Raptor has lots of friends

Washington — It can break the sound barrier without kicking its engines into overdrive, instantly tell the difference between friend and foe, and destroy the enemy long before the enemy ever sees it coming.

But the protection the F/A-22 Raptor needs to survive doesn't lie solely in its arsenal and flying abilities. It also depends on an equally sophisticated system of cash and politics that keeps thousands of defense workers around the country on the job, their employers profitable and their congressmen in office.

About 2,200 Lockheed Martin employees assemble the Raptor in Marietta. But the company says the program accounts for as many as 40,000 jobs, with 1,000 companies in 43 states providing parts in a strategic spreading of the wealth that gives scores of congressmen and senators a stake in the plane's funding.

The so-called political engineering of a national weapons system into a local jobs program is a tactic so effective that critics complain it can keep a weapon alive and multiplying even when Pentagon officials and government investigators say production should be halted — as they have with the Raptor.

"It's pretty clever, actually, because you build in congressional support," said Eric Miller, senior defense investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, a politically independent watchdog group. "Sometimes the best interest of the taxpayers and people in the military lose out. It's a pretty strong force in Congress."

Raptor supporters, however, warn of dire economic consequences should the F/A-22 be canceled.

"There's a domino effect when programs like this are cut," said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who represents many of those Marietta workers and who, with the rest of the state's congressional delegation, is fighting to save the plane.

The Raptor is the Air Force's budget priority; it wants hundreds more of them. Yet Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in January proposed cutting the number of planes from 276 to 179, halting new orders after 2008.

Pentagon officials cited the jump in the program's cost from about $35 million per plane to $250 million and questioned whether a fighter jet designed to combat the now-extinct Soviet Union has the "potential to counter future attacks."

In a series of congressional hearings in recent weeks, critics of the F/A-22, which is to replace the Air Force's F-15, suggested that the Raptor had outlived its mission and that the $10 billion in savings gained by canceling it could be used to build less-sophisticated, but cheaper, fighter jets.

Rumsfeld's proposed cut set in motion a sweeping lobbying campaign to save the F/A-22, an effort honed over the last six years, during which F/A-22 supporters battled similar funding threats.

Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., the chief partners for the F/A-22, along with the aerospace workers union, distributed $4.5 million in campaign cash in last year's congressional elections. When the 109th Congress convened in January, it was met by lobbyists from the two companies' army of more than 100 and from prestigious outside lobbying firms they keep on retainer.

One of the most potent forces mobilized to save the Raptor, however, is its nationwide network of suppliers. Full-page advertisements in Roll Call, a newspaper distributed on Capitol Hill, featured machinists standing in a Kansas field and in front of a rough-hewn barn in Montana.

"Out here they grow wheat, livestock and precision-machined titanium," says the ad featuring workers from Brittain Machine in Wichita, Kan. — though, in fact, the workers are standing in an asparagus field. "Here in the heartland, they're standing tall and proud behind the Raptor."

Another ad featuring workers from Summit Design and Engineering Co. in Helena, Mont., reads, "The F/A-22 program means $26 million to Montana businesses and more than seven times that amount for the Rocky Mountain region."

Officials from Brittain, Summit and other companies said Lockheed also asked them to contact their members of Congress to express concern about the proposed cuts. In past years, Lockheed brought some contractors to Washington to personally visit their lawmakers' offices.

The contractors said they were glad to help Lockheed — and get free publicity for their own firms. And their efforts have had an impact.

Now a chorus of congressmen from Georgia to Washington state, from California to Texas — many of them in positions of influence — is rallying 'round the Raptor, pledging to restore its funding.

"I personally think cutting it off at 179 is a mistake," said Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.), a member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee and a top ally of Boeing, a major employer in his state. "It's a tremendous airplane."

It's difficult to tell exactly how many jobs depend on the F/A-22 nationwide or whether Lockheed's claims about its supplier base are accurate. (The Brittain Machine ad said there are 700 suppliers; the Summit Design ad said 1,000.)

"We say 'about 1,000' because it fluctuates," Lockheed spokesman Sam Grizzle said.

Lockheed would not provide a complete list of its contractors or provide a breakdown of how many jobs and how much money it doles out to each state. Two spokesmen said the information was proprietary, though all of the contracts are funded with tax dollars and Lockheed has provided such a list to at least one industry publication before. Air Force spokesmen referred questions about suppliers to Lockheed.

Lockheed did release a list of its top 50 suppliers, each with a contract of $50 million or more. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution identified nearly 100 other F/A-22 contractors through Pentagon and industry sources.

