
DATE: Thursday, April 10, 1997              TAG: 9704100394

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: MARIETTA, GA.                     LENGTH:  225 lines

RAPTOR MAY BE SHOT DOWN BEFORE IT TAKES OFF

When they get it in the air, its belly packed with computer-guided missiles and its engines ``supercruising'' at speeds faster than sound, the fighter jet the Air Force's top brass unveiled here Wednesday will be the deadliest of its kind ever built.

``First Look, First Shot, First Kill,'' the publicists for the F-22 Raptor promise. And the plane will deliver on all counts, insist service officials and the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp.

``No one's going to challenge the F-22 in the air,'' Lt. Col. Scott Anderson, an F-22 systems officer based at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, told reporters shortly before the rollout ceremony. ``And if they do, they'll only do it once.''

But despite the admiration of 5,000 aircraft artisans at Wednesday's festivities, the first Raptor off the production line is in danger of following its reptilian forebear into extinction.

The angular jet's radar-evading capabilities and next-generation sensors have not let its growing costs escape detection by congressional budget cutters.

And backers of the Raptor and the Navy's new F/A-18E/F ``Super Hornet'' are facing the possibility that the Pentagon may lack the cash to finance both jets - and may have to trim one program, scale back both, or kill one altogether.

Some of the staunchest Republican supporters of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose nearby district includes thousands of Lockheed Martin workers, are among those questioning the new fighter's necessity and affordability.

Just last week, a Pentagon-conducted review of the F-22 program concluded that the Air Force may have underestimated the production cost of the 438 Raptors it wants by $16 billion.

The review said the program's likely bottom line is $64.4 billion, or about $147 million per plane, compared to the Air Force's estimate of $48.3 billion, or $110 million per plane. The F-15 Eagle, the Air Force's current top fighter, costs $53 million a copy.

Neither F-22 cost estimate includes the almost $19 billion the Air Force now plans to spend on design and development. When that's added, the price per plane could go as high as $190 million.

The Raptor ``has all the earmarks. . . of an unconstrained program,'' U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., a longtime F-22 skeptic, complained at a recent hearing. At the least, he suggested, Congress may erect ``a fence'' around the plane, setting limits on program spending and telling the Air Force not to bother asking for more.

In a letter to congressional leaders last week, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen urged critics to give the Air Force and Lockheed Martin time to demonstrate the value of new cost-cutting initiatives. But Cohen also warned that unless costs are controlled, he will ``make changes to the program content - reducing quality and/or quantity - so as to keep the program both stable and affordable.''

Even if the Air Force estimate of $110 million per plane holds up, each F-22 will cost about 80 percent more than the current cost of each of the Navy's new Super Hornets.

At $81 billion, the Super Hornet now is the Pentagon's most expensive weapons program. Its cost, plus that of the F-22 and a new ``Joint Strike Fighter'' to be developed by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps in the next decade, is projected to push the military's aircraft spending to levels - even adjusting for inflation - eclipsing those of the peak of the Cold War.

With overall Pentagon budgets expected to remain flat, at best, while Congress tries to balance the federal budget, a ``quadrennial review'' of U.S military needs now under way at the Pentagon is focusing on the cost of all tactical aircraft.

The review, officials acknowledge, could end with termination of either the Super Hornet or Raptor programs, or substantial cuts to both.

And each program could be vitally important to Hampton Roads: Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach has been designated the principal East Coast base for the Super Hornet; Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, home of the Air Combat Command, is expected to be an important base for the Raptor.

Uncertainties surrounding the Raptor's future sparked Lockheed Martin and the Air Force to stage a rollout ceremony Wednesday that mixed patriotic chest-thumping about the jet's capabilities with a defense of its cost.

The Air Force christened the first Raptor ``The Spirit of America,'' and a pair of Atlanta-area singers performed a song of the same name - composed just for the unveiling - as flag-waving F-22 workers marched through the cavernous old bomber plant where the event was staged.

Then, after speeches by Gingrich, Air Force brass and corporate leaders, a laser-light show, and a multimedia presentation that featured scenes of aerial maneuvers by past aircraft and a gravity-defying slam dunk by Michael Jordan, singer Lee Greenwood arrived to belt out his signature ``God Bless the USA.''

``This is a model program,'' Air Force Secretary Sheila E. Widnall asserted shortly before curtains parted to reveal the Raptor, with ``the most stringent standards of program management and cost control'' in history.

But for the efforts of Air Force and industry ``teams'' that have worked together on every phase of the project, the F-22's price would be far higher, officials asserted.

Gen. Ronald R. Fogelman, the Air Force chief of staff, argued that the latest Pentagon cost estimates ``aren't very relevant'' because they're grounded largely in comparing the F-22 to past aircraft programs. None of those predecessor jets, he asserted, have been developed with the F-22's emphasis on teamwork and cost containment.

As for the Raptor's capabilities, Air Force and Lockheed officials asserted that its radar-evading ``stealth'' technologies and next-generation sensor systems will let it avoid detection and then identify and destroy enemy targets before adversaries even know it's around.

Lt. Col. Anderson, the F-22 systems officer, said he wouldn't feel safe flying any current American jet, including the Super Hornet, against an enemy armed with modern surface-to-air missiles and advanced fighters. He'd have no hesitation about taking the Raptor into such a tangle, he said.

The Raptor ``is the natural American contribution to the next cycle of freedom,'' Gingrich said in the ceremony's concluding address. ``No pilot whose life will be in danger would approve of a strategy which - in order to be cheap now - costs us the lives of courageous Americans at a later date.''

Whatever its cost and capabilities, some critics say the plane simply isn't needed. And there is a basic conflict, they suggest, between the intelligence estimates the Air Force cites to justify the Raptor and those the Navy uses in making the case for its Super Hornet.

