Editors Across the Country Agree: Kill the Raptor

Earlier this week, the Department of Defense's (DoD) Acquisition Chief told the Boston Globe that fixing DoD's notorious procurement problems means getting programs right at the start (the intention of the Weapons Acquisition Reform Act) and having the discipline to stop programs that are no longer needed. DoD and the White House have repeatedly demonstrated that they have the discipline, and unsurprisingly, Congress is largely demonstrating that they don't. The vote on whether to put $1.75 billion for F-22s back into operations and maintenance (O&M) funds is expected to occur late Monday, so there's still time for the Senate to demonstrate discipline. Pierre Sprey has repeatedly pointed out the problem of political engineering, and he reiterated his point to the Washington Post last week:

Its troubles have been detailed in dozens of Government Accountability Office reports and Pentagon audits. But Pierre Sprey, a key designer in the 1970s and 1980s of the F-16 and A-10 warplanes, said that from the beginning, the Air Force designed it to be "too big to fail, that is, to be cancellation-proof."

Lockheed farmed out more than 1,000 subcontracts to vendors in more than 40 states, and Sprey -- now a prominent critic of the plane -- said that by the time skeptics "could point out the failed tests, the combat flaws, and the exploding costs, most congressmen were already defending their subcontractors' " revenues.

But we've been hearing from many offices on the Hill and seeing in newspapers across the country that there seems to be a different kind of political engineering occurring, with many constituents and editorial boards saying it's time to put national security needs over parochial interests. With the help of a couple of our stellar interns, POGO put together a list of newspapers that have said they support the decision of two secretaries of Defense, two Presidents, three chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force to stop buying F-22s.

Here's the list, in alphabetical order by state. We will try to continue to update the list over the weekend.

Alabama: The Birmingham News, "Why bail out banks and not protect soldiers?"

Georgia: Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, "The question isn't that hard"; and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Gates, Obama, McCain fight for those on the front line"

Illinois: Chicago Sun-Times, "U.S. doesn't need even more F-22s"

Indiana: Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, "Clipping Raptor's wings is right move for Defense"

Massachusetts: Boston Herald, "Ground this jet proposal"

Missouri: St. Louis Times-Dispatch, "Gates signals dark days for military-industrial complex"

Nevada: Las Vegas Sun, "Threatened veto is justified: Obama correct to argue against additional fighter jets that aren’t needed"

New Hampshire: New Hampshire Business Review, "Bring it on: N.H. defense firms like what they see in new budget priorities"

New Jersey: New Jersey Star Ledger, "F-22 Raptors: Shoot down wasteful defense spending"

New Mexico: Santa Fe New Mexican, "An old air warrior says 'enough' to F-22"

New York: New York Post, "Can't Fly, Won't Die: The F-22 Is Armored In Pork"

North Carolina: Asheville Citizen Times, "Gates' sense on defense budget should be heeded"

Ohio: Columbus Dispatch, "Change strategy; Congress needs to resist political pressure and make needed military changes"

Oregon: The Oregonian, "Obama vs. the contractors"

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia Enquirer, "Change and Cut Spending" and "A Jet Even The Military Doesn't Want"

Rhode Island: Providence Journal, "Editorial: Balance of power"

Tennessee: Knoxville News Sentinel, "Editorial: The right weapon for the right war"

Texas: San Antonio Express News, "Nation's defense is first priority"

Washington: Tacoma News Tribune, "Defense secretary right to retarget spending"

And beyond that, there's also the New York Times ("$1.75 Billion Boondoggle") and USA Today ("Our view on military spending: Dogfight over Raptor typifies defense excess").

-- Mandy Smithberger

(A big thank-you to John, Marc, and Nina for compiling these articles)

Pentagon Cuts Annual Report on Major Acquisitions

The Department of Defense (DoD) will not provide Congress with a complete annual Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) on major acquisition programs this year. According to Inside the Pentagon, “Instead of an annual report summarizing the acquisition program costs, schedules and performance changes for approximately 100 big-ticket programs, Ashton Carter--the Pentagon's acquisition executive--on July 6 sent lawmakers an explanation for cost growth in a single program only, the Marine Corps' H-1 helicopter upgrade.”

The annual SAR is indispensable to proper oversight of major defense acquisitions and is used to determine if a program's costs have exceeded so-called “Nunn-McCurdy” thresholds. The Nunn-McCurdy Amendment, which was first introduced in the 1982 National Defense Authorization Act and made permanent by Congress the next year, requires Congress to be notified when a program exceeds cost estimates by 15% and mandates that a program be restructured or terminated when its price grows to 25% over the original estimate.

POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian explained the importance of SARs in a 2004 letter:

The SARs, which provide cost, schedule and performance information on major weapons programs, have historically been a cornerstone for the monitoring of weapons systems by Congress, the media, and groups like POGO. Their elimination would deal a serious blow against open government. For instance, the latest round of SARs revealed a disturbing story of out-of-control weapons systems unit cost escalation for programs ranging from the F/A-22 tactical fighter to the Comanche helicopter. This important information could have been kept out of the public debate were it not for the SARs.

DoD is legally required to provide a comprehensive annual SAR with 60 days after submission of the President's budget proposal to Congress and to submit quarterly SARs that are relatively limited in scope. However, the law contains enough ambiguity and exemptions that this year's remarkably brief report probably satisfies legal requirements. The Inside the Pentagon article explains that “Pentagon officials justified this omission in May by arguing that the compressed fiscal year 2010 budget review this spring did not permit time to prepare detailed funding projections for FY-11 to FY-15, arguing that those funding plans were going to be dramatically revised this summer as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review.” However, the piece also mentions that the Department of Defense's actions are not unprecedented; no SAR was provided to Congress in the first year of George W. Bush's administration.

