Analysts say plans to buy fighter jets too costly

As the military's burgeoning operational and personnel costs threaten to squeeze weapons system accounts, independent defense analysts warned that the Pentagon might have to scale back its ambitious $242 billion Joint Strike Fighter program.

In a report released Wednesday, analysts at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments concluded that either the Air Force or the Navy might need to make dramatic reductions in the number of next-generation fighters they intend to buy.

But Steven Kosiak and Barry Watts, the report's authors, rejected outright cancellation of the Joint Strike Fighter, a U.S.-led international program to produce planes with better stealth and computer capabilities than F-16 and F-18 fighters now in the fleet. The military already has sunk $29 billion into the JSF program.

There are "good reasons to think [the military's JSF procurement plans] might not be affordable," said Kosiak, who discussed his report Wednesday.

Plans to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 troops comes with a hefty price tag, as do efforts to repair and replace equipment lost or damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those and other pressures on the overall defense budget, including sizable increases in the Navy's shipbuilding budget, could make the $8 billion budget requests expected annually for the Joint Strike Fighter over the next three decades seem unrealistic, Kosiak said.

The Pentagon requested $6.1 billion in fiscal 2008 to buy six planes each for the Air Force and Marine Corps. At the same time, China and other potential adversaries in the Pacific theater means the military must put a heavier reliance on long-range bombers than shorter-range tactical fighter aircraft, said Watts, who headed the Pentagon's program analysis and evaluation office in 2001 and 2002.

The Pentagon, which plans to field a new long-range bomber in 2018, needs to find a "more sensible balance between long-range and short-range" aircraft, Watts said.

Kosiak and Watts explored the option of cutting the Air Force's plans for the planes in half -- leaving the service with about 880 fighters. That would force the service to keep hundreds of its modernized F-16s flying longer than expected, but would save an estimated $300 million to $500 million annually, Kosiak said.

The Navy also could cancel its carrier-based variant of the fighters and replace them with long-range unmanned aerial vehicles. The Navy, which plans to buy more than 300 fighters, would save $450 million to $500 million a year by nixing their fighter plans. Combined, the two approaches would save between $800 million and $1.2 billion a year, Kosiak estimated.

The study concluded that canceling the Marine Corps' short takeoff and vertical landing variants would be an extremely unlikely move, in part because the British military, which also plans to buy the JSF, is "adamant" that it needs that version of the plane. Kosiak also noted that the Marine Corps' support on Capitol Hill is legendary for its strength -- further complicating any efforts to scale back one of the service's prized aviation programs.