The F-22; an unaffordable useless jobs project for politicians

At last new production of the F-22 fighter has been ended by Congress. There are currently 187 F-22's in service at a total cost of $67 billion. This is for an aircraft that requires 34 hours of maintenance on the ground for every single hour in the air. More important, this is an aircraft that has never seen a single hour of combat time, even though America has been in constant war since 2003. The F-22 is a useless and overpriced political boondoggle.

The F-22 is an aircraft that is designed to fight no known enemy of America either now or in the foreseeable future. There is no justification for spending more money on such as expensive waste. In addition to its extremely high cost per plane, there is no possibility that any other nation will buy F-22's and lower America's average cost because the law specifically forbids selling the aircraft to foreign nations. It is too hard to predict who America's enemies will be in a decade, and we don't want to sell them our latest technology today. Besides, they don't need the F-22 either - unless America decides to attack them.

Think about what the cost to every American family and American non-defense-related business of the constant war that America's mostly Republican and entirely conservative leaders costing this country are forcing America to fight. Here's what President Eisenhower said in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

That's not to say that America should not be fighting against the al Qaeda, Taliban, or the narco-traffickers in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Afghanistan. We should. But the expensive gold-plated flying machine called the F-22 has no value in those conflicts, and the cost of the things means that there are fewer resources available to fight those real enemies.

Killing the budget item for purchasing more F-22's is one of the rare good moves to come out of the Senate Recently.That $1.75 billion that congress tried to spend for seven more unwanted F-22 jet fighters can now be applied to bring down the total cost of a decent health care system for this nation. That is just under one one-hundredth of the estimated annual cost of Obama's health care plan, for those "fiscal" (meaning bought by the health insurance industry) Blue Dog Democrats. I'm sure that if the corporate lobbyists could be kept away from the corporate whores who populate Congress (and especially the rich man's 100 member protection club called the Senate) another 50 or so such budget cuts would be easy to find.

The Air Force shake up is aimed at the roots of the Air Force culture

The firing of the Air force Chief of staff (a fighter pilot) and his replacement by a special ops pilot who is not a member of the Christian evangelists who have taken control of the Air force since the end of the Cold War means a really major attack on the current culture of the Air Force. Laura Rozen comments on the Bob Gates initiated change.

"USAF CoS: Fighter pilots 'out,' unconventional ops, team player 'in'":

The SAC bomber pilots ran the USAF from 1947-1989. The fighter pilots, mostly "F-15 mafia" (fighter vs. the attack air-to-ground guys like me), have run the USAF since 1989.

Gates appointment of Schwartz is significant for a number of reasons, and clearly points to issues of "roles and missions" and procurement strategy -- not just nuclear weapon assurance.

Expect more emphasis on:

-- team player leadership vs. fighter pilot mavericks who nod their heads at civilian Pentagon leadership then do whatever they please

-- mobility (tanker/transport) vs. combat forces (fighter/attack/bomber)

-- UAVs (unmanned "drones") procurement vs. fighters (especially F-22 - the USAF gold-plated fighter without an adversary)

-- USAF support for small-unit special ops vs. preparing for global war with one of the [B]RIC nations

-- (perhaps) less promotion based on secret hand-shake patronage

The fact that Gates is going the Langley AFB (USAF's fighter HQ) to lecture them on leadership is really striking. It is a direct slap at the entrenched USAF culture.

Last, I don't know if Gen. Schwartz is Jewish or not. Given his name, he may be. If he is, his appointment is also a strong message against the evangelical Christian cult that has overtaken the USAF since the end of the Cold War.

The places to look for real change are a revamp of announced strategy along with changes in weapons system procurement.

One area I would speculate on is that since the Marine Corps is in the process of proving the V-22 Osprey, a major change in aerial support of special operations troops, will the Air Force increase purchases of the Osprey?

Another place to look is the procurement of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

This is an interesting move from Bob Gates.

The essence of the Pentagon propaganda aimed at Americans

Glenn Greenwald returns to the story of the corps of retired military individuals who became the Pentagon's special propaganda corps on TV "News."

So the Pentagon would maintain a team of "military analysts" who reliably "carry their water" -- yet who were presented as independent analysts by the television and cable networks. By feeding only those pro-Government sources key information and giving them access -- even before responding to the press -- only those handpicked analysts would be valuable to the networks, and that, in turn, would ensure that only pro-Government sources were heard from. Meanwhile, the "less reliably friendly" ones -- frozen out by the Pentagon -- would be "weeded out" by the networks. The pro-Government military analysts would do what they were told because the Pentagon was "their bread and butter." These Pentagon-controlled analysts were used by the networks not only to comment on military matters -- and to do so almost always unchallenged -- but also even to shape and mold the networks' coverage choices.

Even a casual review of the DoD's documents leaves no doubt that this is exactly how the program worked. The military analysts most commonly used by MSNBC, CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC routinely received instructions about what to say in their appearances from the Pentagon. As but one extreme though illustrative example, Dan Senor -- Fox News analyst and husband of CNN's Campbell Brown -- would literally ask Di Rita before his television appearances what he should say (7900, 7920-21), and submitted articles to him, such as one he wrote for The Weekly Standard about how great the war effort was going, and Di Rita would give him editing directions, which he obediently followed.

Among the most active analysts in this program were all three of the most commonly used MSNBC commentators -- Gen. Montgomery Meigs, Gen. Wayne Downing, and Col. Ken Allard.

This is clearly not a public information program run by the Pentagon. It consists of developing a channel of propaganda from the Pentagon directly into the Television news organizations, then manipulating the TV organizations so that they became dependent on the propaganda channel in place of TV controlled news reporters.

By doing this the Pentagon could quickly get it's views out to he public and immediately respond to and quash bad news that placed the Pentagon in a bad light.

No wonder the American people are so poorly informed about the invasion and Occupation of Iraq. The news media have been turned into nothing more than a government propaganda channel.