Oh! That Matt Cooper. I didn't realize.

I think "changing the culture of Washington" is far less important and less relevant to the President right now than righting the Economic ship. If we need to order a couple useless Raptors to save some jobs, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, nor would it be conclusive evidence of Obama's failure to "change the culture".

Incidentally, our biggest military enemies right now have how many radar stations and strike fighters that we need to deal with? How many long range bombers with fighter support and tanker capabilities? How big are their navies and amphibious assault capabilities? Answer to all: NONE.

This is sooo freaking outrageous it isn't even funny anymore. We are broke as a country and we are worrying about buying more expensive and useless toys? Unbelievable.

As much as all good liberals would like weapons procurement decisions to be cut and dried--and mostly cut--I respectfully suggest its not that simple. Development lead-times for fighters have become so long since the 50s that the threat and capabilities of your current, or currently foreseeable, enemies are irrelevant. American war fighting doctrine depends upon air superiority. If we don't have air superiority, we lose the next war and, alas, much as many Americans, going back to Thomas Jefferson, might wish it were so, you can't forestall the next war by making yourself seem weak and unthreatening. You can only lose it that way.

This is a decision about what our cababilities will be through 2025, easy. We have no way of predicting what threats, or combination of threats, will present themselves through then. What we can be reasonably sure of is that the Russians aren't going to stop designing great new planes of their own and selling them to people who don't like us.

Granted, spending ourselves into oblivion now is also a sure way to lose the next war, but I can't help but remember how Pat Schroeder, just by way of example, decried and ridiculed every new weapons system that came along throughout her tenure on the HASC as overbudget, unworkable, too big a target, too complex, yada yada yada, and, in case after case, those systems were decisive when the crap hit the fan. From the M-1 tank, to the F-15, to AWACs and JSTAR and damn near every other system that eventually proved its worth, the list goes on and on.

All that ranted, its absurd for Lockheed-Martin to fail to see that the F-22 and the F-35 are a zero sum game at this point. Any money spent on extra F-22s is going to come out of F-35 producation in this environment, and, in either case, their bottom line doesn't change (unless one is more profitable than the other).

If anybody is interested Mark Boden penned a Paean to the F-22 in this month's atlantic. Its pretty over the top in its bias, but a good read nonetheless.

How about converting them to corporate executive jets? Then the CEO's could say they were doing favors for the nation's labor force by purchasing them? Just a thought.

I agree with NC Steve but I also hear what you guys are saying about spending cost. That said whether we like or not many of our fighter planes have become too costly to keep in the air simply because their air-frames have lived their life. I am sure you guys might have read about the F-15's being grounded across the country (not the story about the crash) but apparently the cost maintaning these aircraft is significant and more risky simply based on the age of the aircraft. Many of these planes are falling apart. So we need some serious questions answered in regards to the long term strategic goals of our defense precurement programs. I agree that the types of battlefield's we face in modern times does not really demand many of the weapon systems we have developed. I think there needs to be some cross-over between energy, water purification, building technologies and defense spending based simply on the enormous amount of capital already being spent on defense. Back to the F-22, I think they will probably not buy the 381 (this seems prudent given todays circumstances), they will work to get the F-35 delivered (but the US has ponied up much of the money it owes because you have to remember the F-35 JSF is a NATO plane as well, and I believe besides the normal delays in production the other NATO countries have not filled there share of the piggy bank yet) but maybe 10 years from now. Flying planes and training pilots is expensive and I would imagine going forward that the amount of actual pilots who fly will be decreased while the number of drone pilot's will be increased. So there will be plenty of business for these companies going forward but a different kind of business, maybe one more adept to the times we live in.

Since there are some military people on this thread, I have an off topic question. Why on earth do we have aircraft carriers? What purpose do they serve other than a floating air base? Why do we need that in the age of mid-air refueling? What big navy are we going against? I really don't understand why we keep building so many of them, especially when they can be taken out by a single missle. It totally defies logic to me.

