Working for the Meltdown: Introduction

by Eric Martin

I've recently completed an anthology edited by Winslow Wheeler entitled, America's Defense Meltdown, and the selections are, at least to this reader, illuminating.  Each chapter is written by a different author (though some authors pen multiple chapters) and each such sub-unit takes on a separate facet of the overall mission.  In its entirety, America's Defense Meltdown is an attempt to reexamine America's military heritage, its current and past priorities and strategies, and the interplay of entrenched defense-related interests with each of the foregoing, all in an attempt to offer advice on how to better tailor defense policy (and spending) to what would be an optimal approach given our current goals and limited resources. 

It's an ambitious project, and the roster of civilian experts and retired military personnel contributing to the effort do an admirable job of providing the relevant history and background, as well as concrete recommendations for future action.  But the true strength of the book lies in the willingness of its many contributors to challenge conventional wisdom and a well-guarded the status quo.  This is no small feat considering the size, reach and potency of the interests being challenged.  Consider, from Lt. Col. John Sayen's (US Marine Corps, ret.) Chapter 1 overview:

Our military is very expensive. The “official” budget will soon hit $600 billion per year. This approximates the military budgets of all other nations of the world combined...[T]he real budget is much higher than the official one. The official budget does not include the Department of Homeland Security or Veterans Affairs, both of which are really military expenses. The current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are paid for by offline “supplemental” budgets so they are not included either. If one adds these costs the budget climbs to about a trillion dollars. [emphasis added]

Any time one seeks to pick a fight with a trillion dollar domestic industrial complex - which employs millions both directly and indirectly - one should expect to meet stiff and formidable resistance.  As stated in the Preface:

The vast majority, perhaps even all, of Congress, the general officer corps of the armed forces, top management of American defense manufacturers, prominent members of Washington's think-tank community and nationally recognized "defense journalists" will hate this book.  They will likely also urge that it be ignored by both parties in Congress and especially by the new president and his incoming national security team.

Nevertheless, over the coming weeks, I will offer mini-reviews on certain of the chapters, highlighting the issues raised therein, in an attempt to widen the parameters of what should be considered acceptable, if not vital, debate. That is not to say that the recommendations contained in this work should be accepted whole-cloth. That would be an impossible expectation, and it would belie the fact that there is not unanimity amongst the book's authors as to the ideal course going forward. 

Rather, by putting forth forceful, fact-based, well-reasoned challenges to entrenched patterns and accepted norms - and the vested interests represented by a massive segment of our economy and population - America's Defense Meltdown provides a useful entry into a larger discussion that we as a nation cannot afford to put off any longer - both literally and figuratively.

The first such installment to follow shortly.

Comments

[Gary Farber]

"The official budget does not include the Department of Homeland Security or Veterans Affairs, both of which are really military expenses."

Are, among others, the National Cyber-Security Center, FEMA, Immigration Customs Enforcement, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, DHS Health Affairs, DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office, DHS Counter-Narcotics, DHS Science & Technology, and so on, really "military expenses"?

[Eric Martin]

Good point Gary. Not all branches of DHS should be lumpted in, but some clearly should.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

If one adds these costs the budget climbs to about a trillion dollars.

$1T/year sounds about right. That would make it about what, 7% of GDP or so?

One of the things I'd like to see is: where does that put us compared with other major powers in the past? IIRC from Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers modern national state style great powers typically spent something like 3-8% of GDP on their peacetime militaries (with "peacetime" referring only to an absence of direct conflicts with other great powers, by which definition the US would presently be in such a state).

I have to double check those figures, but my off the top of the head guess is that we (the US) are thus at the upper end of the range for peacetime spending, but perhaps not at the very top of that range. This is obviously a very crude measure, and says nothing about whether we are getting fair value for the money spent, or to what extent we live in a highly militarized society (IIRC pre-WW1 Germany was spending near the bottom of the this GDP range, not the top, for example).

One of the questions I'd like to examine is, does “This approximates the military budgets of all other nations of the world combined” arise because the US is spending more than it should (as judged by historic norms), or does it arise because spending (on a per GDP basis) by the rest of the world is currently low by historic standards? Are we being profligate in our spending, or is the rest of the world enjoying the dividends of a Pax Americana by spending less than they might under a more chaotic system of international relations? (and note that the latter notion is a purely economic judgment, independent of the morality and social justice aspects of such a regime).

