[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 94 (Tuesday, July 19, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           PENTAGON WISH LIST

 Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, a short, sharp flap recently arose 
over efforts by the chairman of the House Defense Appropriations 
Subcommittee to throw the F-22, F/A-18E/F, RAH-66, and V-22 in a pot 
and force the Pentagon to choose three. The chairman's initiative was 
beaten back, but his point is well taken: The defense budget cannot 
sustain the current Pentagon wish list. Frankly, it behooves us to cull 
out the weakling now, rather than cripple the entire herd waiting for 
the one program to starve.
  I believe that weakling is the F-22, an overbred, overpriced relic of 
the cold war that is no more affordable than was the B-2 or the 
Seawolf. We have been remiss in allowing the Air Force and Navy, armed 
with identical weapons, facing identical threats, and spending out of 
the same checkbook, to have come up with such radically different 
solutions to tactical aviation modernization.
  The Navy's solution to gaining and maintaining air superiority and 
projecting force while reducing the overall cost of tactical aviation, 
is a neckdown strategy centered around an upgrade to the proven, 
multimission F/A-18C/D. The new F/A-18E/F, besides enjoying a 
significant improvement in range and payload over the C/D version of 
the Hornet, will be a marvel of flexibility. It will handle all strike 
and fighter duties for the Navy, replacing three earlier aircraft, as 
well as assuming some tanking responsibilities, and possibly serving as 
the next-generation Navy jammer. The payoff in logistics savings alone 
will be enormous, and the projected $48 million unit cost is a nothing 
short of a bargain.
  The Air Force has taken a different approach to gaining and 
maintaining air superiority and projecting force, splitting the 
missions and delaying modernization of strike assets. Focusing on air 
superiority as the overarching concern of the next century, the Air 
Force is in the process of developing a new fighter with third 
generation stealth characteristics, supercruise, thrust vectoring, and 
integrated avionics. This wonder weapon, the F-22, will not come cheap. 
The latest estimates are that an F-22 will cost $134 million apiece, a 
figure likely to increase due to the state-of-the-art nature of every 
aspect of the aircraft. More importantly, the single-mission nature of 
the F-22 will force the Air Force to develop a different new aircraft 
to handle strike requirements.
  What is the Air Force doing? The defense budget has been declining 
for a decade, a shortfall of several tens of billions of dollars is 
looming in the out years, and yet we are being asked to commit enormous 
resources to a single mission F-22 with a limited mission that will 
represent only a small fraction of total combat aircraft required.
  With the cold war over, are the studies that eliminated upgrades to 
the F-15 still valid? The F-22 was designed to win against overwhelming 
odds in enemy airspace facing frontline Soviet aviation units flying 
aircraft, and anticraft units fielding surface-to-air missiles, a 
generation more advanced than those presently fielded. Today, and for 
the foreseeable future, we, and our allies, will have numerical 
superiority against opponents that are less well-equipped, well-
trained, and well-supported. Can an upgrade to the F-15E really not be 
good enough, when an upgrade to the F/A-18C/D is? Can we afford single-
mission aircraft?

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