By Emelie Rutherford
The House’s lead defense appropriator said yesterday he will support whatever path the defense secretary chooses for the F-22 stealth fighter, just as close to 200 other House members plead with the newly inaugurated president to keep producing the aircraft.
At least 180 House members–including Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), John McHugh (R-N.Y.) and C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.)–signed a letter that was to be sent to President Obama at the end of the day yesterday imploring him to certify continuing the F-22 production line.
Absent from the list of signers is House Appropriations Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.), who holds great sway over the Lockheed Martin [LMT] jet’s future.
Murtha said he recently talked to Defense Secretary Robert Gates about the F-22’s future “for a length of time” and that Gates, who is retaining his job in the Obama administration, has pledged to clarify just how many F-22s the Pentagon and Air Force believe are needed.
“What that number is I don’t know, and they’ve got to get it together,” Murtha told reporters. “Gates says they’re going to get it together. And working with him I think we’ll get a figure, a final figure, and we’ll put in whatever he says. If they cut it off we’ll cut it off.”
The F-22 letter House members prepared for the new president, spearheaded by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), like a similar missive sent to Obama by 44 senators last week argues more F-22s than the 183 on order are needed to both respond to potential adversaries and protect U.S. jobs during the economic crisis (Defense Daily, Jan. 21).
“The F-22 is a model production line,” the House letter states, noting unit flyaway costs have decreased since full-rate production began. “If this certification (by Obama for continued F-22 production) is delayed, layoffs will begin as this critical supplier base shuts down. Once we begin to lose the F-22 industrial base that was created with billions of dollars of investment over many years, it will quickly become virtually impossible to reconstitute a production capability.”
Gates and other Pentagon leaders have hesitated to continue the F-22 line far beyond the 183 aircraft ordered, supporting buying just four more aircraft in the next supplemental war-funding bill. Congress has directed the new president to decide no later than March 1 whether continuing or terminating production of the aircraft is in the nation’s best interest.
Young, the ranking member of the HAC-D, said yesterday the need for more radar-evading F-22s cannot be met by future F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, also built by Lockheed Martin.
“Joint Strike Fighter is slow coming into the inventory,” Young told Defense Daily. “So we need the F22. They (the F-22 and F-35) have two different roles.”
Young said he touted the F-22 to members of Obama’s national-security transition team.
“I told them I thought we should be aggressive with the F-22,” Young said, acknowledging he “didn’t get much response from them.”
Dicks, the HAC-D vice chairman and a signer of the F-22 letter, said yesterday he can’t predict what will happen during the aircraft debate. Like Murtha, his comments cast doubt on the notion of Congress going against the Obama Pentagon if it opts to shut down the aircraft line.
“We hope that we’ll move in that direction (of continuing the F-22 line), but it’s going to be up to the new administration to make a decision,” Dicks told Defense Daily.
While close watchers of the F-22 debate hoped to hear from Obama on the matter as soon as yesterday, his first day as president, Dicks predicted word from the new administration on the F-22s won’t come for a “couple months.”
“We haven’t got any signals yet, because their people aren’t in place yet, the new ones, and we want to talk to them about this,” he said.
Congress has not yet confirmed Obama’s nominees for four senior Pentagon posts: William Lynn, a Raytheon [RTN] executive and former Pentagon comptroller, the deputy defense secretary pick; Robert Hale, a former Air Force comptroller, the Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer selection; Michele Flourney, the president of the Center for a New American Security, the under secretary of defense for policy choice; and Jeh Charles Johnson, a New York lawyer, the Pentagon general counsel nominee.
In addition to Murtha, another powerful lawmaker who did not sign yesterday’s F-22 letter is House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.)
Yet it was signed by McHugh, the HASC’s ranking member, and Abercrombie, the chairman of the HASC’s air and land forces subcommittee.
Additional signers include: HAC-D members Reps. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), Steven Rothman (D-N.J.), Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), Kay Granger (R-Tex.), and Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), as well as HASC members Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), Howard McKeon (R-Calif.), Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), and Jeff Miller (R-Fla.)