[Whitfield:] Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea, the U.S. military needs different tools for these different threats. The Bush administration wants a beefed up Pentagon budget roughly a billion dollars a day, but is that budget getting the best bang for its buck? Joining us from our Washington bureau, Frank Gaffney, former official in Ronald Reagan's Defense Department, now the president of the Center for Security Policy. Also in our Washington studio, Christopher Hellman, a senior research analyst at the Center for Defense Information. Good to see both of you.
[Frank Gaffney, Center For Security Policy:] Thank you.
[Christopher Hellman, Center For Defense Information:] Thanks.
[Whitfield:] All right. Everyone agrees that it costs a lot of money to develop and refine tools of weaponry for the Department of Defense. But the disagreement comes on what areas are more deserving than the others. So let's begin with the B-22 Osprey, which has been quite controversial for quite awhile. Frank?
[Gaffney:] It has been, principally because it's been plagued by some technical developmental problems and some fatal crashes that resulted from them. However, the reason it's still going and the reason why I'm confident that it will be ultimately deployed and widely used by the Defense Department not just, by the way, the marines and the special operation forces but, I think, in a host of applications is because it really is a transformational technology. It is one that has been understood as a real revolutionary system for many years but particularly in the kinds of environments that we're dealing with today, the war on terror in which you've got to be able to move forces quickly over long distances, stealthily and in a survivable way. This is really an instrument of choice and it's just a shame that it's not available already.
[Whitfield:] Well, Christopher, no one disputes that the Osprey appears to be very versatile or at least it was designed to be very versatile. But at what point do you make a decision on how much money needs to be sunk into a project when it doesn't seem to be a perfect project?
[Hellman:] Well, that really is yes, that's really a good question. What we've seen in the case of the Osprey is that it's been delayed for, you know, years. This is a program that Secretary of Defense Cheney in 1992 tried to cut as being unnecessary and too expensive, and since then, the cost of the program per unit cost of the unit has basically trebled. So the question then becomes, you know, are we throwing good money after bad in this program? The future of the marine corps may very well be tilt rotor technology but that doesn't mean that it will necessarily be the Osprey.
[Whitfield:] All right. Let's talk about the F-22 Raptor. This is created for air combat. Christopher, I want to let you address that, then, first. Does the U.S. necessarily have an enemy to threaten its air warfare while in the air?
[Hellman:] Well, at this point, we probably don't, but that's only really part of the problem. What we have to look at with the F-22 and make no mistake, if it works as advertised, it's going to be the most profoundly advanced fire aircraft that we have ever seen. The problem you run into is that the staggering per unit cost of the thing is putting in the situation where we simply won't be able to purchase enough of them to buy enough air frames, to do all the things that the air force says it needs to be able to do.
[Whitfield:] All right, Frank, how do you defend the Raptor?
[Gaffney:] Well, in a point that ought to be made about both this and the B-22, for that matter, is we've deferred modernization of what the services have been using for these jobs. We're going to have to replace aircraft one way or the other. I agree with Christopher. I think the F-22 will dramatically improve the capabilities of the United States air force. I think we do need to get it into production, we do need to actually start getting those unit costs down. But I think the truth of the matter is we don't know what the future's going to look like and whether it's air to air threats of the future or whether it's surface to air threats of the future. Having a stealthy aircraft with the performance characteristics of this, I think, will be well worth the investment. And I think we'll get there later, probably, rather than sooner but we will have this aircraft in the inventory.
[Whitfield:] Well, Frank, let me Let me stick with you as we move on to another somewhat controversial defense system, and that's the missile defense system, some saying that it really still is very much a pipe dream.
[Gaffney:] Well, it's not. It's actually proving itself day after day. There are, as with a number of these programs, developmental challenges. We have not been working in this area as assiduously and, I think, as effectively as we should have. Principally because, until very recently, until really the president withdrew from the 1972 Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty, we couldn't. We were unable to do the full kinds of testing and take full advantage of the technology available. But one thing I would say is I believe that what we will do very quickly is utilize the navy's Aegis fleet air defense system, an existing system in the inventory today, as a missile defender if, God forbid, somebody lets fly with one of the missiles that's out there, perhaps a short-range missile off of a ship, and destroys some place we care about whether it's the Middle East or perhaps here. That's something that we will do. I wish that we were doing it more aggressively now so that we'd have a defense in place. Unfortunately, we still don't have such a defense in place, but I think the idea that we're in a world in which you can live without missile defense is naive and increasingly reckless.
[Whitfield:] All right. Christopher, then, would the same argument or could the same argument be made for the B-1B Lancers? Lancer bomber?
[Hellman:] Well, I'm not sure what the analogy is there. The B- 1's been in the inventory for over 20 years now. The problem is it hasn't been operationally very much value to us until the last few years because it was there were development problems and then it was it was actually tasked to do the nuclear mission well into the mid-1990s. It's only just now being sort of retasked, reconfigured, so it can perform conventionally. But that's an expensive thing to do, and one of the things that the air force is looking at, as a way to fund that, is actually retire a portion of the fleet in order to make the remaining portion of the fleet operationally more suitable for the current environment.
[Whitfield:] All right. Frank, would you agree with that?
[Gaffney:] Well, the system that I wish we were doing more procurement of is not the B-1 but the B-2, the stealth bomber. And I think it's a terrible mistake that the Pentagon made earlier this year you were talking about the F-22. One of the shortcomings of, no pun intended, of that aircraft is it has relatively short range.
[Whitfield:] All right.
[Gaffney:] Having a long-range bomber for the future is critically important. I think the B-2 is the obvious choice.
[Whitfield:] All right. Frank Gaffney and Christopher Hellman, thank you very much, gentlemen, for joining us.
[Gaffney:] Thank you.
[Whitfield:] Appreciate it.
[Hellman:] My pleasure.
[Whitfield:] Well, next up on NEXT@CNN, we'll have more on military might, 70 tons of military might, as a matter of fact. Find out why the most advanced tank in the world may already be outmoded.