By Andy Savoie
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, 21 November 2005
The U.S. Air Force will fight to protect the F/A-22 Raptor if it's threatened in the Pentagon's upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, a QDR forum panelist said Nov. 18.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "has an emerging confrontation coming with Congress on a number of things. He can't even get his undersecretary confirmed. The relationship between Congress and Rumsfeld is pretty poisonous, and unless he wants to try to evolve an era of good feelings with Congress in the context of QDR, they're gunning for him," said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information.
"There's a lot of constituencies in the Pentagon in the services that Congress is very happy to work with to reinforce their proclivities, a case in point being the F-22," he said. "I'm sure staff in the department of the Air Force and uniformed officers, I'm sure are working very closely [with congressional staffers] to protect the F-22 if it doesn't do well in the QDR. That's standard behavior."
The Pentagon plans to complete the QDR in February.
Wheeler spoke at a National Press Club forum in Washington along with Charles Knight, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives and editor of the Defense Strategy Review Web site; and Cindy Williams, principle research scientist for the MIT Security Studies Program.
The Air Force says it needs 381 F/A-22s. The service was budgeted to get 277, but the Defense Department cut that number to about 180 last December, and the Air Force estimates it can afford only 170 F/A-22s with the money provided. The December cut is projected to stop Raptor production by the end of the decade, years earlier than planned (DAILY, Sept. 14).
The Pentagon also has asked the military services and defense agencies to cut planned spending by $32 billion over the next five years, including $8.6 billion from the Air Force (DAILY, Nov. 7).
The recent first practice deployment of the stealthy fighter has given Air Force crews increased confidence in it (DAILY, Nov. 1).
Knight said a major issue will be whether the QDR urges a shift from traditional platforms to a mix that can better fight terrorism.
"... Or does it fudge the issue by reassuring us that, as their champions in Congress and the military frequently do, expensive platforms designed for traditional battlefields can also be used in the hunt for terrorists?" he said.
The number of ground forces the Pentagon plans to deploy overseas for long periods has "considerable" force structure implications for the QDR, Knight said. "It is now around 185,000, a level that is unsustainable for long within the current structure of forces," Knight said.
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Citation: Andy Savoie. "USAF Will Fight Back If QDR Threatens F/A-22, Panelist Says," Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, 21 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_aerospacedaily.jsp
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