The Budget and Boeing's C-17s and F/A-18s

On Tuesday, 10 U.S. senators and House members got together in a room in the Capitol and saved the jobs of 900 Missourians, 5,000 Californians and thousands more around the country.

They did this by deciding to buy eight C-17 GlobeMaster III cargo planes the Air Force isn't sure it wants (as least not as much as it wants more fighter jets) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says aren't needed. Each of the airplanes costs around $220 million, but what with extra parts and all, the total cost of the eight-plane package was $2.2 billion.

They tacked this money onto a $97 billion supplemental appropriations bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the rest of the current fiscal year. Mr. Gates and President Barack Obama didn't include any funding for C-17s in the 2010 Pentagon budget.

They argued that even when you're spending $533 billion a year on defense, you can't have everything, so you cut the lowest priorities, which would include cargo-lifting capability you don't need.

So Congress went around them and stuck the authorization for eight more planes in the supplemental budget. The Senate fight to save the C-17 brought together strange bedfellows, including Sen. Christopher S. "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. In the House, the C-17 had support from both liberals and conservatives.

As much as we like watching lions lie down with lambs, we're torn about the C-17 program.

On the one hand, we're delighted that 900 St. Louisans who work at Boeing's St. Louis-area plant will keep their jobs — good jobs, paying $75,000 a year or more with excellent benefits. Such jobs are hard to come by, especially these days.

Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems unit, of which the C-17 program is a part, is headquartered here. Key parts of the Globemaster III are built here — the nose, the cargo doors and ramps, engine pylons and landing gear pods. Boeing is an excellent corporate citizen.

But is this really the best way to defend our nation? Setting aside St. Louis interests and looking only at national interests, isn't Gates right that spending should go where it is needed most — in more troops, greater readiness and rebuilding the depleted Army?

Gates is in an enviable position, a Republican holdover from President George W. Bush's administration now serving a Democratic president. More than any defense secretary in recent memory, he's free to make recommendations based only on a hard analysis of what's best for the nation, without regard to party politics.

And Gates says 205 C-17s already in service or in the pipeline will serve the nation's airlift needs for the next 10 years.

But politics and jobs always trump reality. Boeing farmed out work on C-17s to more than 40 states.

Boeing can tell you precisely how many of its workers and suppliers live in each of the nation's 435 Congressional districts. You don't get a degree in aeronautical engineering without learning how to count.

Indeed, Boeing is so confident of its political position that it insists that the eight planes in the supplemental budget aren't enough. Orders for at least three more will be needed to keep the C-17 line open, Boeing lobbyists say, meaning that the C-17 battle will be renewed when Congress takes up the 2010 Pentagon budget.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a self-proclaimed warrior against government waste, twisted herself into a pretzel in rationalizing more C-17s. She said the C-17 is a lot more versatile than the C-5 Galaxy, the huge warhorse of nation's airlift wings. And one of these days the C-5s will have to be retired, she said, and we'll need lots of C-17s to replace them.

She also echoed the line that Boeing officials have trumpeted, that the C-17 line must remain open to preserve the nation's aerospace industrial base. Once the program ends and all those workers move on to other jobs, what happens when the nation needs new cargo planes?

Is the nation supposed to keep building unneeded airplanes ad infinitum, stacking them in the basement like a survivalist stockpiling beans and bullets? Isn't this billion-dollar make-work, paying a guy to lean on a shovel in case you need him later? Shouldn't Boeing and the nation's pork-loving leaders find other profitable uses for America's high-tech manufacturing infrastructure and workforce?

Or has it come this: If the government can give $150 billion to AIG, what's another $2.2 billion for Boeing? At least we'll get eight airplanes out of the deal.

We're far more sympathetic to Boeing's argument for another of its aircraft, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, which also took a big hit in Gates' 2010 budget request. Instead of building 40, he wants to build only 31. The nation's interests would better be served with more of these planes than fewer.

Gates, good financial steward that he is, hopes that Lockheed-Martin's F-35 soon can begin filling the gap. The F-35, the so-called "Joint Strike Fighter," was supposed to cut costs by being a one-size-fits-all aircraft suitable for all military branches.

The Navy variant can be launched from carrier decks, like the F/A-18. Indeed, there's even a STOVL (short take-off, vertical landing) variant for the Marine Corps last seen portrayed in the 2007 Bruce Willis movie "Live Free or Die Hard."

The plane wreaks havoc on a freeway interchange in the movie (though Bruce manages to bring it down single-handedly) but in real life, its performance is not so great. The F-35 program is very late and very far over budget; the F/A-18 is a proven aircraft that can do just about everything the F-35 is supposed to do and costs about half as much.

Boeing wants Congress to authorize another multiyear contract that would keep the F/A-18 assembly line in St. Louis (and suppliers and subcontractors in 45 other states) working beyond the current 2014 end-date for the program. In both the national and local interest, that sounds like sound policy.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH.

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