July 10, 2009 1:41PM # More Bad News for the F‑22 By [Christopher A. Preble](https://www.cato.org/people/christopher-preble) --- SHARE This won’t make the [“Buy the Planes that the Pentagon Doesn’t Want” Caucus](http://www.f22-raptor.com/advocacy/documents/F22Final.pdf) happy. (There’s a similar “caucus” [in the Senate, too](http://www.f22-raptor.com/advocacy/documents/ObamaF-22Jan1609.pdf); and [12 governors](http://www.f22-raptor.com/advocacy/documents/GovernorsLetter.pdf).) The [*Washington Post* reports](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903020.html) that the F‑22 requires > more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces. How might this bad news be twisted into a good news story by the F‑22’s advocates in industry and on Capitol Hill? Look for the same line of reasoning that has been used up to this point. If we’re building the F‑22 in order to give jobs to workers who might otherwise have to seek out other opportunities, then maybe the plane’s high operating costs can be justified on the grounds that it employs more maintenance workers? [J.M. Keynes must be smiling down on us](https://www.cato.org/2009/01/12/making-work-destroying-wealth/). ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).