F 22

WASHINGTON -- High-level House and Senate negotiators made no progress again yesterday in deciding how many F-22 fighter planes to buy next year, holding up the entire $266 billion defense spending plan.The House-Senate conference committee on defense spending remained in recess for the second straight day as its leaders -- primarily Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska and Rep. Jerry Lewis of California -- met secretly to hash out the F-22.With pressure mounting to complete all spending bills by the end of the fiscal year next Friday, the stalemate is likely to break early next week, sources said.

WASHINGTON -- There is no money for producing combat-caliber F-22 fighter planes next year under the defense spending plans that a House-Senate conference committee considered last night.Instead, an unspecified number of planes would be built for research purposes.Senate and House conferees met to hammer out differences in an overall defense spending plan of about $266 billion, and the F-22 was the single most contentious issue going into the closed-door, three-hour-plus session.The House of Representatives voted in July against spending $1.8 billion to buy the next six of the Lockheed Martin-built fighter planes.

Top House and Senate budget negotiators have begun closed-door sessions that will determine the fate of the Lockheed Martin-built F-22 fighter plane.Rumors flew over the weekend about deals to save the jet from a $1.8 billion budget cut approved in July by the House, but nothing has been resolved."

He has had a month to reconsider the bold move that the Air Force said jeopardized its most important new weapon, the F-22 fighter plane.Rep. Jerry Lewis spent the congressional recess that ended last week listening to argument upon argument about why he should put $1.8 billion back into the budget for buying the next six copies of the Lockheed Martin-built plane.The California Republican, who heads the military spending subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, visited factories near Atlanta and Seattle where workers depend on the $62.7 billion F-22 program for jobs.

Part of what made the "Blair Witch Project" so scary was that moviegoers never saw whatever was stalking those kids through the woods. Lately, Washington and the Pentagon have been using the same technique to raise blood pressure over the military's plan to buy new warplanes.While budget fights focus on the $62.7 billion F-22 fighter program, the unseen bugaboo making everyone nervous is another jet: the Joint Strike Fighter.Generals warn that terrible things will happen to the Joint Strike Fighter if the nation doesn't also build the F-22.

Military officers have sugar-coated problems on the F-22 fighter plane program out of a can-do optimism, not with an intent to deceive, the Air Force's top general for acquisitions said in an interview.But as Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Martin fights to save the F-22 from a $1.8 billion budget cut passed July 22 by the House of Representatives, he faces what some say is an Air Force credibility problem."My impression from staffers I've talked to is that among the services, the Air Force at present has probably the lowest credibility, and it's altogether because of the way they've handled the cost growth in the F-22 program," said Bert Cooper, a military aircraft expert with the Congressional Research Service.

The Pentagon is trying to protect the F-22 fighter plane from congressional budget cuts by insisting that the jet is crucial for future military dominance, but Defense Secretary William S. Cohen once argued just the opposite.Cohen called for the elimination of the program in 1990 when he was a Republican senator from Maine and an influential member of the Senate Armed Services Committee."The astonishing pace of political change in Eastern Europe has caused many conventional assumptions to crumble," Cohen wrote in an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post on April 9, 1990.

WASHINGTON -- With the doors closed and only one other congressman in the small room on the first floor of the Capitol, Rep. Jerry Lewis dropped a bomb."

CONGRESS DID a shabby job of holding the Pentagon and defense contractors accountable for the towering cost of the F-22 Raptor plane. The system is now twice as expensive as the Pentagon first estimated, and it's threatening to suck money away from the purchase and maintenance of other key defense systems.As next year's budget for the F-22 moves to discussion in a House-Senate conference committee, lawmakers ought to be thinking about how far this system should be pursued -- or whether it should be abandoned altogether.

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives voted yesterday to eliminate funding for the next six F-22 Raptor fighter planes, thrusting the Air Force's most coveted new weapon system into limbo.By a vote of 379-43, the House approved a $266 billion defense spending plan that omits $1.8 billion the Pentagon had wanted for buying the planes next year.The measure also would put a halt on two F-22s the Pentagon agreed to buy this year from lead contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda.Though $1.2 billion remains in the House-approved budget for continuing to develop the F-22, contractors, the Air Force and President Clinton have argued that zeroing out money to build the planes would kill the $62.7 billion program.