[Slartibartfast]

Isn't this the same Winslow Wheeler that said the F-22 was "a dog" on performance?

Why yes. Yes, it was. That didn't seem to get defended all that well, Eric. If Wheeler has in fact defended that point in writing, I'd like to see it.

[The Crafty Trilobite]

Fascinating stuff, Eric. I look forward to your digests.

TLTABQ, I heard a lot of angry talk during the Cold War that NATO was free-riding on our defense spending, but these days it seems harder to make that case b/c there is no active threat to Europe. (Whether the Soviet Union was actually much of a threat to Europe during most of the Cold War is another issue, but at least there was a plausible threat then. Now, not so much.) Even then, it was a good deal overall for us: we paid for the military, and in return, Europe gave us good trade deals, deferred to us in resource-rich zones in the ME and Africa, gave our military bases and passage as needed for same, did not challenge our leadership of institutions like G-8, the World Bank, and the UN Security Council (sort of), accepted our dollar as the global standard, etc.

Now that we were not providing this perceived useful service, Europe defers less. It unleashed its own industry and banks, developed the Euro, and has largely broken with us as to Middle East policy.

[Eric Martin]

That didn't seem to get defended all that well, Eric. If Wheeler has in fact defended that point in writing, I'd like to see it.

I'm not sure. You could always ask him.

winslowwheeler at the ole' msn with the dot, and the com

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

TLTABQ, I heard a lot of angry talk during the Cold War that NATO was free-riding on our defense spending, but these days it seems harder to make that case b/c there is no active threat to Europe.

I was really thinking more along global lines, but if we want to break it down regionally, IMHO South Asia and East Asia are the places where I would expect regional arms races and the percent GDP spending on military might to reach an equilibrium well above current levels in a truly multi-polar world. I'm wondering if it is a coincidence that this is also the region which has experienced the most rapid economic growth since the fall of the Soviet Union.

[Gary Farber]

"That didn't seem to get defended all that well, Eric."

I'm not competent to speak to that point, not being a fighter pilot, but the points about al Qaeda and terrorist groups not having fighter/attack planes, and the huge costs of the F-22 seems rather relevant. The JSF, after all, isn't completely crap.

Bottom line: is the F-22 truly something that should be a priority in our defense budget? Is Wheeler wrong that it shouldn't be? Would you, or anyone, like to contest that point?

"It unleashed its own industry and banks, developed the Euro, and has largely broken with us as to Middle East policy."

"Largely" doesn't seem right to me. First, each country really does have its own policy (Poland is not France, etc.); second, none of them has an ME policy that is radically different than hours. All oppose Iran getting nuclear weapons; all are friendly to Israel; all are not friendly to Hezbollah and Hamas. The differences in policy are relatively minor degrees of emphasis.

"Have slightly broken with us on Middle East" policy seems closer to accurate to me.

[Bernard Yomtov]

modern national state style great powers typically spent something like 3-8% of GDP on their peacetime militaries

TTL,

Could you be more specific as to who and when this refers to?

I am also curious about the degree to which this level of spending by states in, say, the pre-WWI era, was influenced by the spending of other states. Obviously, this says a lot about whether historic norms are relevant.

[sara]

I am glad to see people considering our present and near-future strategic and tactical problems in light of the current situation, foreign relations, technology, cultures, media, etc. (one of the lessons of the Iraq War is that digital media is ubiquitous, the enemy will make use of it, and that cover-ups don't last)

One of the things that drove me mad during the lead-up to the Iraq War and for several years thereafter, though more of a media and FP phenomenon than actual military strategy, was the nostalgia for past empires, the British Empire (ahem, a hundred years ago or so) and even the Roman Empire (two thousand years ago!). Considering whether these writers were serious was enough to make you insane.

I'm still not sure that they were serious; it was part of the neocons' overall smoke-blowing and rhetorical manipulation, and a curious academic battle with dubious strategic objectives. Lose a war, x trillion dollars, and all American geopolitical credit, merely to thumb your nose at academics in post-colonial studies?

[freemti]

What we spend (and have spent over many a year) on so called defense is an obscene, colossal waste of money for the most part. We could buy a quite robust defense ability for probably a fraction of that, say a third or a quarter. We get stuck in a constant cycle of designing for the last war/conflict, spending huge sums of money on programs with too long design and procurement spans. We are far too in love with big tech solutions to many humdrum low tech problems.

