Aerospace World Special Report

Battle of the F-22

For a time, the Air Force and Lockheed Martin thought 1999 might be a quiet year for the F-22. Hearings in Congress had been tame. The Balkan War had demonstrated anew the value of advanced airpower. Lawmakers were talking about USAF budget increases, not cuts. As the key to future air dominance, the Raptor was in a strong position, officials concluded.

How wrong they were. In midsummer, the fighter program suddenly was thrown into turmoil as the House, following the lead of a small band of defense appropriators, struck a major blow. It voted July 23 to deny $1.8 billion needed to buy the first six F-22s and, at the same time, put the fighter on research-only life support. The F-22 soon found itself in a fight for survival.

The attack on the F-22 came as a thunderous surprise to Pentagon and USAF officials. Leaders of the Congressional defense establishment were similarly stunned. Seldom if ever had such a limited number of lawmakers moved so swiftly, successfully, and secretively against a major program so close to production.

"Maybe we should have seen it coming, but nobody did," maintained Tom Burbage, president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems, the F-22's prime contractor. "We thought this would be the first year that we wouldn't have a battle." Instead, Burbage noted, it turned out to be "the biggest we've ever had."

The battle for the F-22 quickly shifted to a House-Senate conference of negotiators charged with ironing out differences in their defense appropriation bills. The two sides started out far apart. Unlike the House, the Senate had fully funded the F-22-a fighter designed to be stealthy, maneuverable, supersonic without use of afterburner, and potent in air combat or ground attack.

Showdown and Solution?

As the showdown moved toward the fall, many predicted a House­Senate compromise that would preserve several F-22s, at the least. The Senate team included many staunch F-22 backers who were unlikely to give ground. The House team itself wavered. Even Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), who had led the anti-F-22 charge, said he only wanted to slow the program, not kill it.

Until July 12, few had any inkling the fighter was in for trouble. Lewis, the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), its ranking Democrat, then delivered the shocking news: The panel had zeroed out F-22 production funds, diverting that money to boost pay for pilots, study F-22 alternatives, and fund other aircraft.

Within a few days, the full appropriations committee and the full House had adopted the subcommittee position.

Why did the House appropriators strike at the F-22, USAF's top priority? The official reason given: fears that escalating F-22 costs were eating away at the service's general health.

A House report accompanying the panel's F-22 decision indicated that F-22 cost increases were becoming intolerable. The Air Force had at one time claimed it could acquire 750 F-22s for $67.5 billion, said the appropriators; now, approximately the same amount of money would pay for only 339 fighters.

Lewis charged that the F-22's unit cost (total program cost divided by the number of aircraft) had skyrocketed from about $90 million in the early 1990s to some $187 million today.

Moreover, House critics plainly doubted they had seen the end of cost growth. The panel report cited alleged problems with the Raptor's wings, brakes, fuselage, fuel lines, and engines, which might be costly to fix. The onboard computer was untested, appropriations members complained.

The panel noted with concern the F-22 was one of three huge fighter programs (others are the Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the multiservice Joint Strike Fighter) currently under way. The implication was that the effort was excessive.

The Air Force was spending so much money on the F-22, Lewis charged, that other critical needs were being starved to death. The biggest problem, he said, was slack recruiting and retention. For the first time since 1979, USAF would miss a recruiting goal, and the service was already short 1,100 pilots. Lewis thought USAF needed to spend more in those areas.

The House appropriators also noted "critical shortfalls" in Air Force reconnaissance, airlift, air refueling capability, and advanced munitions.

"The Air Force has such tremendous needs in so many other areas ... that we believe it is imperative for them to reassess their priorities," Lewis said July 16.

At the same time, critics claimed, the F-22's military rationale had vanished. They contended that the Raptor had been designed to counter Soviet fighters which now would never be built in large numbers, and no nation would soon challenge USAF's dominance of the air. Typical of these claims was this statement in a July 22 New York Times editorial: "It makes no sense for the Pentagon to proceed with three separate advanced fighter programs when no other country has a chance of threatening America's air superiority in the foreseeable future."

Low-Cost Alternatives

Under those circumstances, House critics said, USAF had an obligation to take a serious look at low-cost alternatives to the F-22. Such alternatives did exist, claimed these critics.

Lewis, for one, contended that the F-15 could fill the air-superiority bill for decades more, well beyond current plans, and that the Air Force should study possible upgrades to keep that fighter going. Another suggestion: Let DoD accelerate production of the Joint Strike Fighter and use it to supplant the F-22 as the air-dominance fighter.

In the end, Lewis and his backers said they sought an indefinite pause in F-22 production. He explained that the Air Force could use the time-out to review its priorities and reconsider all options in a new context.

Needless to say, Air Force and Pentagon officials strongly disagreed with virtually every premise and conclusion put forward by the House critics and their supporters in the press. They said so frequently in the press, at public forums, and in private meetings on Capitol Hill.

What rankled many was what were viewed as distorted cost claims. For example, the proposed number of F-22s had indeed gone down, but the reductions came mostly from political decisions and not from massively rising costs. When the program began in the mid-1980s, USAF projected a need for 750 fighters. The Pentagon Bottom­Up Review, conducted in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union, trimmed the number to 442. The Quadrennial Defense Review in 1997 took the projected number down further, to 339. Not surprisingly, these steps drove up the cost per airplane because the cost of development-a constant-was spread over fewer fighters.

Air Force officials take issue with the committee's portrayal of the fighter's unit cost--$187 million. They pointed out that USAF already has expended more than $20 billion, a third of total program funds, developing the fighter. By factoring out that sunk cost, one arrived at a far lower "to go" sticker price--$85 million per airplane.

