six F-22s, a total of $3 billion.

But then the House, led by Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., and chairman

of the House Appropriations Committee's defense spending panel,

deleted the $1.8 billion for production, and called for additional

testing of the F-22, which has completed only about 5 percent of

its flight tests, before spending any money on building planes.

Congress almost never cuts off money for a major weapons system

that is about to enter production, and the overwhelming vote in the

House to stop production of the F-22 pending further tests shocked

the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin.

The deal sealed on Wednesday night allows both the House and the

Senate to claim partial victory. The plane will have to pass many

more tests before full-scale production of combat-ready aircraft

begins, but initial production of up to six test aircraft now can

begin.

Before the House vote, "we were moving directly toward purchasing,

and maybe committing to as much as $40 billion to $60 billion for

production of the F-22," Lewis said.

More than $21 billion has been spent on research and development of

the plane already; two test aircraft have been built.

Now, Lewis said, stringent tests will require that the planes "will

work as we hope they work before we ever get to the point of

production."

Lewis and senior Republicans in Congress said that the United

States could not afford the Pentagon's plans to build three

different kinds of fighter jets -- the F-22, the Joint Strike

Fighter and a new model of the F-18 -- at a projected total cost of

$350 billion in the coming decade.

They proposed a pause in production of the F-22 to allow the Air

Force to rethink its plans. But a pause would have killed the

plane, the Air Force and its supporters in Congress argued.

"What we were worried about was a pause -- which would have been a

death," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

The agreement makes 2000 "definitely a testing year" for the F-22,

she said. "We need to have successes all the way through the year

to show that the F-22 can be built, that it can be built on time,

that it will be able to perform the way we hope it will."

All told, the compromise provides $1.923 billion in research funds

that can be used to build test aircraft, $277 million in so-called

"advance procurement" funds that would allow for buying and

building parts for additional aircraft in fiscal 2001, and $300

million available in fiscal 2001 to Lockheed Martin if delays or

cancellations cause the company financial or legal problems.

The Air Force and Lockheed Martin reserved comment until they see

the precise language of the deal.

The compromise was sealed as the House and Senate negotiators

wrapped up a Pentagon spending package on Wednesday night that

Lewis said totaled about $269.5 billion, including $1.8 billion for

a military pay raise.

The bill also contains $375 million personally requested by the

Senate majority leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, to start

building a $1.5 billion Navy carrier at his home state's shipyard.

The Navy had not requested funds for the ship, but Lott and his

staff pressed the Navy to support a budget request of between $375

million and $500 million for the carrier.

The Pentagon spending bill also contains about $6 billion in funds

that Lewis said were labelled as "emergency spending." While that

technically means they do not count against spending caps imposed

by Congress in 1997, they have to come from somewhere -- and at the

rate Congress is spending, that may be surplus Social Security

funds, which members have sworn to protect.

A Republican plan for billions of dollars in across-the-board

spending cuts, which could keep the Social Security funds intact,

picked up some steam in Congress on Wednesday as the Senate passed

a resolution backing the idea, on a nearly straight party-line

vote. But Republicans continued to argue fiercely among themselves

about the idea, which would require at least $16 billion in cuts in

the spending bills to run the government in fiscal 2000, which

began Oct. 1.

Congress is still struggling to pass six of its 13 spending bills

for fiscal 2000. On Wednesday, the Senate very nearly failed to

pass a $12.6 billion foreign aid measure.

The bill was about to fail on a 50-50 tie vote. Then Lott leaned on

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and chairman of the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee, to change his vote from nay to yea.

Helms agreed, and the bill survived. But President Clinton has

vowed to veto it, since it cuts 1999's budget for foreign aid by $1

billion.

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company



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