The Air Force Bids Farewell to the F-22

In an Op-Ed in today's Washington Post, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz answer the question we explored last week--how many F-22s does the Air Force need? The answer? Exactly what Gates said last week. And by the Air Force publicly supporting closing out production of the F-22, the justification for the program has now been stripped down to parochial interests.

Donley and Schwartz say that while the Air Force's warfighting assumptions have differed from the Department in the past--the DoD/Air Force tomaeto-tomahto fight has been a pronounced difference from the Air Force favoring 60 additional aircraft--they recognize that budget constraints are forcing them to make choices:

Within a fixed Air Force and overall Defense Department budget, our challenge is to decide among many competing needs. Buying more F-22s means doing less of something else. In addition to air superiority, the Air Force provides a number of other capabilities critical to joint operations for which joint warfighters have increasing needs. These include intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control, and related needs in the space and cyber domains.

All of this largely echoes Gates's themes that DoD needs to set priorities and consider inescapable tradeoffs and opportunity costs. In addition to all of the spending we're seeing through the stimulus and TARP, it's great to see another signal that DoD is seriously considering costs as part of their procurement strategy.

-- Mandy Smithberger

Comments

[Ingo Castilho]

Its true, we are at war with terrorism. And its true, a sophisticated, technologicly advanced Fighter like the f22 isent the best weapon to fight the taliban or al qaida. But what people fail to realize is that Russia has been resurging and China is rising as well. Both of these nations, specialy Russia have the capability to overtake the U.S in air supremacy capabilities. Although China is more of a long term problem(they need to invest alot of time and money before catching up with the f16 let alone the f22) Russia has fighters comparable to the f16. It is imperative that F22 production remains active and even more important that the f22 is upgraded and evolves whenever the chance to do so arises.

[Mandy]

Former AF Secretary Wynne disagrees, and argues that there are significant strategic ramifications to Gates's decision to stop production of the F-22- http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/04/13/gates-cuts-leading-to-strategic-drawdown-wynne/