The 148 identified contractors were spread among 111 congressional districts in 40 states, giving at least 191 of the House and Senate members a political stake in the F/A-22. And that list represents less than 15 percent of the contractors Lockheed says it has.

Boeing builds the plane's wings and the rear of its fuselage in Seattle. Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems builds the center fuselage, weapons stores and other parts in Fort Worth, Texas. Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney provides the engines. The nose cone, cockpit and other elements are built in Marietta, where the entire plane is finally assembled.

In places like Hot Springs, Ark.; Torrance, Calif.; Burlington, Vt.; Clearwater, Fla.; Hauppauge, N.Y.; and Magna, Utah, machine shops, software developers and other contractors are churning out parts large and small for the Raptor.

Some contractors, such as Summit Design — quite possibly Montana's only aerospace firm — are small operations that depend on the Raptor to keep their companies afloat. Summit founder Tom Hoffman said the Raptor accounts for half the company's revenue, though he continues to seek other business.

Summit has 75 workers, but a cut in the Raptor program could force layoffs, he said.

"I plan on the worst," Hoffman said. "I've been working on the F/A-22 since 1989, and you get used to this [talk of program cuts]. You get kind of numb, and you just kind of hope for the best."

In Wichita, Brittain Machine employs 104 — down from a high of 240 in 1998 — and counts Lockheed as its second-biggest customer behind only Boeing, Wichita's largest employer. The company's contract with Lockheed runs through 2012 and would be cut short by the Pentagon's proposal.

"I don't know how many [workers] would have to go," said Vice President and General Manager Pat Bussard, who has taped radio advertisements in support of the F/A-22.

Lockheed emphasizes stories about the small firms like Summit and Brittain in what has become the aerospace industry's version of the family farm. But just as corporations have come to dominate agriculture, consolidation of defense companies in recent years means that an increasing share of the money being spread around for Raptor is ending up on the bottom lines of a dwindling number of firms.

CTA Inc., a small company based in Alabama with operations in California, is one those small companies. CTA, which provides robots that apply the F/A-22's stealth coating, was bought by Advanced Systems of Huntsville, Ala., which is a subsidiary of Pratt & Whitney of East Hartford, Conn., which is in turn owned by United Technologies, a Connecticut-based company with more than 200,000 employees in 180 countries. All four are listed as Raptor contractors.

Moreover, a relative handful of America's largest companies — including Intel, Northrop Grumman and Honeywell International — are the chief benefactors of the Raptor's contracts. Those corporations spread their the work among their own subsidiaries around the country, each of which is then counted by Lockheed as a subcontractor.

Some of the work also goes to foreign corporations, including BEA Systems and Smith Aerospace, both United Kingdom-based companies with U.S. subsidiaries. They are among the Raptor's top 50 contractors, making more than $50 million each.

Lockheed spokesman Grizzle said the subcontractors are put through a "very rigorous" and "very competitive" assessment.

"Our first priority is getting the best value and getting the best technology we can," he said.

But a number of think tanks and watchdog groups have complained for years that defense contractors spread the work among scores of subcontractors for political rather than economic reasons.

Having multiple subcontractors should breed competition and lower costs. But 30 years ago, subcontracting was transformed from a way to save money to a means of increasing political clout, according to Winslow Wheeler, a congressional staffer at the time and later an analyst for the Government Accountability Office. He is now affiliated with the Center for Defense Information in Washington.

In the 1970s, Rockwell International, later bought by Boeing, tried to build support for its B-1 bomber by selectively doling out contract work to companies in the districts of influential congressmen, said Wheeler, author of "The Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages National Security."

"That was really the first time," he said. "Like everything else on Capitol Hill, this has gotten out of control."

Rep. Jerry Lewis, the Republican chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee who six years ago nearly derailed production of the F/A-22, is among those in Congress unmoved by arguments about lost jobs, said communications director Jim Specht.

"It's an argument," Specht said. "But [Lewis] always felt that the role of Congress was that you balanced that argument against the needs of the taxpayer"

Lawmakers whose districts include F/A-22 contractors said jobs are a legitimate concern at a time when the aerospace industry is losing scientists and engineers – down from 150,000 a generation ago to 20,000 today, according to the Aerospace Industries Association.

A study done in Seattle showed that every aerospace job helped create as many as four in other sectors of the local economy, said Frank Larkin, spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

"We have coordinated our lobbying efforts with Lockheed in the past, and we urge our members to contact their representatives," said Larkin, whose union represents about 1,500 workers in Seattle, Fort Worth and Marietta. "It was a union-wide effort."

While Lockheed and its partners are winning over lawmakers by focusing on local jobs, lawmakers are trying to win over colleagues and administration decision-makers by suggesting that jobs are a secondary concern at best.

