The U.S. Senate voted July 21 to hold the line on procurement of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet. The vote was a victory for U.S. President Barack Obama, his secretary of Defense, Mr. Robert Gates, and defense budgeting sanity. The move effectively forecloses the prospect of Japan's purchasing the troublesome plane. That is not a bad thing. This country has better uses for its diminishing defense funds.
The F-22 is the world's most advanced fighter aircraft. It was designed in the 1980s to ensure U.S. dominance of the air against a future Soviet threat. That enemy vanished, but the F-22 did not: The U.S. has purchased 187 of them, spending $65 billion, or $350 million per plane.
The exorbitant price tag is not the only reason defense planners have been reluctant to buy more Raptors. The plane has been plagued with maintenance and operating problems. Its stealth technology has not performed as promised, pushing up maintenance costs. Even rain is apparently a problem for the plane's surface. As a result, the F-22 requires more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour it is in the air. Its hourly cost of flying exceeds $44,000, again almost 50 percent more than that of the plane it is supposed to replace. The Pentagon estimates that just 64 percent of the fleet is currently "mission capable." There has not been a single F-22 mission in Iraq or Afghanistan.