Both Goldfarb and I have offered a collective head scratch over the Obama administration’s decision to cut the valuable F-22 Raptor while pouring trillions into economic black holes. Lockheed’s F-22 program was a nexus for tens of thousands of defense manufacturing jobs, the preservation of which was the entire point of the hyper-expensive stimulus bill. Now, according to former Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne, axing the Raptor will have a destructive ripple effect throughout the entire defense manufacturing world, killing even more jobs, closing production plants, and ultimately hiking up the price of weapon systems like the Joint Strike Fighter (the much-touted F-16 replacement that is years away from operational deployment) and F-18 Super Hornet. So Obama makes a decision that strategically weakens our posture against peer/near peer competitors, kills thousands of jobs, and drives up the price of everything from titanium to the military’s workhorse C-130 Hercules. Weapons development should be focused purely on strategic threats instead of job creation/preservation, but slashing the F-22 makes little sense in either scenario — particularly at a time when billions are pumped into failing auto manufacturers and mortgage companies.
