In parsing costs for the F-22 program, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates rightly wants to kill, the Pentagon has cited a price tag of about $143 million per plane—no small change for something we don’t need. But turns out that’s the so-called “flyaway” cost. When you add in development, maintenance, training, and all those vital extras, the damage balloons to a staggering $360 million a pop. So says the Center for Defense Information in this four-minute video, “Catch F-22,” which features military watchdogs like Danielle Brian from the Project on Government Oversight and Winslow Wheeler, head of CDI’s Straus Military Reform Project. (Wheeler also contributed a dispatch last year to our ambitious online military package, titled Mission Creep.) The video dumbs things down a lot—thankfully for those of us who don’t spend our workdays scrutinizing Pentagon spreadsheets—but it provides a glimpse of why this program, and others like it, will have to fall to earth if America ever hopes to pay the bills for basic necessities.
In the meantime, Mission Creep contributor David Vine, who wrote “Homesick for Camp Justice,” on how the British cleared out Diego Garcia’s population to make way for a United States military base on the island, covers the subject further in his new book, Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia. Haven’t read it yet, but the New York Review of Books sure seemed to appreciate it.
