This year has been refreshingly different. President Obama and his defense secretary, Robert Gates, have made a compelling case for ending weapons programs that significantly exceed their budgets or use limited tax dollars to buy more capability than the nation needs. And Congress has agreed — somewhat.
The $680 billion defense authorization bill signed into law by President Obama last week pares back or cancels billions of dollars in expensive weapons systems that are either anachronistic, redundant, poorly performing or exceed the military’s real requirements. Even with these reductions, the defense bill is one of the biggest in history, in part because of the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it sets an important base line for future cuts that need to be far more ambitious. ...
... The biggest political win was ending production of the Air Force’s F-22 stealth fighter jet after 187 aircraft. Several previous presidents, including President George W. Bush, tried and failed to end the program. The decision by Lockheed Martin and its partners to put plants and other facilities in dozens of states ensured that it had a lot of powerful friends on Capitol Hill.
This time, strategic reality finally trumped high-priced lobbyists. The F-22 was designed for combat against the former Soviet Union and has not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Air Force’s new high-performance F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a Lockheed Martin weapon that begins production in 2012, should be sufficient. ...
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