Inouye: F-22 might still be sold abroad
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-HI, is keeping hope alive for the possibility that the U.S. might be able to export the F-22 fighter plane. Despite that the Senate voted to end production of the planes and the administration has worked hard to ensure that no new planes will be built, Inouye, who has led the ...
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-HI, is keeping hope alive for the possibility that the U.S. might be able to export the F-22 fighter plane.
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-HI, is keeping hope alive for the possibility that the U.S. might be able to export the F-22 fighter plane.
Despite that the Senate voted to end production of the planes and the administration has worked hard to ensure that no new planes will be built, Inouye, who has led the charge for exporting the plane, says there might still be a way.
“It depends on whether the potential buyers, Australia, Israel, and Japan, are willing to do what’s necessary to make it happen,” Inouye told The Cable in an interview.
He said those countries would have to commit to paying for the plane and also paying for the costs of refitting it to remove sensitive technologies the U.S. doesn’t want to share.
Conventional wisdom is that F-22 exports are a dead issue, because there’s no active drive to repeal the Obey amendment, which bars export of the plane, and because the line is now set to shut down after 187 planes are built.
But Inouye said that he would argue that a scaled-down F-22 might be able to get past the legislative language.
“You can’t ignore that,” he said about the prohibition, “But this would be different from the Obey amendment. This would be an unclassified version.”
Inouye leads the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee, which put language in its bill to encourage the Air Force to continue working on the research needed to develop an export version.
“The committee urges the Air Force to start this effort within the funds appropriated in Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Air Force, for the F-22 aircraft,” the committee’s report stated.
Inouye’s comments directly contradict Tuesday statements by the head of Pacific Command Adm. Timothy Keating, who said the Obey amendment was a dealbreaker.
“The Japanese would like to buy the F-22, but we’re not going to sell it to them,” said Keating.
Japanese officials are still talking about their desire to buy the plane, something Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell will probably discuss with them on his trip there this week.
The idea of exporting the F-22 suffered another setback this week when Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said he didn’t want to divert Air Force resources to the effort.
Marco Garcia/Getty Images
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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