In hearings and private meetings, they have been careful to emphasize the military need for the F/A-22, which they say exists because India has already produced a plane that can beat U.S. jets, and Russia and China are about to do the same.

"The jobs are always important, but jobs to me come second to the ability of getting that plane in safely and getting that plane out safely," said Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), a former Navy pilot who was one of only two pilots to earn the title "Ace" in the Vietnam War.

"We certainly have people who are tied to the F/A-22," said Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), a former Boeing manager whose Wichita area district includes Brittain and other aerospace firms. "And I'm concerned that we have good-quality jobs for them. But the F/A-22 is an aircraft with a very important role to play in our national defense."

Few on Capitol Hill or at the Pentagon doubt, however, that concern about jobs is a key factor in the strenuous defense of the F/A-22.

In 1999, in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Louis Rodrigues, a government defense analyst, warned that jobs often colored congressional views of weapons systems and urged lawmakers to review the F/A-22 program more thoroughly before proceeding with full production.

"We all know what happens when we get everybody in jobs," Rodrigues said, only to be interrupted from the dais by then-Sen. Max Cleland, a Democratic committee member from Georgia.

"I know what happens when we get everybody employed!" Cleland exclaimed. "They're in Georgia!"

The F/A-22 ain't a jobs program. It's 20 years of unchallengable US air superiority, and one of the most impressive feats of human engineering ever.

The USAF's transport fleet is disintegrating from overuse. Without more C-17s, the F-22 will be useless because the US will not have the capacity to airlift support personnel and parts to where the F-22s are based. It's that simple.

The F/A-22 ain't a jobs program. It's 20 years of unchallengable US air superiority, and one of the most impressive feats of human engineering ever.

Yes and so incredibly effective in fighting terrorists.

There is nothing like a stealthy, fast fighter aircraft to take on car bombers as they cross our borders.

If we took the Air force and returned it to the Army as the Army Air Corp we might get some air weapons worth having in this brave new world.

Nothing like spending billions on weapons to fight a Soviet Union that no longer exists.

I am of course concerned about car bombs and terrorist. But I am more concerned about the war we will most likely have with China in 10 years. This aircraft is needed.

Nothing like spending billions on weapons to fight a Soviet Union that no longer exists.

My big fear for the F-22 is that unmanned, ground-controlled, suicide aircraft costing about $2 million each will be able to easily knock it from the sky in the not-too-distant future. And if we can build such craft, so can China.

We write IOU's for everything else. What's the tally now, 38 trillion in debt? Whats a few more billluns?

What better thing to spend our future away on than self defense and military equipment? I still want to see America's anti nuclear net up and working, even on passenger jets as part of their pilot's normal training. Every time we mention the MDS program, Europe, China, and Russia go nuts, spaz, and drool down their chins. Now why is that? Given all the electronic pulse weapons the third world war will, most likely, have be be fought on horse back anyway, but I still feel better the more weapons, and defense weapons, we manufacture.

Nothing like spending billions on weapons to fight a Soviet Union that no longer exists.

As if no one is selling weapons to our enemies, or is building the Su-47/S-37 Berkut...

Yep, and the legacy of the USSR lives on. Think of the scores of countries around the world that use Soviet (and, now, Russian) aircraft, AAA, SAMS, etc. The name changes but the game remains the same. We will be dealing with the USSR post mortem for many, many years to come,

And nations all over the world are buying new, improved Migs from Russia. Some nations who don't like us or our allies very much.

Damn, CT, think for a minute. Maybe you need a little more java?

The PAK FA is a joint development between Russia and India to produce a fifth generation fighter to replace the ageing Migs. PAK FA is scheduled to enter into service in 2009. This would be the first such joint development venture between India and Russia.
The Sukhoi Bureau has been chosen for the development. Obviously with India jointly developing the PAK-FA fighter will help greatly to increase the development stages of the aircraft by committing massive funds to Sukhoi to boost the development phase.
The "Perspektivnyi Aviatsionnyi Kompleks Frontovoi Aviatsyi" fighter is meant to be a counter to the US F-35 JSF.

In 'Tator's defense, I'm so often 100% wrong, he can be forgiven for taking the opposite point of view =)

:)

I get a little testy because people seem to forget that the WOT is only the CURRENT war, not what the future might become. Our opposing nations don't see the WOT as we do, and think us more a threat, so I think it's best to be able to defend ourselves with the best weaponry possible.

The customer dropped the number of units after the money had been primarily spent. Kinda drives up the price. If more orders come in, and economy of scale will decrease the price.

that unmanned, ground-controlled, suicide aircraft

If the unmanned aircraft hits it's target, does it's ground crew then commit suicide?

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