GAO Wants to Cut Back on F-22 Jet Fighter Program : Military: Agency recommends slowing from a planned 36 planes per year to six or eight.

Production of the F-22 fighter, one of the costliest weapons programs in the military, should be slowed to avoid ending up with a plane that fails to meet requirements, a congressional study concludes.

The General Accounting Office, in a study made public Friday, recommends slowing from a planned 36 planes per year to six or eight planes until initial operational testing and evaluation is completed. That could delay full-scale production for four or five years, beyond 2001.

“The need for the F-22, based on our analysis, is not urgent,” the GAO concludes. Problems already identified in development of the plane “underscore the need to demonstrate the weapon system’s performance through flight testing before significant commitments are made to production.”

In a separate report also released Friday, the GAO concluded that cruise missiles worked well in the Persian Gulf War. The report recommended that the Pentagon study whether expanded reliance on cruise missiles might lessen the need for building more aircraft carriers or attack aircraft.

The recommendations on the F-22 strike a blow at a program cherished by the Air Force and considered one of the military’s top priorities.

In their policy statement to Congress this year, Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall and Gen. Ronald Fogleman, the Air Force chief of staff, defended the F-22 as a vital asset in any future war.

“The F-22 program is at a critical stage, just approaching engineering and manufacturing development milestones,” Widnall and Fogleman said.

Designed to provide fighter pilots the same radar-evading Stealth capability as the B-2 bomber, the F-22 would gradually replace the Air Force fleet of F-15 fighters as the main weapon of air superiority in wartime. Under current Pentagon plans, the Air Force would buy 80 F-22s before operations testing was completed. This first batch of planes would cost $12.4 billion, or $155 million per plane, and be budgeted between 1997 and 2001.

The Pentagon rejected the key findings of the GAO report. In a response submitted by Spiros G. Pallas, an official in the Defense Department acquisition office, the Pentagon contended that slowing production “can result in increased total costs, possible loss of key manpower and suppliers, and earlier technical-operational obsolescence.”

Noting that nearly two-thirds of the F-22 program is subcontracted by Lockheed Martin Corp. to outside suppliers, the Pentagon argued that “the low (production) rates suggested by the GAO are so unattractive due to their low profitability that many current suppliers would likely be lost.”

The Pentagon acknowledged that the F-22 is encountering development problems, particularly in fuel consumption. The GAO, noting that the F-22 is designed to be the first fighter to fly faster than the speed of sound for extended periods without high fuel consumption, said the problem could cost $479 million to fix.

But the Pentagon response rejected assertions in the GAO report that the F-22 may be more visible to radar than expected, saying “there have been no major problems in the observability areas of the F-22.”

Known as the “advanced tactical fighter,” the F-22 is budgeted for $2.2 billion in President Clinton’s fiscal 1996 request. The Pentagon is spending $2.3 billion on the program this year.

Initial plans to build a total of 648 F-22s were scaled back; the current Pentagon plan calls for a fleet of 442 F-22s with the first plane delivered in 1999 and production continuing well into the next century.

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