Senator James Inhofe arrived at the Paris Air Show early Monday morning. As “the last active commercial pilot in the United States Senate,” Inhofe makes a point of never missing the show, and I had the chance to sit down with him just a few hours after the show kicked off to discuss a wide range of defense issues. On Joint Strike Fighter: “How could there be anything better than that?” Inhofe stopped himself as he was about to say that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would allow the United States to maintain its air superiority, instead saying that “a lot of people don’t realize, but during the 1990s–the drawdown during the Clinton administration–we cut back on modernization. In fact, I was so proud of [former Air Force chief of staff] General Jumper, who had the courage to stand up in 1998 and admit that the Su series that the Russians were making were superior to our best strike fighters in some ways…so the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter are going to put us back [on top], unquestionably. On F-22: “I think we need to get the numbers up.” Inhofe said that “we do need to have the F-22 [production numbers] enhanced, as well as the Joint Strike Fighter, as well as the C-17–our lift capabilities are more strained than they have been [at any time] in the history of the United States…[when the C-17 program got first started] we never dreamed we’d have Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and all the lift needs that we have today. So our deficiency isn’t only in strike vehicles.” On missile defense: “What the House did in their mark-up was not acceptable at all.” Inhofe was none too pleased with recently proposed legislation in the House that would see deep cuts to the missile defense program, including cuts to funding for the deployment of interceptors in Eastern Europe and Boeing’s Airborne Laser program. Inhofe said that he and his Republican colleagues were committed to restoring that funding in conference, and he added that proposed cuts to the Future Combat System would also face stiff resistance in the Senate. To all these questions, Inhofe said “the only answer is that we have to have the best of everything, artillery, strike vehicles, lift capacity, everything has to be the best if we’re going to meet what I consider to be the minimum expectations of the American people.” And how are we going to pay for the best of everything? Inhofe said that American defense spending in the 20th century averaged more than 5.5 percent of GDP, dropped to 2.8 percent during the Clinton administration, and was now “hovering at around 4 percent.” But Inhofe says that’s not enough–“we need to be really close to where we’ve been in the 20th century…it’s going to have to be at 5-5.5 percent of GDP.” As for how we might get back to a number like that, Inhofe said “it won’t be long before I’m chairing the Armed Services committee again, and I look forward to rebuilding these programs.”
