Retired Air Force Brig. General Blaine Holt told Newsmax on Thursday that the modern military’s procurement systems can’t be “corrupt,” as he suggested was the case when the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., led the charge in Congress to scrap production of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet.
“I was there when F-22 [Raptor] was killed,” Holt said on “The Chris Salcedo Show.” “I was working for the secretary and the chief at the time. My brother, my little brother, who would go on to be a two-star general, was the contracting officer of the Air Force. He negotiated and actually fought in spaces with John McCain about the number that John McCain wanted to cut from the Air Force so that they could go get the Navy’s LCS [Littoral Combat Ships], which they’re throwing away now. So, we have had disaster after disaster in procurement, and today’s modern warfare won’t permit us to have overbloated corrupt procurement systems.”
President Donald Trump floated the possibility of developing an upgrade to the F-22 Raptor – called the F-22 Super – while speaking at a meeting of business leaders in Doha, Qatar in May.
“I think the most beautiful fighter jet in the world is the F-22 but we’re going to do an F-22 Super and it’ll be a very modern version of the F-22 fighter jet,” the president said at the time.
Holt argued that the United States military “needed those 800 [F-22] Raptors,” that were originally planned and abandoned, and said “we would be in far better shape today with them.”
“We’d be modernizing other systems, which we flew the wings off of in wars that led to nowhere,” he said. “So, Super Raptor is the NGAD – Next Generation Air Dominance fighter. I am told that there are mechanisms in place to make that a much better procurement, and I wish that for the nation, because our Air Force and our nation needs that airplane, and we need them in high numbers.”
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer agreed with Holt, saying that “Blaine is completely correct,” regarding the procurement systems and added that the other thing the Pentagon is “doing right now is updating the F-15, which is a superb platform.”
“The F-15EX is now coming in with 21st century technology,” he said. “We have to get innovation back into the spaces that will benefit the United States, not benefit states and defense contractors. I’d like to believe that era is over.”
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