JSF request puzzles Congress - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

JSF request puzzles Congress

The Air Force could have a hard time convincing lawmakers that a crashed F-16 Fighting Falcon is worth a new F-35 Lighting II.

It’s like wrecking a 10-year-old Ford Mustang and asking your insurance company to replace it with a new Corvette that won’t be available for three years.

As part of the Air Force’s budget requests to cover the losses of three F-16s and an F-15E Strike Eagle from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the service is asking for three F-35 Joint Strike Fighters as replacements. The problem, however, is that F-35 is still in its early development phase, and it will be several years before one is available for combat.

Combined, the three jets carry a high price tag: $578 million.

The proposal is already drawing puzzled comments from Congress.

“That does seem a bridge too far,” the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., commented during a hearing on the defense budget.

Asked why the service didn’t request new F-16s, Air Force budget director Maj. Gen. Frank Faykes said the latest jets are incompatible with the service’s existing F-16 fleet.

Faykes didn’t address other options for the money. The Air Force has been scrambling to find money for upgrading the A-10 Thunderbolt fleet and buying more targeting pods for fighters, so aircrews can train with the same gear they take to war.

The Air Force also wants six additional CV-22 Ospreys — at a cost of $639 million — as replacements for five crashed MH-53 Pave Lows helicopters. Prior to this announcement, the Air Force was expecting to buy 50 Ospreys.

The service may have challenges selling this deal on two counts.

Air Force Special Operations Command intends to retire all of its Pave Low helicopters by the end of the decade. The six CV-22s would replace aircraft already destined for the bone yard if they hadn’t crashed.

Also, AFSOC does not consider the CV-22 a replacement aircraft for the Pave Low. The Army’s new MH-47 Chinooks are taking over the Pave Low mission. The CV-22 is intended to for long-range or covert missions where speed and quick deployment are a primary concern.