One could make a good case that even our $trillion budget has failed us at every turn if we are frank enough to admit it. 911 pointed out clearly how unconventional warfare can easily evade our most modern weapons with simple human engineering. Iraq showed it took us 5 years or so before we found the least bad way to fight that war. North Korea is largely free to do as it pleases as is Iran since we lack the total manpower (thank goodness!) to alter those facts - left only with the truly despicable nuclear option. The recent financial calamity also shows how vulnerable our country is to "attacks" on its economic borders. Bio warfare and other new vectors are there to be exploited by an enemy with the will and wherewithal to seize them, we could be be left bloodied, wondering what kind of defense our touted defense budget brought us. Slim to none in my opinion.

[Gary Farber]

"One of the things that drove me mad during the lead-up to the Iraq War and for several years thereafter, though more of a media and FP phenomenon than actual military strategy, was the nostalgia for past empires, the British Empire (ahem, a hundred years ago or so)"

Fifty-odd, or less. Edward II was still Emperor of India, and King-Emperor, until 1948 (a year after independence), and King of India and Pakistan until 1950. Winston Churchill, 1942: “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

One might argue for different dates, and 1947, when India and Pakistan were given independence (and surrender of the Palestine Mandate in 1948), isn't a bad one, given that it coincided with the slipping of true world power from Great Britain, though might can certainly argue for a variety of other dates: 1956, and Suez, is a good one, for instance. One can go earlier, but generally speaking, everyone referred to "the British Empire" through at least 1950, and the idea that their wasn't a British Empire during WWII would be a very anachronistic argument.

(Yes, the 1926 Imperial Conference created Dominions, and the Commonwealth, but that's more or less a technicality; nobody ceased referring to the "British Empire" until around 1950, and neither did the King-Emperor cease being King-Emperor until 1948.)

[bobbyp]

Excessive military spending is indeed the one entitlement capable of breaking this country...spiritually, morally, and financially.

I look forward to the future installments promised.

[Hartmut]

I think it is misleading to just compare military spending with the GDP without also comparing the general budget with the GDP. Pre-WW1 Germany is a perfect example why this does not work that well. The tax structure of the German Reich was primarily state-centered with the federal government always at the short end in budget debates. As a result the military budget (esp. the navy) was huge in comparision with the part of the total German tax income that could be spent on it (let's leave out Bavaria that kept its own military for the sake of this discussion). Also the "excess" production of countries at the time was lower than it is today (i.e. production beyond 'keep your population alive'). Oversimplified: military needs do not necessarily grow with the wealth of a country, i.e. a rich country does not automatically need a stronger (=more expensive) military.
Another factor is that these days military products are much more military-only while in the past there was also a civilian use for most of the products 'consumed' by the military. The Prussian wool and textile industry for example was grown to supply the army with non-imported cloth but then could also satisfy the civilian market. The same can be said for other trades. But how many civilians are going to buy MBTs*, SAMs etc. for use at home?

*Doonesbury's Family Assault Vehicle may not come to a dealer nearby for some time.

[rea]

Edward II was still Emperor of India, and King-Emperor, until 1948 (a year after independence), and King of India and Pakistan until 1950.

Edward II reigned 1307-1327.

George VI reigned 1936-1952

Elizabeth II reigned 1952-present

[Gary Farber]

Yes, I meant George VI, of course. Why I typed Edward II, I have no idea. Thanks for the correction.

[Slartibartfast]

Is Wheeler wrong that it shouldn't be?

That wasn't the point. It was never the point. The point was that Wheeler was attempting to devalue the F-22 as a fighter aircraft because of some unspecified performance deficiency. I'm completely open to discussion of whether the F-22 is truly necessary, but the assertion that it's lacking in kinematic performance hasn't been supported. I don't think it can be.

BTW, Wheeler also seems to have issues with the F-35.

[Gary Farber]

"BTW, Wheeler also seems to have issues with the F-35."

Reading your link, I'm not noticing any claims that I'm aware are false: do you know of any, or is that also not the point?

Maybe Wheeler is wrong about the performance of the F-22 -- though I'm unaware of any use in actual combat yet -- but even if so, I don't follow how that invalidates either his specific other views, or his general credibility, per se. Suggesting that it means he's generally unreliable because of one data point would seem a bit of an over-generalization, though perhaps you have other points of concern about him.

