GAO advises against spending on F-22 fighter jets

Faulting the business plan for one of the Air Force's biggest programs, congressional investigators have concluded that the military should halt spending on the F-22 Raptor fighter jet and abandon efforts to use a non-traditional approach for buying the aircraft.

In an unreleased report dated Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office called the Air Force's procurement plans for the Raptor "unexecutable," and questioned whether the next-generation fighter is necessary in a changing military environment increasingly focused on combating terrorists, insurgents and other unpredictable enemies.

"The Department [of Defense] needs to reevaluate the value delivered by continuing production of the F-22A past what it has already committed to by examining the likely future threat and risk environment, the funding it can make available relative to other demands, and the alternative ways to achieve air-to-air and air-to-ground military superiority," according to the report.

The report, requested by House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., might complicate Senate debate on the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill, during which at least 15 F-22 supporters intend to introduce an amendment reinstating Pentagon plans to use a multiyear procurement strategy to buy 60 Raptors.

The GAO report shoots down the procurement strategy, stating that the Air Force has not met several conditions required by law for multiyear procurement, including an expectation of significant cost savings.

As part of its fiscal 2007 budget request, the Pentagon proposed spending $2 billion to buy subsystems for 20 F-22s. The House when it passed its authorization bill last month, approved an Air Force request for multiyear procurement of the plane on the condition that all legal requirements for a multiyear procurement are met. The House also rejected the Air Force's bid for incremental funding, which would not cover the full cost of the planes acquired in a single year.

The Senate Armed Services Committee took action in its version of the bill to address concerns that stretching out the purchase of the planes, as the Pentagon prefers, ultimately would cost more money.

Supporters of the F-22 program, led by Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., plan to argue that the multiyear approach would save $250 million, a hefty amount at a time of fiscal constraint. The plane is built at the Lockheed Martin Corp. facility in Marietta, Ga.

Lockheed has stepped up its lobbying to overturn prohibitions against the multiyear approach, sending e-mails to Senate offices last week arguing that doing so would save taxpayers between $235 million and $335 million.

But the GAO report questioned those numbers, concluding that the strategy would drive per-plane costs up to $183 million from $166 million.

The multiyear strategy, according to GAO, "would tie up significant amounts of funds at a time when DOD already has more wants than it is likely to be able to afford and sustain over time."

A Senate aide supportive of the multiyear approach disputed the GAO findings, arguing that the Air Force's business case for the program -- including the multiyear buy -- was validated in the Pentagon's massive Quadrennial Defense Review released earlier this year.

The aide also argued that GAO's cost estimates relied on old data, and does not take into account a study released by the Institute for Defense Analyses earlier this year that concluded that the procurement strategy would save money in the long run.

"GAO is out of touch, is the best I can say," the aide said. "If this would've been submitted for a college paper it would have been a C-minus."