What a Blunder

That’s how Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes describes the Obama Administration’s efforts to end the F-22 production line. In an op-ed piece for the Sept. 7 issue of the business magazine, Forbes argues that White House officials and others “take our superiority in the air for granted and thereby conclude we don’t need to make big investments on future weapons systems to maintain that superiority.” Such thinking, he writes, “is a classic mistake.” Instead, the US “should take no chances with this superiority,” he continues. Forbes says, while “shooting down” the F-22 is supposed to demonstrate the Administration’s “determination to bring sanity to defense spending,” the issue of defense acquisition reform is separate from the need for more F-22s. “The need to reform our procurement systems shouldn’t stand in the way of developing the weapons we need now and will need in the future,” he says.