Lawmaker backs more fighter jet funding despite appearances

House Armed Services Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, said Thursday that he supports buying 20 more F-22 Raptor fighters, even though he voted against an amendment to the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill that would keep the program alive.

The additional Lockheed Martin fighters, he said during a breakfast with reporters, would give the Pentagon "breathing room" as it considers its long-term plans and strategy.

Abercrombie said he opposed the F-22 amendment during the Armed Services Committee's markup of the bill this week because of concerns over tapping defense environmental cleanup funds to offset the spending to acquire more F-22s.

The amendment, which the panel approved on a narrow 31-30 vote, would authorize $369 million for advance procurement of 12 F-22s in fiscal 2011. That essentially reverses the Pentagon's decision to end production of the aircraft with the four Raptors in the pending fiscal 2009 supplemental spending bill.

Abercrombie said he did not add funding for any F-22s - whose price tag is $250 million apiece -- in his subcommittee's markup of the authorization bill last week because he was limited in his choice of offsets to Army and Air Force programs under his jurisdiction. But he said he expects Congress ultimately to approve funding for more of the planes.

"It is highly likely that there's going to be an F-22 buy," Abercrombie said Thursday. "The exact number and where the money's coming from is a work in progress."

Meanwhile, Abercrombie expressed frustrations that the Pentagon disregarded Congress, which inserted $523 million into the fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill for advanced procurement for 20 F-22s in fiscal 2010.

"I'm committed to get the Defense Department to do what it was supposed to do in the first place," Abercrombie said. "I think the Congress can't back down off of that. We cannot allow the executive to run roughshod over congressional obligation and responsibility."

He criticized the Pentagon for often wavering in their plans for programs, frequently changing the number of weapons systems or other hardware it intends to buy. For the F-22, for instance, Air Force leaders had pushed to buy 381 fighters, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates decided that 187 fighters are sufficient.

"I don't have a clue whether 187 F-22s is adequate to support our national military strategy because it was another number the day before and it will probably be another number after that," Abercrombie said.

For his part, Gates has said that limiting the F-22 fleet to 187 aircraft was not among the more difficult decisions he made in crafting the fiscal 2010 budget request.

He has argued that 187 F-22s - when coupled with F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and unmanned aerial vehicles -- provides the Air Force with enough firepower to best any military now and in the future.