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AF leaders: F-22 cuts a matter of priorities

The Air Force’s top two leaders explained in a newspaper op-ed Monday that they recommended capping production of the F-22 Raptor program because they couldn’t justify spending billions more on stealth fighters when other higher service priorities exist and money is tight.

The op-ed in the Washington Post by Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz was their first public statement on the F-22 program since Defense Secretary Robert Gates released the 2010 budget last week.

Schwartz and Donley acknowledged they had wanted an F-22 fleet of 243 but came to realize “buying more F-22s means doing less of something else.” The $13 billion for the 60 additional fighters could be better used to repair the service’s nuclear enterprise, ramp up its unmanned aircraft fleet and better fight irregular wars.

The leaders pointed out they remain dedicated to air superiority and have confidence that a combination of the 187 F-22 fleet Congress has approved and the 2,443 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters the Defense Department plans to buy will provide that.

As Gates continues to guide the Defense Department away from Cold War-era weapons programs and shape the services to fight both irregular and conventional wars, Schwartz and Donley said F-22 requirements changed.

“Based on warfighting experience over the past several years and judgments about future threats, the Defense Department is revisiting the scenarios on which the Air Force based its assessment” for F-22 fleets of 243 or even 381 aircraft.

Only a handful of F-35s have been built, though, and Schwartz and Donley said they understand concerns exist with shutting down the F-22 production line in 2011 before the F-35 production line reaches full capacity in 2015. But the risk wasn’t worth the cost of buying more F-22s.

“We considered whether F-22 production should be extended as insurance while the F-35 program grows to full production. Analysis showed that overlapping F-22 and F-35 production would not only be expensive but that while the F-35 may still experience some growing pains, there is little risk of a catastrophic failure in its production line,” they wrote.

Schwartz and Donley said they recognized the F-22 is the military’s best air-to-air fighter and continue to support the four more F-22s that will be purchased with this year’s supplemental defense spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that will bring the fleet’s final number to 187.

“The F-22 is a vital tool in the military’s arsenal and will remain in our inventory for decades to come. But the time has come to move on.”