ANY MANNED WEAPON IS A WASTE OF MONEY...:

What will Obama do about the F-22? (BOB COX, 12/31/08, star-telegram.com)

[President-elect Barack Obama] might decide, as the Bush administration has, that the F-22 is superfluous and that the money is needed for other priorities. On the other hand, the Air Force, according to defense analysts and consultants, wants to buy at least 60 more of the $180 million jets.

Jim McAleese, a consultant with close ties to the Air Force, told a Reuters conference in Washington last week that the service was putting "all its political capital" into buying more F-22s beyond the 183 on order.

"I think the Air Force will work very hard to build a consensus" around the idea of buying 60 more F-22s under a three-year agreement, McAleese said.

Time is of the essence, according to the Air Force and Lockheed, which says it needs hundreds of millions of dollars soon to keep the F-22 production line up and running. If the line begins to shut down and then is restarted, F-22 advocates say it would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of buying more planes.

The F-22, launched in the early 1980s to counter Soviet air forces in Europe, has been targeted by the Pentagon civilian management team as an airplane that is likely to be of little use in the kinds of irregular wars the U.S. is fighting or is likely to face.

...but for Democrats they're jobs programs.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 1, 2009 9:02 AM