-- John Cappel

F-22 Vote Update

Our sources now tell us that the vote on the Levin-McCain amendment--which would strip funding for additional F-22s from the National Defense Authorization Act--will likely happen sometime next week. So in the meantime, please keep contacting your Senators and tell them to vote YES on the amendment. Remind them that buying more F-22s means choosing a corrupt procurement system over our national security needs. The vote is extremely close, and every call counts.

Click here to learn more about POGO's F-22 investigations.

POGO to Track How Senators Vote on the F-22

POGO has put together the following list of how each Senator is expected to vote on the Levin-McCain amendment to strip funding for the F-22 from the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010 (our fact sheet on the F-22 is available here). If you're a staffer from one of these offices and believe we have listed you in the wrong column, please contact POGO and we will correct our list. And if you're a constituent reading this and your Senator's position on this issue  is unknown, please call their office to find out and email us at msmallberg@pogo.org or msmithberger@pogo.org to let us know how they're voting.

UPDATE (5:25 P.M.): POGO has decided to remove the list of expected votes. The situation is extremely fluid, with a number of Senate offices changing their positions. Nonetheless, we now believe the race to be very close, and that every vote will count. Place contact your Senators and urge them to support the Levin-McCain amendment.

Air Force Leadership: No More F-22s

"Ultimately, buying more F-22s means doing less of something else and we did not recommend displacement of these other priorities to fund additional F-22s. In summary, we assessed the F-22 decision from all angles, taking into account competing strategic priorities and complementary programs and alternatives, all balanced within the context of available resources. We did not and do not recommend F-22s be included in the FY10 defense budget." [Emphasis POGO's]

- Norton Schwartz, Air Force Chief of Staff, and Michael Donley, Secretary of the Air Force, July 13, 2009

President Obama's Letter Promising to Veto Bill With Additional F-22s

"As Secretary Gates and the military leadership have determined, we do not need these planes. That is why I will veto any bill that supports acquisition of F-22s beyond the 187 already funded by Congress....To continue to procure additional F-22s would be to waste valuable resources that should be more usefully employed to provide our troops with the weapons that they actually do need." [Emphasis POGO's]

- President Barack Obama, July 13, 2009

-- Mandy Smithberger

Gates and Mullen: More F-22s Will Threaten Our National Defense

“If the Air Force is forced to buy additional F-22s beyond what has been requested, it will come at the expense of other Air Force and Department of Defense priorities--and require deferring capabilities in areas we believe are much more critical to our Nation’s defense.”

-Defense Secretary Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mullen, July 13, 2009

-- Mandy Smithberger

Smoke and Mirrors Budgeting: Clearing the Air on the F-22

POGO and Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) just sent a letter to the Senate asking them to delete funding for the F-22 from the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010. Our letter raises many of the concerns we've expressed on the blog and on our twitter feed about how the F-22 is being funded through smoke and mirrors budgeting by relying on anticipated savings from procurement reform that the Congressional Budget Office said there was no basis for determining. Additionally, we question the Senate's decision to take funds from the Joint Strike Fighter management reserve fund, which may disrupt its development.

But most importantly, we urge the Senate not to take money from operations and maintenance (O&M) accounts to fund a fighter jet that the Department of Defense doesn't even want. Unfortunately, taking funds from the accounts that most directly affect our troops to fund parochial interests is an all-too-familiar Congressional budget tactic, as we saw in 2006 when Congress opted to trade night vision goggles for Ospreys.

-- Mandy Smithberger

Can F-22 Funding Pass Go?

John T. Bennett at Defense News (sadly, subscription-only) has more news on where the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) is drawing funds to procure seven F-22s the Department of Defense (DoD) doesn't want. In addition to drawing money from the Joint Strike Fighter's (JSF) fund to fix unanticipated problems in the program, Bennett quotes a Senate aide who describes how the F-22 relies on offsets, including $500 million in anticipated savings from overhauling the Pentagon procurement system--savings that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said their office has "no basis for determining." To say that counting on these savings is irresponsible is to put it kindly. Decades of procurement "reform" have only led to a more costly, largely broken system--this spending strategy is like asking DoD to buy F-22s on Boardwalk when they only have funds for Baltic Avenue.

-- Mandy Smithberger

Former Lockheed Martin Engineer Calls Fraud on F-22 Stealth

As the fight over whether to continue production of the F-22 rages on, a recently unsealed qui tam lawsuit raises major questions about its stealth capabilities, one of the key air-superiority features of the fighter jet. If the allegations are true, the justification for the whole program may be in question.

The lawsuit, filed by a Materials and Process engineer specializing in stealth (also known as low-observable materials), accuses Lockheed Martin of fraudulently developing the stealth capability of the F-22 and falsely portraying to the Air Force that the stealth coating on the fighter met specifications. The engineer, relator Darrel O. Olsen, also alleges that the management at Lockheed Martin directed him not to speak to the Air Force about the problems with the coating, and that his advice to modify the coatings or purchase different coatings to meet specifications were ignored due to concerns with meeting contract milestones. While the relator in the case left Lockheed Martin in 1999, the suit claims that third-party sources report that the stealth capability of the F-22 remained dysfunctional through at least 2004, with Lockheed Martin knowingly using defective coatings and never fully disclosing the low observable system defects to the Air Force.

This of course is not the first time that the real and practical capability of the stealth of the F-22 has come into question. Just last February, POGO reported that the maintenance requirements for the stealth capability significantly reduced the F-22's mission capability. As we said at the time, we believed that this may have been one of the primary reasons why then-Defense Department Acquisition Chief John Young said that the F-22's mission capable rate was too low to waste additional taxpayer dollars on further procurement.

-- Mandy Smithberger