As I have written previously, President Obama and the members of Congress who voted to kill funding for the F-22 did the right thing.

The Washington Post reports:

The Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation’s premier fighter-jet program, embracing by a 58 to 40 margin the argument of President Obama and his top military advisers that more F-22s are not needed for the nation’s defense and would be a costly drag on the Pentagon’s budget in an era of small wars and counterinsurgency efforts.

While this vote marks a step in the right direction, the fight isn’t over. The F-22′s supporters in the House inserted additional monies in the defense authorization bill, and the differences will need to be reconciled in conference. But the vote for the Levin-McCain amendment signals that Congress will take seriously President Obama and Secretary Gates’ intent to bring some measure of rationality to defense budgeting.

The Raptor’s whopping price tag— nearly $350 million per aircraft counting costs over the life of the program— and its poor air-to-ground capabilities always undermined the case for building more than the 187 already programmed.

In the past week, Congress has learned more about the F-22′s poor maintenance record, which has driven the operating costs well above those of any comparable fighter. And, of course, the plane hasn’t seen action over either Iraq or Afghanistan, and likely never will.

Beyond the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter, we need a renewed emphasis in military procurement on cost containment. This can only occur within an environment of shrinking defense budgets. Defense contractors who are best able to meet stringent cost and quality standards will win the privilege of providing our military with the necessary tools, but at far less expense to the taxpayers. And those who cannot will have to find other business.

Senate Votes to End Production of F-22 Raptor is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

If Congress votes to build even more F-22s in the 2010 Defense Authorization bill, it will be a sad example of parochial interests overriding our nation’s security. The move would defy the wishes of the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Gates, who have wisely called for the program to come to an end.

The Raptor’s whopping price tag—$356 million per aircraft counting costs over the life of the program— and its poor air-to-ground capabilities always undermined the case for building more than the 187 already programmed.

In the past week, Congress has learned more about the F-22′s poor maintenance record, which has driven the operating costs to more than $44,000 per hour of flying, which is well above those of any comparable fighter. And, of course, the plane hasn’t seen action over either Iraq or Afghanistan, and likely never will.

If Obama is serious about getting a handle on the enormous federal budget deficit, confronting Congress over the clear wastefulness of the F-22 is certainly a good place to start.

Obama Is Right to Stare Down Congress Over the F-22 is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

This won’t make the “Buy the Planes that the Pentagon Doesn’t Want” Caucus happy. (There’s a similar “caucus” in the Senate, too; and 12 governors.)

The Washington Post reports that the F-22 requires

more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces.

How might this bad news be twisted into a good news story by the F-22′s advocates in industry and on Capitol Hill? Look for the same line of reasoning that has been used up to this point. If we’re building the F-22 in order to give jobs to workers who might otherwise have to seek out other opportunities, then maybe the plane’s high operating costs can be justified on the grounds that it employs more maintenance workers?

J.M. Keynes must be smiling down on us.

More Bad News for the F-22 is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Travis Sharp of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has a good update on the Nukes of Hazard blog about the current congressional politics of the F-22, the Air Force’s favorite air-to-air fighter.

Secretary Gates and the Obama administration, you’ll recall, want to stop buying F-22s. Soon we’ll have bought 187 at $350 million a pop, depending on how you count. With few air forces out there that can rival ours, DoD, sensibly, would rather spend its billions elsewhere.

Congress isn’t so sure. The House Armed Services Committee narrowly voted to include $369 million in the FY 2010 defense authorization bill to keep the F-22 production line open. An amendment to strip that money from the bill didn’t make it out of the Rules Committee.  The Senate probably won’t include the funding in their version. The appropriators haven’t acted yet, but are generally pro-F-22 in both houses. So this will remain a live issue for a while, with resolution probably coming in conference. Meanwhile,  the White House just threatened to veto the defense bill if F-22 money is in it.

The fighter mafia that dominates (dominated?) the Air Force wants more F-22s but has been silenced by Gates, who stuck a non-fighter on the top of the service to tow the company line. Fighter generals on the way to retirement, however, can speak their mind and show Congress where the Air Force’s heart is.

The logic behind keeping the line open is simple. Politically, defense production lines are hungry mouths to feed, a concentrated set of interests that compel their representatives to favor continued procurement or export licenses. Advocates of defense programs understand that political demand will dissipate when the line closes. So when their program is in political trouble, they punt, and ask for just enough money to keep it open, trying to live to play another day.

We should stop buying the F-22. But I worry that doves consume their political energy arguing about the merits of particular defense programs, while mostly ignoring the bloated defense budget and the excessive commitments it underwrites. The F-22 is just a symptom of the larger malady. With all sorts of new spending commitments and a recession, this is a relatively good time to make the case against our hegemonic military posture and its extraordinary cost, fiscal and otherwise. That’s a way to kill the F-22, and more.

F-22 and the Big Picture is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Jon Soltz over at VoteVets delivers a stinging rebuke of Congress’s plans to buy more F-22s — the $350+ million fighter aircraft designed to fight the Soviet Union, and that the Pentagon doesn’t want.

If the F-22′s backers can round up the votes and the money, it won’t be the first time that Congress has overruled the combined wisdom of the SecDef and the Joint Chiefs. But you’d think that by now the specious arguments that military spending is an efficient way to stimulate the economy had pretty much run their course. Alas, they haven’t.

In that resepect, I think that Soltz is taking the right approach. Rather than assaulting the Iron Triangle head on, he highlights the aircraft’s limited utility (as I have on this blog and in my book), and suggests that the troops in the field, and the troops who just left, won’t appreciate it if Congress puts parochial interests above those of our men and women in uniform.

Whether the vet’s voices are stronger than the interests who will make money off the purchase of a dozen more planes is an open question. But I hope that the anti-F-22 forces prevail.

Veterans against the F-22 is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog