The Senate has sided with the Obama administration in agreeing to cut off new spending for the F-22 jet fighter program. Pratt & Whitney, a unit of Hartford-based United Technologies, makes the F119 engines for the jets.
By voting 58-40, the Senate removes $1.75 billion that was set aside in a defense policy bill to build seven more F-22 Raptors, adding to the 187 stealth technology fighters already in the pipeline.
Senators John McCain and Carl Levin filed the amendment to kill the money for the seven super-expensive machines.
Little old Connecticut, and Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, were stuck in the middle of the political turmoil because East Hartford-based Pratt & Whitney, a unit of Hartford-based United Technologies, makes the engines.
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“If no additional F-22 aircraft are ordered, Pratt & Whitney would be required to halt orders from our long-lead suppliers within months,” the company said. “The last F119 engine is currently scheduled for delivery in Q1 2011 and we will staff as required. As this production requirement is satisfied, we will scale down our work force as required.”
"I believe it is our duty and responsibility to protect the thousands of workers in Connecticut and across the country from losing their jobs and to ensure that our country maintains the ability to continue building the finest and most sophisticated fighter jets in the world,” Dodd said.
The Senate vote came the same day that Pratt & Whitney announced it is considering closing the Cheshire Engine Center and moving some operations from the Connecticut Airfoil Repair Operations in East Hartford elsewhere.
"The downturn in the global economy and its impact on the aerospace industry has led to reductions in volume and we anticipate some additional deterioration,” the company said in a statement released Tuesday morning. “As a result, we have excess capacity in our large commercial engine overhaul and repair operations.”
Opponents to the federal defense spending for the F-22s have called the price for the performance-plagued planes a boondoggle that the country cannot afford, but lawmakers from the states that make the parts that create the military aircrafts were fighting to retain the funding.
President Barack Obama had threatened to veto any defense spending that includes money for the F-22 if lawmakers went ahead and bought more planes than the 187 requested. After the Senate vote, Obama made a statement at the White House saying he rejected the notion that the country has to "waste billions of taxpayers dollars" on outdated defense projects.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell said 100,000 people across the country have a direct or indirect link to the F-22s and said she will work with the state’s Congress members try to preserve the program.
“ We need the Raptor, especially when many nations have developed or purchased aircraft that can compete effectively with the aging F-15 fighter,” Rell said. “In the midst of the greatest economic turmoil since the Great Depression – and at a time when Congress has approved countless hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus funding and bailouts for banks and automotive manufacturers – I cannot understand why this relatively small amount of money is seen as a stumbling block.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the military also opposed further production of the F-22, saying it was too expensive at a time of limited budgets at the Pentagon and competing defense spending priorities.
Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland, assembles the planes in Marietta, Georgia. Chicago-based Boeing Co., Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. and Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co. make fuselage sections, radar and electronics, Bloomberg reports. Hence, the unusual political divide.
Pratt & Whitney said its top priority remains supporting the U.S. Air Force with safe, reliable power for the F-22 Raptor for the duration of the F-22 program.
"With more than 110,000 operational hours, the F119 engine powering the F-22 is the safest, most advanced military jet engine in operation today and offers the U.S. Air Force a critical national security capability which can not be achieved with any other single airframe,” company officials said.
Copyright The Associated Press
