Earth to Congress : the Cold War is over.
The F-22 Raptor is an incredibly advanced flying machine. It’s probably the most advanced fighting airplane in production today and it’s ours. Hooray. We will be ready when the USSR develops a time machine and we have to refight the Cold War.
As you might imagine, the F-22 is a pricey machine. Including all the research, development, and production costs to date, John Q. Taxpayer has spent a tidy sum on this jet: $62 billion. Excluding the R&D already spent, each additional unit produced today costs about $138 million.
That’s a lot of money to spend on aircraft designed to fight a war that ended 20 years ago. I may not be a military strategist, but I sincerely doubt that Al Qaeda or their friends are going to start strafing their targets in advanced fighter jets.
So why is Congress promoting continued production of this war machine? Jobs, of course! You see, building those multi-million dollar Air Force toys requires lots of staff. Something to the tune of 20,000 jobs when you factor in suppliers and service companies related to the program. Strangely, many of the same Senators who oppose government spending in the 2009 stimulus bill are advocating continuing the F-22 program. I guess roads and bridges just aren’t sexy enough.
This is where our Congress needs to wake up and pull their heads out of 1988 and think about the future. There’s another industry in the U.S. that demands the same skilled manufacturing jobs, high technology, and advanced materials: Wind Turbines! Instead of building war toys for the Pentagon to play with, might we retool and build wind turbines for the rest of us to power our homes?
For the price of one F-22, we could build 50 commercial-sized wind turbines that would generate enough electricity to power 30,000 homes. And on the subject of jobs, wind turbine manufacturing would yield more jobs than the military alternative.
Congress: wake up. Stop investing in technologies to fight yesterdays war and start investing in technologies to power our future.
Filed under economics, energy, politics, war : Comments (0) : Feb 28th, 2009 by tadfad
