Washington , DC – The House of Representatives voted today to deny the Air Force money to purchase six costly and unproven F-22 fighters. The redirection of F-22 funds to build new F-15 and F-16 aircraft would strengthen our national defense and save taxpayers money, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), a national budget hawk organization.

“The House Appropriations defense subcommittee and specifically Rep. Lewis and Rep. Murtha should be commended for their initiatives to save the taxpayers billions,” said Brian Hughes, director of the National Security Reform Project for TCS. Yet, congressional leaders in the Senate have vowed to nullify this cutback in the near future.

“It is unusual for Congress to kill such a major new defense program after billions of dollars have been spent,” concluded Hughes. “Congress sent a message to the Pentagon that they don’t want to waste money on a fighter that cost too much with questionable results.”

According to the House Committee Report, the F-22 is riddled with technical problems including: “manufacturing problems with titanium castings; anomalies in brakes, inertial reference system and environmental control system; nagging fuel leaks; problems with engine low pressure turbine blades, high pressure turbine blades, and engine combustors; and problems with excessive engine vibration.”

Critics including the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have recently questioned the need for the F-22 program because two other tactical fighter programs, the F/A-18 and the Joint Strike Fighter, already are slated for production.

Since the F-22’s conception, the cost of the program has skyrocketed, according to Hughes. “The price for an F-22 fighter has increased from $68 million to more than $200 million and it is still rising,” Hughes said.

The F-22 is expected to cost $63 billion for 339 fighter planes. But recent studies by the CBO have stated that cost estimates for the F-22 fighter program are still unrealistically low. A recent independent audit found that Lockheed Martin could go $9 billion over budget.

The termination of the F-22 program would produce a five-year savings of at least $14.6 billion, according to the CBO.

While the F-22’s redundancy continues to be questioned by government watchdog agencies, critics say the program is plagued with problems from a lack of experimental testing.

Originally the Air Force planned 1,400 hours of flight testing before awarding a contract to start initial production. But that was reduced to only 183 hours due to delays in the delivery of the test aircraft. The GAO has criticized the Air Force’s decision to reduce flight testing to this level, which is well short of the amount the Defense Science Board suggested.

In April 1992, the only flying prototype of the F-22 crashed. The Air Force blamed the tragedy on operation error, but the CBO stated that this accident might indicate costly production problems.