[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6766-6767]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 AMERICA CANNOT REPEAT MISTAKE OF 1938

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, in the year 1938 domestic needs were 
great in this country. The New Deal programs that FDR had actually 
failed, and the Depression had deepened during his second term to the 
point that the P-51 fighter plane was considered so insignificant and 
so costly it was not funded that year.
  When World War II started, the bombing runs that we took as a country 
produced 20 percent casualties for us to the point that we suspended 
bombing runs until we could build enough P-51 fighters to accompany 
them. It was not until the winter of 1943 that we were able to have 
superiority over the sky in Europe.
  The technology of today has made this world so much smaller and so 
much faster that we cannot afford to make the same mistake this country 
did in 1938. We cannot predict the type of future combat we will be 
called upon to participate in. We must be prepared for that future.
  Decisions we make today, because basically it takes 8 years from 
design to construction of a plane, decisions we make today have the 
impact of what kind of options we have both in the military and 
diplomatic sphere 10 and 15 years from now.
  This country has controlled the skies since the Korean War, and we 
take it for granted. We have forgotten that we have flown a military 
sortie every day of every year for the past 16 years, and we have done 
so with the oldest fleet in the history of this country. Our newest 
plane, the F-16, is 30 years old. It is older than the pilots who fly 
it. There are F-16s at this time that are restricted as to the speed 
and the distance in which they can fly. We have 63 C-130 cargo planes 
that cannot fly if they actually have any cargo. We have KC-135s that 
generals in the field will not accept because the age of the plane 
makes it impossible to protect.
  Despite our best efforts at our depots to try and fix these planes 
and patch them up, we cannot ignore the reality and forget we are in a 
difficult situation with the capacity of our military equipment. It may 
take, indeed, a catastrophe, the wings falling off, until we recognize 
the situation we are in, or find ourselves shorthanded in a time of 
need.
  The Air Force has asked for the ability of recapitalization, taking 
1,000 planes they have determined to be excess and no longer funding 
those planes and instead putting that money into new technology. This 
Congress has failed to allow them to do so on many of those planes.
  If we had sufficient F-22s, we could get rid of all of our F-117s and 
save this country over a billion dollars a year over a 5-year period of 
time.
  While we have been playing around in America, our enemies, our 
allies, and maybe those who in the future will become our enemies have 
not been sitting still. The Chinese have added 10 percent to their 
military budget every year since 1990. That is a 200 percent increase 
over the past 17 years. Their navy is expanding. Their medium-range 
missiles are expanding. In January, they conducted a test to shoot down 
one of their own satellites which is the same type we depend upon for 
communications in the United States. And more significantly, their 
Jian-10 is a sleek new fighter aircraft designed to narrow the gap 
between the Chinese and the American Air Force to give them numerical 
compatibility and technical equality to the United States Air Force.

[[Page 6767]]

  The Russians have a new Sukov fighter airplane that they have already 
fielded which is technologically equal to what we have.
  We have even found a Third World country like the Indian Air Force 
has put so much money into their technology and training of their 
pilots that in many respects they are equal to the United States.
  We cannot afford to wait for the future. This country needs to build 
the fifth generation of fighters, the F-22. We need all 183. Actually, 
we need 300, not just the 183 we have authorized. We need to put money 
directly into the new F-35s. That is the future: 1,500 planes for both 
the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force to be the next generation to 
give us technological superiority in the skies and maintain superiority 
in the skies into the next decade.
  If we do not do that, we are desperately playing and gambling with 
our own future. We forget how long it took to ramp up to be producing 
the F-16s we fly today. This country should be producing 200 planes a 
year. Instead, in our budget for next year, we have scheduled to 
produce six, and two in the supplemental that were taken out. We are 
gambling with the future of this country because we have taken the past 
for granted.
  In fact, as one general half jokingly said, if we are not willing to 
appropriate the money to let our Air Force build the new equipment and 
planes they need, maybe we should at least give them the opportunity to 
purchase the Russian planes so they can be flying something that is 
new.
  Mr. Speaker, we cannot gamble with the future of this country. We 
cannot make the same mistakes we did in 1938. We need to put money into 
the building of the F-22 and the F-35 for the future of this Air Force.

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