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What Happened to the F-22?
Travis | Jul 31, 2009 |
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Respect the dome
Recent Senate and House votes to stop buying additional F-22 Raptor aircraft have been heralded as huge wins for President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the battle to reform the Pentagon. Certainly the votes were major political victories. Yet this year is not the first time Congress has attempted to stop the F-22. During the 1990s, legislators in both the House and Senate tried – unsuccessfully – to cut funding for the program. Why did Congress deliver the Obama administration’s preferred policy outcome this time around?
Let’s first review some history. In 1995, the Pentagon requested $200 million less for the F-22 than was called for in the future years defense plan. The smaller request was the result of Defense Secretary William Perry’s December 1994 announcement that funding for several weapons systems would be slashed due to logical post-Cold War downsizing.
Democrats in Congress tried to support Secretary Perry. Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-AR) sought to restructure the F-22 program and to procure only 42 Raptors, but his bill was buried unceremoniously in committee. Rep. David Obey (D-WI) then offered a floor amendment that, with a cut of $1 billion, went beyond Perry’s preferred reduction. The amendment was crushed 126 to 293.
After sitting on its hands for a few years, Congress decided to try again. In 1998, Sen. Bumpers joined Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) to introduce an amendment which blocked advance procurement funds until the F-22 completed 601 hours of flight tests. “Fly before you buy” is usually a reasonable requirement for weapons programs, but not when it came to the F-22. The amendment was clobbered 19 to 73.
Congress came closest to slowing down the F-22 in 1999, when the House actually managed to pass a Defense Appropriations bill that eliminated $1.85 billion for six F-22s and redirected the funds to purchase other aircraft. House appropriators noted that “current threat projections for 2010 indicate that the United States will have a 5 to 1 numerical advantage of advanced fighters against our most challenging adversaries without the F-22,” an argument similar to the one invoked today by Secretary Gates.
The Air Force and defense contractors went nuts and flooded Capitol Hill with complaints. Even President Bill Clinton opposed the House-led cut and publicly vowed to fight for the restitution of funds. In the end, the money was restored during conference committee negotiations with the Senate.
Given this wretched history, the recent congressional rejection of the Raptor was truly unprecedented. What was so different this time around?
Gordon Adams, the Don Corleone of Defense Budgets, offers a convincing answer. As he articulated in The Iron Triangle: The Politics of Defense Contracting, Adams believes that successful defense programs require three pillars: “the service that wants and will advocate for the program, a contractor for whom the program is major business, and members of Congress” who sit on the key defense committees or whose constituents are employed by the program. This is the three-legged stool of defense contracting.
In the current context of the F-22, the three-legged stool was chopped down to one-and-a-half legs. First, the Air Force leadership, with insistent prodding from Secretary Gates, abandoned the F-22. That’s one leg gone. Then the lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, announced that it would accept the Pentagon’s plan and would not lobby hard for continued funding. That’s another half-a-leg gone. “A two-legged stool is weak, and a one-and-a-half legged stool even weaker,” wrote Adams.
Congressional supporters of the F-22 mounted a vigorous campaign to keep the plane alive, but there was only so much they could do. With the Air Force leadership opposed and Lockheed Martin dithering, F-22 advocates on the Hill were on their own. After the 1-2 legislative punch from Levin-McCain and John Murtha, the weakened F-22 edifice collapsed in spectacular fashion. Even some labor groups’ support for the program was not enough to sway an adequate number of Democrats to buck Obama and Gates and vote for more Raptors.
The battle for the F-22 is not over. Things could potentially change during Senate appropriations action or conference committee negotiations. For once, however, the future does not look bright for a major weapons program. This deviation from the status quo is a sign of the power a popular President and respected Defense Secretary can wield against the Iron Triangle – at least for now.
Security Matters, Congress, F-22 (all tags)
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