`Cold War momentum' - F-22 Raptor fighter jet

Pentagon budget grows with few challengers in sight

When Congress reconvened last month after its long summer break, House and Senate appropriators immediately entered into a fractious debate over a $1.8 billion military spending provision for the F-22 Raptor -- the next-generation "stealthy" attack jet for the Air Force. Just prior to recess, Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis of California, chairman of the defense panel on the Appropriations Committee, stunned the military community by diverting money needed to buy six F-22s in order to acquire fighters already being used by the Pentagon.

It was a rare move by a Republican lawmaker, much less one from a state with a considerable defense industry. But Lewis, worried that not enough testing had been done on the Raptor, was wary about spending $3 billion to buy the plane before being certain it worked as advertised. Instead, the committee committed $1.2 billion for more research and development. The Senate had no such qualms about the plane's abilities and had earlier voted to spend $3 billion for more research and the acquisition of six new aircraft, thereby setting the stage for the budget battle to come.

The episode serves as a telling example of the high stakes involved -- and the lengths the defense industry is willing to go -- in keeping the Cold War era weapons manufacturing systems running even over the objections of experts who find them strategically unnecessary and economically draining.

The stakes were high: Lockheed Martin -- the company building the F-22 -- knew that if the House won the clash over the new jet, there was an outside chance the entire program might be canceled-- all $64 billion worth. Congress worried that if the F-22 program were eventually eliminated, $20 billion for research and development would have been spent with nothing to show for it.

Further, the Air Force had been pushing for the plane since it hit the drawing board in 1981 and, if the program were cut, would be dealt a serious blow in the never-ending interservice rivalry for budget dollars.

Meanwhile, at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia 35 miles south of Capitol Hill, the stakes were high, too. Each Saturday, a small group of Marines congregate to rummage through used clothes, furniture and other items that have been salvaged from the trash pick-up spots on the base. With military pay about 14 percent below that of private industry, after-duty part-time jobs and searching for free clothing are the order of the day for many in uniform. Indeed, in a report on the weekly Quantico give-away, The Washington Post referred to those who showed up as "needy" -- not a term usually associated with the Marine Corps.

But it need not be so. Despite the lack of a superpower foe, the United States still spends more than twice as much on defense than that spent by eight potential enemies combined. According To The Military Balance, an annual report on military developments around the globe, Russian defense expenditures in 1997 (the most recent year for which data are available) were $64 billion; China spent $37 billion; and the total amount spent by Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Libya and Cuba was under $16 billion. When defense expenditures of our NATO allies Japan and South Korea are factored in, the United States and its closest partners outspent likely enemies by more than four to one.

All of which leads to the question "Where does the money go?"

High tech/high prices

One place the Pentagon spends a chunk of its budget is on expensive weapons programs like the F-22. Designed during the height of the Cold War to penetrate deep into Soviet airspace, the Raptor became an anachronism when the communist state crumbled in 1991. John pike, a defense analyst at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, underscored this point recently by noting that the F-22 is "utterly unrelated to any plausible threat" and pointed to the Kosovo conflict as an example. "There was not a military deficiency there that could be fixed by the F-22," he said.

Despite the fact that the F-22's mission had evaporated, and that the United States already dominates the skies with the relatively inexpensive F-15, the drive to continue the Raptor program is difficult to stop. Too much money has been spent, and too many military careers are on the line -- a situation Pike likens to "Cold War momentum."

But the F-22 is just one of many programs critics believe could be cut or eliminated because of their cost or questionable value to the nation's security. At a time when the military is supposed to be developing a lighter, more mobile force to contend with the contingencies it is likely to face in the coming years, the Pentagon continues to purchase weapons to fight major land, sea and air battles against a superpower enemy. Indeed, according to Larry Korb, a vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the Pentagon is spending money "as if [it] were still in an arms race with the Soviet Union." Korb, who was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, also noted that the Pentagon has "more than enough money" but then asked rhetorically, "Are they spending it on the right things?" He answered that question no.