``If you buy into the threat argument for the F-22, the F/A-18E makes no sense at all,'' said Franklin C. Spinney, a Pentagon aircraft program analyst. ``And if you buy into the Navy argument on the F/A-18, the F-22 makes no sense.''

Though it lacks stealth and will need fuel-gulping afterburners to break the sound barrier, the Super Hornet should be more than adequate to defeat any air or ground threat until at least 2015, according to the Office of Naval Intelligence. By then, the Navy will have the stealthy joint strike fighter coming into its inventory.

The Navy expects the carrier-deployed Super Hornet to be among the first U.S. planes involved in any conflict. The jet will be able to defend the fleet, protect itself and allied planes, and strike targets ashore in support of ground forces, service officials argue.

But F-22 backers say the Super Hornet will be only marginally better than the smaller and far cheaper C/D model Hornets it will replace.

And Gen. Fogelman, the Air Force chief of staff, told a congressional committee in February that until F-22s arrive to clear the battlefield of surface-to-air missiles and advanced enemy jets, the Super Hornets will be almost exclusively occupied with protecting the fleet.

Fogelman's comments, and an Air Force briefing later that underscored that service's view of the Super Hornet's limitations, outraged Navy leaders. Fogelman did not mention the Super Hornet or his service's competition with the Navy for aircraft dollars on Wednesday, but warned pointedly of ``the lure of cheaper substitutes'' for the F-22.

Less-advanced fighters, he asserted, could end up costing more - ``in equipment and in lives'' - than the Raptor.

Navy officials won't discuss the Raptor in public. But in private, they argue that however impressive its capabilities, the F-22 jet can't do much in a future war unless the U.S. has allies in the battle zone who are willing to loan out their bases. Carrier jets, of course, need no such foreign permission to operate.

Neither service's intelligence estimates directly compare the Super Hornet with the Raptor. But the Air Force suggests that its F-15 Eagle, a plane generally considered at least as capable as the Super Hornet, will by 2005 be vulnerable to advanced jets being developed or planned in Russia and several European countries.

Though none of the countries involved are now considered U.S. adversaries, Air Force officials worry that some of the new jets may be sold to potentially hostile nations - Iran, Iraq, China, North Korea. And whatever their air power, officials say those countries will be able to buy advanced surface-to-air missiles that only a stealthy plane like the F-22 will be able to avoid.

Spinney, probably the most prominent internal critic of the Pentagon's tactical aircraft program, argues that the rationale for the F-22, or at least for the ``stealth'' characteristics that have helped drive its cost, ``vaporized'' with the demise of the Soviet Union.

The service conceived the Raptor in the 1980s because it wanted a fighter able to safely penetrate and destroy the overlapping network of radars, surface-to-air missiles and aerial dogfighters the Soviets were thought to have put in place, Spinney said.

Those defenses, certainly gone today, probably never were as formidable as advertised, he said. And because no U.S. adversary has or is developing such capabilities, the stealthy B-2 bombers and F-117 fighters already in the Air Force inventory, along with cruise missiles that can be launched well away from a battle zone, ``are more than adequate'' for the remaining threat, he wrote last summer.

A former Air Force engineer, Spinney warns of a ticking ``time bomb'' in weapons procurement. The F-22 may be a great plane for the handful of pilots who get to fly one, but Spinney suggests it's also the most dramatic example of how the Pentagon's devotion to ever-more-costly weapons systems threatens to leave most of tomorrow's warriors with old and possibly dangerous equipment.

From 1983 to 1992, the last decade of the Cold War, the Air Force spent $50.3 billion to buy 1,800 fighter aircraft. Purchases are dropping to $13.3 billion for 116 planes over the following 10 years, but will leap to $68.6 billion for 792 planes in 2003-2012, when the service will acquire most of its F-22s and join the other services in buying the joint strike fighter.

By spending more money to get half as many planes as it bought in the last decade of the Cold War, Spinney contends that the Air Force either will have to eliminate some fighter squadrons - an unsettling prospect - or keep many of today's F-15s and 16s in the air for up to 40 years.

Air Force leaders seem ``willing to wreck the Air Force to build the F-22,'' Spinney fumes. The service's own projections are that by 2006, the average fighter jet in its inventory will be 19 years old, almost twice today's average, he observed.

In place of the F-22, Spinney contends the Air Force should refurbish the F-16 Falcons and tank-killing A-10 Warthogs now in its inventory and should buy 60 to 100 new F-16s each year. That would allow the service to acquire almost 2,500 new or remanufactured fighters between now and 2013 for just over half of what it plans to spend on the F-22 and the joint fighter.

Then, he said, the Air Force should launch a program to build competing prototypes for replacement of both the F-16 and A-10, aiming to purchase those new fighters for no more than the inflation-adjusted cost of the current models.

The service's goal should be to use advanced electronic technologies to cut costs, Spinney argued, just as successful companies have cut the cost while improving the quality of a variety of consumer products.

Fogelman, Widnall and other Air Force officials countered Wednesday that those cost-cutting strategies are being pursued. But America must be willing to pay whatever is needed for the protection of its fighting forces, they said.

``This is not a business in which you want to be second best, or equal,'' Fogelman asserted. ``You've got to dominate.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

The Air Force's new F-22 Raptor

Officials conducting a review of U.S military needs acknowledge that

either the Navy's F/A-18E/F ``Super Hornet'' or the Air Force's F-22

Raptor programs could be terminated or substantially cut.

Each program is vitally important to Hampton Roads

Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach has been designated the

principal East Coast base for the Super Hornet.

Langley Air Force Base in Hampton is expected to be an important

base for the Raptor.

COMPARISON OF AIRCRAFT

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