[novakant]

What concerns me much more than the actual amount of spending (well, I'm from Europe, lol) is the suspicion that the US economy is by now so intertwined with and dependent on the military/security complex that troops are stationed everywhere, arms exported worldwide and wars have to be fought on a regular basis just to keep the whole system running more or less smoothly.

I'm aware that this claim has a bit of a conspiratorial whiff to it, but on the other hand there is so much circumstantial evidence that it is hard to dismiss. Does anybody know a good book on this?

[Slartibartfast]

Reading your link, I'm not noticing any claims that I'm aware are false

I didn't say any claims in that link are false, just that the F-35 instead of F-22 isn't necessarily something that Wheeler is going to agree with.

Suggesting that it means he's generally unreliable because of one data point would seem a bit of an over-generalization

I don't say that he's generally unreliable, but I do think that he's not generally knowledgeable about the nuts and bolts of defense machines. Less knowledgeable, for instance, than I am. He makes some decent points about the acquisition process, but hasn't, as far as I've read, brought forth any ideas about how to make it work better.

But the publication Eric is going to be (hopefully) writing about isn't written by Wheeler, just edited by him.

[Winslow Wheeler]

Some of you are interested in my reasons for describing the F-22 as a "dog." Please find same in the September 20, 2006 Janes Defense Weekly at

http://www.cdi.org/PDFs/Stevenson%
20Sprey%20Commentary%20on%20F-22.pdf

Also, please find my views on the even more disappointing F-35, also originally in Janes, at
http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=4370&from_page=../program/document.cfm

[Hogan]

generally speaking, everyone referred to "the British Empire" through at least 1950, and the idea that their wasn't a British Empire during WWII would be a very anachronistic argument.

True, but that's not the British Empire for which people (*cough*NiallFerguson*cough*) are nostalgic. It's the pre-WWI model, or even the pre-Boer War model.
(Generally sold in this country as "the Kipling.")

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

Could you be more specific as to who and when this refers to?

Good question Bernard. I was deliberately a bit on the vague side as all historical comparisons are to some degree strained, some are just more strained than others :-)

So I don't see any good bright lines to draw in making comparisons. Having made that obligatory disclaimer, what I primarily had in mind are the industrialized nations with large centralized bureaucratic states and large standing militaries in peacetime, from roughly the mid 19th Cen. to present.

So that would mean the US post-1865, the so-called European "Great Powers" of the post-Napoleonic era, post-Meiji Restoration Japan, post-1949 China, India and Pakistan, and a variety of other similar states.

At the same time I think somewhat looser comparisons can be made with earlier states (e.g. some of the 18th Cen. European states) as well, but estimates of GDP and govt. budgetary information are rather hard to come by in many such cases. Also, as you diverge from contemporary state structures it becomes harder to define what is the equivalent of peacetime military spending. For example samurai in Tokugawa Japan received a regular govt. stipend - does that count as military spending, or is it merely an economic bounty received by a politically and culturally favored social class? A bit of both IMHO, which raises some interesting issues about how to judge spending in our contemporary US military-industrial complex. How much of the spending on the latter is truly military in character and how much could more accurately be described as a public sector jobs program and/or white-collar welfare?

[Slartibartfast]

Mr. Wheeler:

With all due respect, that article contains a great many unsourced assertions, and quite a few statements that are highly arguable.

On the issue of size: the F-22 is almost exactly the same size as an F-15. Do you have similar objections to the suitability of F-15s as air superiority platforms?

On the issue of stealth: stealth doesn't make you invisible to radar, it decreases the detection range. If you're arguing counter to stealth, the use of some metrics is absolutely necessary.

You're not going to get any argument from me on expense.

The "five points" are disputable, but you've supported none of them by anything but assertion. Point 1: training and ability you downcheck because the air force doesn't (or didn't; this is a 2-year-old article) have the budget to train. In other words, this is just the expense argument in disguise. This item doesn't seem to belong, in any event: training isn't a limiting factor in an airplane, unless they're down for maintenance to the extent that training is impeded. Your grading of the remaining points is by assertion only; in fact, you undercut your own argument later by saying that these things have not in fact been demonstrated other than in scripted engagements.

