F-22 - a plane you won't go to war with?

Max2147 · 07-22-09, 12:12 AM

Congress shouldn't be overriding the SecDef and The Pentagon on defense matters, so in that way I'm glad to see this vote. The folks in Congress who were trying to save the F-22 weren't concerned for our national defense, they just saw it as another pork barrel project for their district.

That said, I still think Gates got this one wrong. I have an enormous amount of respect for Gates, and I think he's really worked wonders to repair all the damange that Rumsfeld did at The Pentagon, but this is one area where I think he's wrong. He's putting a lot of responsibility on the F-35, and I don't like that. The F-35 is an overly compromised design that's pretty good at a lot of things, but not really great at anything.

However, it's worth noting that this would have happened even if the last election had gone the other way. I imagine McCain would have also kept Gates on, and McCain was very much against the F-22. He publicly backed Obama in trying to get production stopped.

07-22-09, 12:12 AM	#12
Max2147 Seasoned Skipper Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 714 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Congress shouldn't be overriding the SecDef and The Pentagon on defense matters, so in that way I'm glad to see this vote. The folks in Congress who were trying to save the F-22 weren't concerned for our national defense, they just saw it as another pork barrel project for their district. That said, I still think Gates got this one wrong. I have an enormous amount of respect for Gates, and I think he's really worked wonders to repair all the damange that Rumsfeld did at The Pentagon, but this is one area where I think he's wrong. He's putting a lot of responsibility on the F-35, and I don't like that. The F-35 is an overly compromised design that's pretty good at a lot of things, but not really great at anything. However, it's worth noting that this would have happened even if the last election had gone the other way. I imagine McCain would have also kept Gates on, and McCain was very much against the F-22. He publicly backed Obama in trying to get production stopped.