China is building a new fighter jet to compete with F-22. Unfortunately, there won’t be an F-22 for it to compete with. Obama killed the F-22 project, saying that we had no need for it. Why? Because, as the administration explained, no other nation was developing a competing fighter.
CNN reported on July 21:
[Defense Secretary] Gates said Monday he’d heard no “substantive” argument for keeping the jet for national security reasons, pointing out that China has no planes that can compete with the more than 1,000 advanced fighter jets the U.S. will have by 2020.
And so Obama threatened to veto the entire defense budget if it included money for the F-22.
Obama went to China last week with a message of “strategic reassurance.” Beijing took the occasion of Obama’s visit to announce its new fighter. Nice touch. According to Aviation Week:
Beijing’s fighter announcement suggests a serious failing in U.S. intelligence assessments, mocking a July 16 statement of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that China would have no fifth-generation fighters by 2020.
And what was Obama’s rationale for killing the F-22?
“At a time when we’re fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, (expanding the F-22) would have been an inexcusable waste of money,” Obama said shortly after the vote.
Hmm, fighting two wars renders weapons an inexcusable waste of money. . . . Okay, we’ll never make sense out of that, so let’s try the deficit argument.
On that score, the massive stimulus funding and the imperative to create jobs simply didn’t apply when it came to defense. We killed real existing jobs at Lockheed to create pretend jobs elsewhere. Just yesterday, in fact, the administration announced on its slick new $18 million web site that it had created a grand total of 30 jobs in Arizona’s 15th congressional district (at a cost of $ 25,380.67 each). Only there is no such place as the 15th congressional district of Arizona.
So, there’s nothing to worry about. Any administration that can create a whole congressional district from nothing won’t have any problem creating regiments and fighter wings from nothing . . . when the need arises.
H/T: RedState
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