That was not much more than the cost of a new but far less capable F-15E. A recent Air Force fact sheet said: "An improved F-15 would only provide one-third the effectiveness of the F-22 at nine-tenths the cost."

Nor would the F-22 squeeze out spending on other critical needs, said the Air Force. As evidence, officials cited the fact that the Air Force, at peak production, will spend 6 percent of its budget on the F-22. This is about the same percentage share that was devoted to developing and buying the F-15.

Especially puzzling to Air Force officials was the House's relaxed attitude about future fighter threats to the nation's air superiority. USAF agrees that the aging F-15 can still do a good job today, as was seen in the recent Balkan air war. However, it insists that this Vietnam War­era fighter faces a real and increasing risk around the world.

Six to Worry About

In a July 24 New York Times article, Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters summarized the situation in this way: "At least six other aircraft--the Russian MiG-29, Su-27, and Su-35, the French Mirage 2000 and Rafale, and the European Consortium's Eurofighter--threaten to surpass the aging F-15, our current top-of-the-line air-to-air fighter." All are either in or near production today and are available for export.

There are mounting concerns, too, about today's advanced Surface-to-Air Missile systems such as Russia's SA-10, SA-12, and SA-20. "These lethal SAMs will overwhelm our current fighter force's ability to gain air superiority," said one recent Air Force paper.

Given this situation, the House recommendation to make do indefinitely with an updated F-15 or perhaps the new Joint Strike Fighter did not appeal to USAF officials or supporters on Capitol Hill, who viewed them as false alternatives. They pointed out that the F-15 fighter was already 25 years old and based on 1960s technology. The F-15 is not stealthy and cannot be made so. Its ability to absorb upgrades is diminishing.

As for the JSF: Defense officials explained that it is supposed to complement the F-22, not replace it. The two fighters do different things and would work in unison, as do today's F-15 and F-16 jets. The F-22 would provide high-end air superiority, while the JSF would act as the less expensive-and less capable-fleet workhorse at the lower end of the threat spectrum.

JSF's principal selling point-its relatively low cost-would quickly vanish if the F-22 program were to collapse, warned officials. The change could be so great, said Gen. Michael E. Ryan, Chief of Staff, that the Air Force might have to revamp its force structure.

"Our assumption is we are going to get the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter," Ryan said Aug. 3. "If that doesn't occur, then we are going to go back and rethink the whole program."

In explanation, officials noted that JSF was optimized for ground attack, not air combat. To turn JSF into an air-dominance fighter, its contractors would have to redesign it, which would add greatly to its cost, if it could be done at all.

Moreover, plans called for the later-developing JSF to piggyback on the Raptor for its advanced engines, avionics, and stealth technologies, meaning it could avoid the cost of developing them independently. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen told the Senate July 20, "The [F-22] stealth capabilities, the supercruise capability--all of that technology along with the avionics is going to be instrumental in terms of helping to keep the costs down on the Joint Strike Fighter."

Cover Story?

Some observers saw the House's declared reason for the "pause" as weak--so weak it might actually be a cover story. They suspect that the authors of the pause might have had a different goal--to force the Clinton Administration to propose breaking the defense spending caps imposed in recent years. The theory is that, to get the F-22, the White House (and Senate) would have to accept higher defense spending than otherwise permitted.

Whatever the motive, few dispute that the stakes are high. Maj. Gen. Bruce Carlson, the Air Force's director of operational requirements, said losing the F-22 would mean "we can no longer guarantee that we'll be able to dominate the sky," with all that that implies for US casualties and battle effectiveness.

In the drive to overturn the House action, F-22 supporters faced a tough task. The House subcommittee members broadened the political appeal of their action by shifting millions of F-22 dollars to the production of extra F-15s in Missouri (home state of the House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt), F-16s in Fort Worth, Texas (home state of several powerful Republican leaders), and C-130J transports in Marietta, Ga. (home state of the F-22's main Congressional backers).

However, the F-22's supporters also held some high cards.

For one thing, Ryan noted that the F-22 has overwhelming support of the nation's uniformed military leadership and "almost every living [former] Secretary of Defense." Those individuals who are "knowledgeable" about the threats emerging in the next 15 years "are convinced that this airplane is what the joint system needs," Ryan said.

On July 28, military leaders rallied to the F-22's cause, signing letters of support to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R­Miss.) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

In one letter, all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked for reinstatement of F-22 funds. Signing it (in addition to Ryan) were the JCS Chairman, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton; the vice chairman, Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston; the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki; the chief of naval operations, Adm. Jay L. Johnson; and the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. J.L. Jones.

"The F-22 is the aircraft we are counting on to guarantee control of the skies in the next century," they said. "[W]e speak with one voice on this issue: America needs the F-22."

Lott and Hastert received a second letter of F-22 support signed by all nine unified commanders, the four-star generals and admirals who lead US forces in geographic regions or in US-based support organizations.

"In every theater of operation and for every military task across the spectrum of conflict, there is an underlying need to control the skies," said the officers, who added that today's air superiority fighter, the F-15, is getting old and must be replaced by the F-22.

The Air Force made the point that blocking F-22 production could come back to haunt lawmakers in predictable ways.

Officials said the move would delay F-22 deployment by at least two years, jack up costs by $6.5 billion, and increase the risk that US pilots will face in the years ahead. That's the best case; USAF thinks it far more likely that the House cut would bring about the death of the F-22 program altogether.

On July 21, President Clinton threw his support behind the F-22, saying it would be a mistake for Congress to abandon plans to produce the next-generation stealth fighter and that he would fight for its production.

Meanwhile, Cohen publicly declared, "I cannot accept a defense bill that kills this cornerstone program." Cohen's words had been cleared by the White House and was viewed as an authorized White House threat to veto any defense bill that did not provide funds for F-22 fighters.

-By Robert S. Dudney