Pentagon Speak Translated

Having put the finishing touches on next year’s federal budget, members of Congress should not forget how hard it is for the folks back home to understand the bureaucratic logic used in Washington. This year’s debate over the Pentagon’s new F-22 fighter must have been most difficult to comprehend.

Washington is run by specialists whose currency of exchange is expertise, and this is especially so at budget time. Citizens, on the other hand, rely on everyday reference points to answer important questions, such as: Should we spend $67 billion to buy the Air Force 339 F-22 tactical fighters at an average cost of $200 million a plane?

Consider the Pentagon’s F-22 sales pitch this past summer:

The acting secretary of the Air Force, F. Whitten Peters, wrote in the New York Times, “Each [F-22] Raptor will cost, on average, about $84 million to produce. The $200-million price tag discussed recently is a figure that charges all past F-22 program costs . . . to the planned purchase of 339 aircraft. This is an unfair comparison, because the $23 billion we’ve already spent on the F-22 would be lost if the program were canceled. The key question is, what will it cost from today forward?”

Compare the secretary’s reasoning with that of an average citizen when figuring the cost of a house. Is the true cost of your house the balance left on your mortgage today? Of course not. Most Americans would say the real cost of their house-- and the cost of the F-22--is the balance still due, plus all prior payments.

Wouldn’t it make more sense if the Air Force bought airplanes the way you and I buy our homes?

Richard P. Hallion, the Air Force historian, took a different approach in an article appearing in the Washington Post. “Failure to procure the F-22,” he said, “would mark the first time since the Second World War that the United States has consciously chosen to send its soldiers, sailors and airmen into harm’s way while knowingly conceding the lead in modern-fighter development to a variety of foreign nations.”

If U.S. auto manufacturers used similar logic to sell cars, few parents would knowingly send their teenagers out onto deadly highways in light-weight vehicles built in Japan. Instead, we would all be driving $30,000, 6,000-pound, reinforced sport utility vehicles to ensure our loved ones’ roadway superiority in the event of a collision.

Parents balance many factors when buying a family car, not just its crashability. Why can’t the Air Force buy fighters the way the common man buys a car?

Officials from Lockheed Martin Corp., the F-22’s prime contractor, spent the summer reminding members of Congress that jobs back home were at stake. As many as 27,000 jobs in 46 states will be lost, the lobbyists cautioned, if Congress cancels the F-22.

If the post-Cold War defense budget is really a make-work program, shouldn’t spending for the F-22 pass through the civil works committees in Congress, not the defense committees, to make sure we get the maximum number of jobs per dollar spent? Perhaps we should use the $67 billion earmarked for the F-22 to hire road builders instead. All 50 states have roads in need of repair, and that’s four more than states with factories making parts for the F-22.

The common man also has trouble with the cost of an F-22, which, like the price of a new car, seems more than a tad high. In 1982, Norman R. Augustine, the former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, saw the coming F-22 cost crunch and wrote, tongue-in-cheek, “In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3 1/2 days each per week, except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.” Today this prediction is read with less tongue in less cheek.

In the end, Congress put off a decision on the F-22 until next year. Maybe, just maybe, that will buy enough time for our leaders in Washington to cast that upcoming debate in terms that make more sense to American citizens back home. *