Quotes on the F-22 Raptor
“The reality is we are fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theater.” - Robert Gates, 2009
“Beyond the pure waste of funds, there’s the risk of a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more we give in to defense contractors and build pointless weapons systems while yelling “China threat! China threat!” the more likely it becomes that people in Beijing are going to start saying “holy crap, look at this giant anti-Chinese defense build-up the Americans are undertaking” then you’ve got arms races, mutual suspicion, regional conflict, etc. It’s all bad news.” - Matthew Yglesias, 2008
“What do you do when you’ve got the world’s most expensive fighter jet and its canopy won’t open correctly so you have to chainsaw free the hapless pilot? If you’re the U.S. government, you sign up for an extended three-year contract to ensure you get even more of them than you originally wanted.” - Ethan Heitner, 2006
“The government will spend $62 billion on keeping the F-22 raptor alive (a plane designed during the Cold War and criticized by basically everyone), but won’t spend a dime of the $800+ billion allocated to restart the economy on a public park, museum, or arts museum.” - Chad W. Post, 2009
“The F-22 was approved initially to give the Air Force a next-generation stealthy aircraft to evade ever improving enemy air defenses. But a funny thing happened: Our enemies’ air defenses stopped improving.” - Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, 2006
“Some of the arguments you’ve been hearing now about how government spending never helps the economy, you’re going to hear the absolute reverse when military spending comes up. We have an airplane, the F-22, that is designed to defeat the Soviet Union in a war, and I think we can save billions. The defense budget has gone way up under George Bush. But somehow to my Republican friends enormous amounts for the war in Iraq–which I thought was a mistake–hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars for weapons to fight the Cold War, they don’t count those.” - Barney Frank, 2009