Schwartz takes up fight for more Raptors - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Schwartz takes up fight for more Raptors

Just a few weeks before a congressional deadline, Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told reporters Tuesday that he soon will ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates for more F-22 Raptors.

Schwartz wouldn’t say how many of the stealthy fighters he will request, only that the total will be “less than the 381” the Air Force has said it needed since 2002.

Congress, which has approved only 187 Raptors, set a deadline of March 1 for President Barack Obama’s administration to decide whether to purchase more.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said in December that he and Schwartz had talked about buying 60 more F-22s, which would bring the total to 243.

Schwartz said he “wouldn’t dispute Admiral Mullen’s characterization ... but as I indicated, I have yet to discuss this with the secretary of defense, and I think it would be appropriate that I share my military advice with him first before doing so publicly.”

Loren Thompson of the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington Institute said he took Schwartz’s comments as confirmation the chief of staff will ask for 60.

F-22s, which cost about $150 million apiece, have been criticized for not contributing to the irregular wars the U.S. faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Air Force generals have said 187 F-22s are not enough, especially considering that only 100 could be available for combat at one time because of maintenance rates.

When the Air Force requested 381 F-22s in 2002, it was assumed the 10 expeditionary Raptor squadrons would each have 24 F-22s and the remaining jets would be spread out among other squadrons for training and testing purposes, Thompson said. Reducing that request to 247 would cut the number of F-22s at each squadron to 18, he said.

“The basic argument is that they can cover the world thinly if they take a very different approach to deployment and to employment of the aircraft,” he said.

The F-22 debate puts Schwartz in a tough position, Thompson said: Many Air Force generals want more F-22s, but part of the reason former Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley was fired in June was his intense F-22 lobbying efforts.

“The Air Force needs a lot more F-22s to cover the world, but his predecessor got fired for pushing that viewpoint too hard,” Thompson said of Schwartz.

Schwartz acknowledged that his F-22 request will face scrutiny but said that lowering it from 381 should not be seen as a “sign of weakness.”

“I think it’s the sign of a healthy institution that we’re willing to revisit long-held beliefs no matter how central to our ethos they may be,” Schwartz said.

‘Troubling’ or ‘respectable’?

The Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, John Young, said in November that another $8 billion will be needed to upgrade the current fleet of Raptors. He described the stealth fighter’s mission capability rate of 62 percent as “troubling,” and he said it was “proving very expensive to operate.”

Schwartz defended the F-22’s mission capability rate Tuesday, saying that the F-22’s performance has been “respectable” compared with other stealth aircraft such as the B-2 and F-117.

Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer now with the Center for Defense Information, said further investment in the F-22 program would be a “disastrously bad mistake.”

Rather, the Air Force “should focus more on the lessons of real combat” and make investments in aircraft needed in Iraq and Afghanistan like intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.

“All the F-22 does is make worse our problems of a shrinking, aging, less-ready-to-fight Air Force,” Wheeler said. “Every time an F-22 rolls off the production line, Osama Bin Laden looks to the sky and thanks Allah.”

Former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne disagrees. In an e-mail to Air Force Times, he said a study requested by the Defense Department that was never made public concluded the service needed 260 to 275 F-22s to replace the F-15 and F-117.

“I would say that 60 more F-22s is a good start,” he said. “It introduces moderate to high risk to future air superiority, a mandatory assumption for the new American way of war.”

95,000 jobs

Lockheed Martin’s production line in Marietta, Ga., could be shut down if more F-22s are not ordered. Gates added funding for four more F-22s to last year’s supplemental budget to keep the line open after he chose to pass the decision to the Obama administration.

In a last-ditch effort to gain congressional support, Lockheed Martin has lobbied lawmakers to buy more F-22s to preserve U.S. jobs. The company calculates ending F-22 production would eliminate or otherwise affect 95,000 jobs: 25,000 directly related to fighter production and 70,000 at small firms, according to Lockheed’s Raptor program manager, Larry Lawson.

When asked whether the Air Force had weighed the effect F-22 production could have on jobs, Schwartz said his staff considered only its military significance and would allow politicians to mull the labor concerns.

Related reading

* Schwartz steps up public appearances

* Raptor at center of budget wars