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China CanardThe Air Force doesn't need any more F-22s.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008, at 6:12 PM ET
An F-22 Raptor 4001 stealth fighter. Click image to expand.

It's time for Congress to rein in the U.S. Air Force.

Last December, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decided to stop production of the Air Force's beloved stealth fighter plane, the F-22 Raptor, at the end of fiscal year 2008. This would leave the program at 187 planes costing a total of $65 billion.

On Feb. 13, according to today's issue of Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, Gen. Bruce Carlson, chief of the Air Force's materiel command, told a group of reporters, "We think that [187 planes] is the wrong number" and that the Air Force would find some way to build 380 before the program's done. He joked that 380 is a "compromise," since the original plan calls for 381.

Gen. Carlson's rationale for this expansion: "Most people say in the future there will be a China element to whatever we do." In plainer words: He says we need more than twice as many F-22s than the secretary of defense says we need because of the future military threat from China.

Two things should be noted about this claim. First, by the Pentagon's own measure, the Chinese military has a long way to go before it constitutes a threat to U.S. forces. Second, even if it does become a threat, it's not at all clear that the F-22 would be the best weapon to deal with it.

The F-22 is a product of the Cold War. It began development in the early 1980s as the advanced tactical fighter—a short-range fighter plane that would incorporate the "stealth" technology that was going into the B-2 bomber and F-117 attack plane, which were entering production around then.

After the Cold War ended, and with it the imminent prospect of air-to-air dogfights, the F-22 was redesigned so that each could carry two JDAM "smart bombs" to attack targets on the ground (as well as eight air-to-air missles to shoot down other airplanes in the sky)—not a lot of firepower for a plane that wound up costing $345 million apiece.

Gates was not the first to push for cutting back. This tussle between the Air Force and the civilian leadership has been going on since 2001, when the Pentagon's Defense Acquisition Board, noting horrendous cost overruns, reduced the program from 331 planes—the number the Air Force wanted to buy back then—to 295.

In September 2002, the board commissioned a study concluding that only 180 F-22s were necessary. The Air Force responded by raising the ante and saying it needed 381. In December 2004, as one of his final acts as defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld backed the board, trimming the program to 180 planes, which would finish production in 2008.

Subsequently, Robert Gates went along with a slight increase—to 187 planes—in order to keep the production line open in case the F-22's successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, experienced difficulties. But that would be it.

Gen. Carlson's upfront challenge is based on the ancient adage that secretaries come and go, but the services stay forever. Still, even stodgy bureaucrat-generals need a rationale to keep their favorite programs afloat. The F-22 is the centerpiece of Air Force procurement at the moment. It has nearly no role in the sorts of wars that the United States has been fighting in the last 20 years—or has much prospect of fighting in the next 20.

And so, the China threat is dragged out of the cellar once again, as it has been to justify troubled weapons systems for 40 years now. (For an example from, yes, as far back as the mid-1960s, click here.)

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. He can be reached at .
Photograph of F-22 Raptor 4001 courtesy United States Air Force/Judson Broehme/Getty Images.
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