The next U.S. president, John McCain or Barack Obama, is expected to be a penny-pinching commander in chief when it comes to buying new military weapons. And that's bad news for the Air Force's push to buy scores more F-22 Raptors, a supersonic jet fighter built to dominate enemy airspace.
 |
|
|
 |
| USA's next president to be penny-pinching commander-in-chief |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At $191 million apiece, extra Raptors will be a hard fit in a defense budget likely to begin shrinking after eight years of steady growth under U.S. President George W. Bush. The jet's expense may be its biggest vulnerability.
The Raptor hasn't been used to fight Islamic terrorism, another factor working against it. In the aircraft's corner is Congress, which may find the cash if the White House won't.
At Langley, home to the Air Combat Command and 40 ash-gray F-22s, ending production of the Raptor is a troubling prospect. Air Force officials point to Russia's attack in August on neighboring Georgia, a U.S. ally, as proof the nation must be prepared to do more than hunt down terror groups.
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly battles fought on the ground, aren't matters of national survival, they say. Wars against heavyweights like Russia and China, or a nuclear-armed Iran, would be.
"We seem to have talked ourselves, in the West, into the idea that the Cold War is over, (that) historical military competition is over - that we may be faced with a counter-terror threat emanating from the Middle East, and that somehow the rest of the world is going to respect this unilateral respite that we've declared," Brig. Gen. James Poss, intelligence director at Air Combat Command, told The Associated Press in an interview.
The Bush administration says the 183 Raptors the Air Force has already bought are enough to deal with future threats.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday said there needs to be a better balance between expensive, high-tech weapons and more basic gear that's critical for fighting counterinsurgencies. He didn't mention the F-22 during a speech at the National Defense University in Washington. But Gates did caution against "rearming for another Cold War."
Overall, close to $65 billion has been spent on research, development and production of the aircraft.
In addition to the Raptors, the Air Force is buying more than 1,700 new F-35 Lightning jets. But the first batch of those planes won't be ready for action for a few more years. Each F-35 costs $104 million.
Read more news
Los Angeles Auto Show
Forum
STATISTICS
Source: 
