Psst! Wanna buy an F-22 for $360 Million?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


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.
 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate