By Jen DiMascio
Lawmakers are supporting the Air Force’s position that it needs 20 more F-22 Raptor stealth fighter aircraft, urging the service to extend its current multiyear contract with Lockheed Martin [LMT].
Language in the conference report on the FY ’08 Defense Appropriations Bill suggests that the service pull $526 million in fiscal year 2009 funding intended to shut down the jet’s production line and apply that to the purchase of specialty metals for an additional 20 planes.
If the service can’t extend the F-22 purchase, the specialty metals purchased this year could be used by the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, also built by Lockheed Martin, said the conferees. The House is scheduled to vote on the conference report today.
The Air Force’s decision last week to ground F-15 aircraft after a training exercise crash supports the appropriators’ push to keep the production line open past 2009, Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, told Defense Daily. He added that he supports multiyear procurement of successful programs like the F-22.
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the subcommittee chairman, expressed a similar position the day before in a briefing with reporters. Murtha said he was coming to the conclusion that the nation may need more F-22s.
Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne recently lobbied the House Armed Services Committee for the 20 additional planes. Even with the increase, the Air Force would still lag behind its 381-aircraft requirement for the F-22. But, according to Wynne, “it does allow me to begin to fill out some of my [Raptor] squadrons that are, in fact, in theaters that I worry about,” he said (Defense Daily, Oct. 29).
The F-22 is currently under a three-year contract to purchase 20 planes per year between FY ’07 and FY ’09. Delivery of the planes runs through 2011.
Despite this signal from congressional appropriators, the decision to extend multiyear authority for another year is not likely to play out until next year in the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
Approval for the multiyear plan was a contentious issue during last year’s defense authorization process. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), who represents the state where F-22s are produced, introduced the amendment that eventually passed. But the measure faced stiff opposition from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has opposed such arrangements particularly after the scandal over an aborted plan to lease tanker-refueling aircraft.
This year, the Senate version of the FY ’08 Defense Authorization Bill contains language that would require savings of at least five percent of a program’s total cost before multiyear procurement authority could even be considered.
That language is currently a matter of debate in the authorization conference, as it is not included in the House version of the bill and is opposed by the Defense Department.
So far, the F-22 program has not met that threshold.
The Government Accountability Office has in the past criticized the Air Force’s strategy of buying to its budget, and has urged the service to build a business case for the program, according to Nick Schwellenbach, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight.
Still, Schwellenbach called the language “clever” because once the money to close the production line is spent on materials for new planes it will make lobbying for another year’s worth of planes much easier.
The real question will be the $3 billion it takes to buy 20 F-22s and where that money will come from, he said.
Chambliss said yesterday that current studies validate the need to buy more Raptors, but he will have to look at those and see whether there is enough money to extend multiyear procurement for one or more years. So far, buying F-22s under a multiyear contract has saved $250 million to $300 million — a significant amount, he said.