One item that has caught a lot of attention is his plan to eliminate the continuing manufacture of expensive Cold War-era weapons systems.  One such weapons system is the F-22 Raptor, a fighter plane designed to overtake and outmaneuver other advanced fighter planes.

The Soviet Union is no longer the primary threat to our national security, and according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a press conference last year, the F-22 has not flown a single mission in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Air support remains a cornerstone of American military strategy but, that function is being performed by helicopters and other, less expensive, aircraft.

The F-22 comes with a whopping price tag of around $355 million per plane.  To date, 184 planes have been manufactured, with a total price tag of $65 billion.

Given that we are in a recession, and that this airplane is extraordinarily expensive and not particularly useful, it seems like a reasonable target for necessary budget cuts.

One might think so, but the Military-Industrial Complex has been planning its game several moves ahead.  Lockheed-Martin has spread out the manufacturing work across no less than 44 different states.  The company and its supporters claim that this one project is primarily or secondarily responsible for the employment of as many as 95 thousand people.

And that’s why, in the middle of a depression, facing record-beating deficits, the Air Force is expected to ask the White House to agree to contracts to manufacture 60 more F-22 Raptors.  If the price per plane holds steady – and it is more likely to increase – that would amount to some $21.3 BILLION dollars.

Supporters of the F-22 seem to base their argument defending continued production firmly on the grounds that manufacturing warplanes provides jobs.

It’s an argument that makes absolutely no sense.

They are saying essentially that $21.3 billion of government money should be used to employ people.  It is an unusual argument from the same individuals who claim to hate socialism; but we’ll leave that aside for the time being.

My point is, that same $21.3 billion could be spent employing the same workers to first mothball the fighter jet production lines and then transition the manufacturing facilities into industries related to environmental technology and large-scale energy production.

Spend the same $20 billion dollars on wind turbines.  Instead of creating a bunch of dangerous weapons that we haven’t really needed since the late 1980′s, we could create a superior national infrastructure upon which our children could build a land of greater prosperity.