I suggest that you review the Red Flag results and update. There's data, there; if your point is a valid one, it ought to withstand exposure to data. If you think the data is suspect, noting that would also be a plus.

It doesn't take an expert to see that there are pieces missing from the discussion. Hopefully your experts can, or already have, filled in those pieces. It's been 30 months since that article was published; surely something has come to light to either reinforce or discount your points.

Again, the expense is a good argument, and may in fact be a sufficient one.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

Now for some numbers. I apologize as I couldn't find my dog-eared copy of Paul Kennedys RAFotGP last night, so I had to make do with *cough*NiallFerguson*cough*.

From The Pity of War, Chapter 5 Public Finance and National Security, Table 13, the spending of major European powers from 1873-1913 ranged within the following bounds (as a percent of Net National Product)

Britain 2.0 - 5.9
France 3.1 - 4.8
Russia 4.4 - 5.1
Germany 2.4 - 3.9
Austria 2.8 - 4.8
Italy 1.9 - 5.1

(note that these lows and highs were not correlated, they took place at different times in differne countries. Let me know if you want the whole time series and not just a summary).

During the latter half of this same period total public spending (see Figure 5 in the same chapter) for these powers ranged within a band of between 11 and 20 percent of NNP, so roughly speaking military spending constituted between 1/5 and 1/3 of total public spending on the part of these states.
(and to answer the point that Hartmut made above, Ferguson aggregates both Federal and State level spending for the purposes of measuring Imperial Germany).

Now if we compare this with current US spending of about 7 percent of GDP, it looks to me like we today are devoting a greater level of resources to our military than did the major European powers during a period which was considered by many contemporaries to be a period of international tension and burdensome arms races. I submit that these figures suggest that the US is at present overly militarized, by at least a factor of 1.5 and perhaps as much as 2, as measured by a combination of spending as a fraction of GDP and military spending as a fraction of total public spending.

Having said that, some caveats:

An argument could be made that the US is presently engaged in wartime levels of spending, not peacetime levels of spending, and that a proper comparison would be to the spending of the European powers during say the Crimean War, not the relatively peaceful interval bracketed by the Franco-Prussian War and WW1.

Second, it may not make sense to include DHS and VA spending is the estimate of US spending for the purposes of this comparison for the following reasons: (1) our contemporary DHS is probably the closest counterpart we have today of a 19th Cen European state’s Interior Ministry (e.g. border control, infrastructure protection, law enforcement, and domestic political repression) which is not included in these estimates of military spending. (2) I think it is difficult to compare our Veterans Affairs system today with 19th Cen. systems of public health and veterans support, especially for the pre-1914 period when most wartime casualties were caused by epidemic diseases rather than enemy arms, and battlefield trauma medicine was nothing like what we have today.

I’ll see if I can come up with more information later.

PS. From what I can tell using a percent sign in comment text seems to drive Typepad’s preview/post feature crazy, sending it into an endless loop, so I had to bail out and try again with revised text. My apologies if this comment ends up being double posted.

[Bernard Yomtov]

TTL,

Thanks for digging that out.

Historical comparisons of this sort are interesting, but need an awful lot of adjustment, I suspect, to be meaningful. And of course the international political situation, a well as the situation of individual states, affects the amount of spending that is rational.

I think it is difficult to compare our Veterans Affairs system today with 19th Cen. systems of public health and veterans support, especially for the pre-1914 period when most wartime casualties were caused by epidemic diseases rather than enemy arms, and battlefield trauma medicine was nothing like what we have today.

I'm not so sure the comparison is invalid. I take you to be saying that veteran care and benefits are much more expensive today than in the past. But that just means today's soldiers are better-paid - as they should be on pure economic grounds even ignoring other considerations.

[Gary Farber]

"With all due respect, that article contains a great many unsourced assertions, and quite a few statements that are highly arguable."

He linked to two articles. The latter is by "Pierre Sprey was one of three designers who conceived and shaped the F-16; he also led the technical side of the US Air Force’s A-10 design concept team. James Stevenson is former editor of the Navy Fighter Weapons School’s Topgun Journal and author of The Pentagon Paradox and The $5 Billion Misunderstanding. This article is adapted from a briefing they produced for the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information."

"This item doesn't seem to belong, in any event: training isn't a limiting factor in an airplane, unless they're down for maintenance to the extent that training is impeded."