We have carriers for precisely the reason you mentioned: a floating air base. The U.S. Navy is able to project massive power into areas where land bases - and therefore mid-air refueling - are impractical.

As to the original question - I should also say, I'd like to see the F-22 built because it advances the overall science of aeronautics. It's the latest and greatest.
Translation: It's reeeeally frickin' cool.
I know that seems like a glib answer, but look at it this way:
We need "shovel-ready" projects.
We need to maintain air superiority.
F-22 does both.
Do we need 381 of them? No. But if you read that Atlantic article, other nations are catching up with F-15. Let's blow 25 years past them with F-22 and provide a lot of jobs in the bargain. NOTE: F-22 should not, not not come at the expense of a single flak vest or up-armored vehicle. It should come at the expense of F-35. If you have command of the skies, an A-10 still does an outstanding job of close air support.

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=4404&StartRow=1&ListRows=10&appendURL=&Orderby=D.DateLastUpdated&ProgramID=37&from_page=index.cfm

Winslow Wheeler
America's Defense Meltdown

One Exocet? You've confused a destroyer with an aluminum superstructure(for example HMS Sheffield in the Falklands War) with the largest and one of the toughest warships ever built. The Essex class carriers of WWII, far smaller and less well-protected than the current Nimitz class, took far more punishment from kamikazees off Okinawa than an Exocet can inflict, with its'(in comparison) small warhead. In fact, one Fletcher class destroyer(a"tin can") survived eight kamikazee strikes- steel, not aluminum, and multiple compartments. Submarines are are far more serious threat(which most of the attached escort, including hunter/killer submarines, are devoted to dealing with). The carriers give the USN the ability to control the sealanes of the world, as well as project power ashore; that is our strategic ace in the hole; nothing else is more important. People seem to have lost track of this since it has not been in question since WWII. Note China trying to lock up resources in Africa. The carriers give us the power to stop this any time we choose.
Note also the Royal Navy plans to replace their three small carriers with two big ones, though not as large as the Nimitz class.
None of the above means you'd want to try to keep the Persian Gulf open if the Iranians really wanted to close it; it's an inherently unfavorable environment, like off Okinawa(see Millenium Challenge exercise).

The technology and costs have risen in the case of technology and declined in the costs of it to render piloted aircraft a vestage of the past. The Joint Strike Fighter (F35) will probably be the last of the piloted fighters. The next war will be done with pilots sitting in a command trailer some where and whipping their planes through a 12 G turn that a human can't endure. Gates knows this.

Or just restart the F-18 production line. Nothing can match that plane and they are a lot cheaper and proven.

My former TIME colleague, Mark Thompson, a veteran defense correspondent, has, for instance, written at length about the problems bedeviling the V-22 Osprey aircraft and why, despite its woes, billions have been pumped into the project.

Thompson's aticle was full of factual errors and was an embarrassment to objective journalism. Anyone who touts that piece of "work" brings their credibility into question.

This looks for the world like the old 80's battle over the F-20 and F-16. The F-20 cost 1/2 the price of the F-16 and in tests the F-16 was repeatedly mock shot down by it. Sadly the F-20 with it's better cost and agility was shot down by Reagan as it was "not big enough to stand up to the Soviet Migs." The fact that it was a better plane in a dog fight and cheaper to operate was lost on Reagan's mighty facsit military utopia wet dream. Since we have as a nation wasted the money already on developing the F-22 and paying extra to fix the whole "plane loses all its electronics when it crosses the international date line" problem, I say finsh out the current contract thus saving the jobs until 2011. That said, F-35 is a better alternative as it is cheaper to buy and can later split it's cost for parts among three branches of the military. Then if we feel all inadequate and need to compensate for a small Air Force package we can just license and build the Euro Fighter as it costs half as much to buy then the F-22 and parts can be sought from our allies in times of actual war.