[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