His assertion:

[...] Flying the cheap, simple F-5, the robustly trained instructors consistently whipped the students in their ‘more capable’ F-4 Phantoms, F-14 Tomcats and F-15 Eagles. Today, partly thanks to the pressure on the air force’s training budget from the F-22’s excessive purchase and operating costs, an F-22 pilot gets 12 to 14 hours of flight training per month.

His argument is that there's a limited amount of money that's going to go to the Air Force, and a dollar spent on the over-budget F-22 is a dollar that can't be spent on training hours.

And, yes:

Moreover, stealth plus the F-22’s complexity result in unprecedented levels of maintenance downtime. That further reduces numbers in the air. 185 F-22s will support about 120 deployed fighters. They will be lucky to generate 60 combat sorties per day, a laughable number in any serious air war. In World War II, the Luftwaffe could field only 70 of its revolutionary jet, the Me-262. It caused alarm among Allied pilots but had negligible effect on the air battle.

[Gary Farber]

"His assertion"

Sorry, their assertion.

[Slartibartfast]

He linked to two articles.

One of which is about the F-35 and so, one hopes, doesn't contain much substantial about the performance of the F-22.

After perusing the second link, I see that was a valid assumption. There's much that is arguable about the F-35 in there as well, but that's another discussion.

His assertion:

...doesn't say anything at all about whether the F-5 is a better or worse airplane than those their opponents drove. All it says is lots of training is a lot better than not-so-much. Certainly one can't expect ME, for example, in an F-22, to defeat any top gun instructor in a Piper Cub sporting a Lewis Gun, except by outrunning it.

Assuming I survived the takeoff.

In any case, none of that says anything at all about the F-22 being a "dog".

And, yes:

This might actually be a decent argument against the F-22, but it's not a performance-in-battle argument.

I'm not making any claims at all about the dogfighting performance of the F-22 or F-35, I'm pointing out that those who have made such claims haven't substantiated them in any way that I can see.

[Turbulence]

This might actually be a decent argument against the F-22, but it's not a performance-in-battle argument.

I disagree. The point is that if you spend money on really expensive fighters that spend a lot of time on the ground being repaired, your pilots will get a lot less training time than if you spend money on cheaper aircraft that spend a lot more time in the air. Choosing the F-22 means that we will not be able to give our pilots as much air time as we otherwise would. Pilots with fewer hours of flight time have lower combat effectiveness.

I mean, if you want to debate a completely abstract isolated question like "Is the F-22 a more useful aircraft than the F-16 when deployed by an Air Force that has an infinite budget?", then I agree with you that Wheeler's argument goes nowhere. But since we live in the real world where budgets are finite and training time matters....

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

Historical comparisons of this sort are interesting, but need an awful lot of adjustment, I suspect, to be meaningful. And of course the international political situation, a well as the situation of individual states, affects the amount of spending that is rational.

Agreed. I was hoping to establish some sort of rough baseline for comparison, but the real meat of the argument of course lies in the details and in how conditions today differ from those in the past. As a general rule, I regard past history as a school, not a prison - i.e., as something we can learn from (and which we ignore at our peril), but not something that we are shackled to, at least not necessarily.

[Slartibartfast]

As I've said repeatedly, Turbulence, there may be good arguments against the F-22, but dogfighting effectiveness is one that's not evidenced.

If I thought the arguments connected, though, I could always question where they got their numbers. Go digging for MTBF or MTBME and see how the F-22 compares to F-15 or F-16.

[Slartibartfast]

There's lots of other uncertainties in there, too. The training hours...how many do F-16 and F-15 pilots get to put in? To what extent is the lack of training time for F-22 pilots in type due to aircraft expense, as opposed to other factors?

I realize that there's only so much information you can put in these things, so I don't expect a lot.

I suppose I've completely derailed this thread. Sorry.

[Slartibartfast]

Ah, some blessed, sweet data.

Skipping to page 127, you can see typical training hours per month for F-16 squadrons for the period of a decade, ending in 1999. The flight training hours per month in 1999 was 15.9. There was a steady decline from a max of about 23 in 1992 to 15 in 1997-8.

I can't find any current data, though, nor is it evident that this tells us anything we can form conclusions from.

[Gary Farber]

I would tend to expect that training hours in all planes would be inclined to decline, if there was less money for training, rather than the cost of one plane leading to less training only in that specific plane. Unless accounting for some reason led to the latter.