Gates to cancel the F-22

[Munin]

You guys got it all wrong, you should use some good sources like this one f.e.:

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced a major reshaping of the Pentagon budget on Monday, with deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems but new billions of dollars for others, along with more troops and new technology to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The decisions are expected to set off a vigorous round of lobbying over the priorities embroidered into the Defense Department’s half-trillion dollars of annual spending. They represent the first broad rethinking of American military strategy under the Obama administration, which plans to shift more money to counterterrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan while spending less on preparations for conventional warfare against large nations like China and Russia.

Mr. Gates announced cuts in missile defense programs, the Army’s expensive Future Combat Systems and Navy shipbuilding operations. He would kill controversial programs to build a new presidential helicopter and a new communications satellite system, delay the development of a new bomber and order only four more of the advanced F-22 fighter jets.

But he also said plans to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, while halting reductions in Air Force and Navy personnel, would cost an additional $11 billion. He also announced an extra $2 billion for intelligence and surveillance equipment, including new Predator and Reaper drones, the remote-controlled vehicles currently used in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq for strikes against militants, and more spending on special forces and training foreign military units.

More broadly, Mr. Gates signaled that he hoped to impose a new culture on the Pentagon — making the system more flexible and responsive to the needs of the troops in the way it chooses and buys weapons.

Even so, he acknowledged that it would be hard, with the economic crisis and concerns in Congress over jobs, to “make tough choices about specific systems and defense priorities based solely on the national interest and then stick to those decisions over time.”

Military experts said Mr. Gates seemed to be mounting a determined effort to rein in some of the most troubled programs after years of record military spending and start dealing with the huge cost overruns and delays that have plagued so many programs.

But some noted that other presidents and defense secretaries had been stymied in making similar efforts in the past, and they said that leaders of military-related committees in Congress would undoubtedly try to save the F-22, C-17 cargo planes and other systems that Mr. Gates would like to cut.

Representative Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Monday in a statement that while Mr. Gates’s proposed budget was a “good faith” effort, “the buck stops with Congress, which has the critical constitutional responsibility to decide whether to support these proposals.”

And some military analysts reacted to Mr. Gates’s promise of budget revolution with skepticism. Andrew H. Krepinevich Jr., a military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said that it was hard to tell how much Mr. Gates was reducing spending over all because he was increasing spending in unspecified amounts in some areas and had not put a net dollar amount on his entire proposal.

Mr. Krepinevich said he anticipated that Mr. Gates’s reductions would not close the $25 billion to $50 billion Bush-era gap between military programs and the spending for them, and that future cuts would most likely be needed.

He noted that some of Mr. Gates’s cuts were less than draconian. While the secretary chose to emphasize smaller, speedy ships for close-in waters, the slower shipbuilding he proposed for the deep-water Navy would not reduce the number of aircraft-carrier battle groups at sea to 10 from 11 until after 2040.

While he capped the number of the $150 million combat plane, the Air Force’s F-22, at 187, he promised to speed the testing of another fighter, the F-35, and maintain plans to eventually buy 2,443 of the planes. While he canceled the purchases of eight Army vehicles to allow for more study and a rebidding, he said he would also speed the development of costly electronic sensors for troops.

And while he promised to fix the flawed procurement processes that allow weapons prices to soar, he said he wanted to hire tens of thousands of civil servants to do the work, since contracting that out to the private sector has not proven efficient.

“The perennial procurement and contracting cycle, going back many decades, of adding layer and layer of cost and complexity onto fewer and fewer platforms that take longer and longer to build, must come to an end,” he said. “There is broad agreement on the need for acquisition and contracting reform in the Department of Defense. There have been enough studies, enough hand-wringing, enough rhetoric. Now is the time for action.”

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/us/politics/07defense.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

A whole tranche of USAF senior officers are now pissing themselves about their post USAF career options.

So no, the USAF will be in better shape (in terms of size).


In general the army (+ special forces) (+ cybersecurity experts), navy and air force are expanding (in terms of size: more troops). To me this shift in policy seems very good (when you look at the big picture). Altough I find it hard to see the F22 capped, I do find that plane to be overpriced (I think that the taxpayer is getting ripped of and that this plane could be sold much cheaper). I don't really have that much confidence in the F35 aircraft, it seems to be an aircraft that has compromised to much on so many levels (for being a multirole aircraft). Making an aircraft that is good to do everything usually ends up with being inferior in doing all tasks (compared to other planes that could have been made with the same technology).

Spending on missile defense programs will be scaled back by $1.4 billion over all. Mr. Gates proposed increasing spending to defend against relatively limited attacks by smaller powers with shorter-range missiles, adding interceptors aboard ships but not on land in Alaska. But he would cancel or delay some of the more exotic programs to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Anti-missile defense spending is increased for some projects (technology): THAAD and missile 3 program are getting $ 700 million more funds. But other projects are being put on hold, or terminated (not all projects are terminated).

 

[Diuretic]

Okay then.

FOX is going to hire a specialist HR firm to sift through all the resumes of retired senior USAF personnel who otherwise would have gone on to lucrative posts within aerospace companies who were going to bid for the "next generation fighters/bombers/airships" that were considered not necessary by the new administration.