February 26, 2009 12:27PM 

# Whither the F‑22? 

By [Christopher A. Preble](https://www.cato.org/people/christopher-preble) 

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I have been thinking for months about canceling my print subscription to the *Washington Post*, but I just can’t seem to pull the trigger. Now I have a new reason for holding onto the messy things just a little while longer: those full-page advertisements for the F‑22.

They have appeared almost every day for the past few weeks — full-colored ads that boast “95,000 employed, 300 million protected.” They feature pictures of smiling workers who (presumably) would be thrown out of work if we were to stop building the planes. They claim that the F‑22 keeps us all safe and secure, now and well into the future. The ads tell us that the F‑22 is essential both to our physical security, and our economic security. It just wouldn’t be the same if all that happy talk were confined to flashing banners on my computer screen.

But while the *Post* is surely happy to keep taking *both* my subscription money and the revenue from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the 13 companies that paid for the ads, I’m still not convinced that the F‑22 is worth the money (more than $350 million per plane).

Neither is Fred Kaplan (maybe he is reading the online version of the *Post*?)

It likely won’t be the last word in the debate, but [Kaplan’s latest at Slate](http://www.slate.com/id/2212034/) makes a pretty good case for what I’ve been saying [for](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9445) [some](https://www.cato.org/2008/12/10/more-like-355-million-per-plane-but-whos-counting/) [time](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9914): If the plane cannot be justified on its strategic merits, then it is unfair for 299,105,000 Americans to pay *merely* to keep 95,000 employed. Our defense decisions should be driven by strategic necessity, not slick advertising campaigns and dubious claims about the economic harm that will come if some people have to switch jobs.

##### Related Tags 

[Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy) 

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