Norman D. Dicks: “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, $420 million from the R&D account, not the procurement account. I wish we…”

“Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, $420 million from the R&D account, not the procurement account. I wish we were in procurement, but we are not there yet. We are still in R&D. What that will do is to slow down this program rather substantially. I think this is a program that has already been stretched out to such an extent that one has to be concerned about how much money we are going to spend on R&D to get this program into procurement. Now, the F-22 is the Air Force's No. 1 priority. Now, anyone who listened to the earlier debate, I might have a different set of priorities for the Air Force, but they believe that the F-22, the air superiority fighter, is absolutely essential for the United States to be able, as we did in the Gulf war, to be able to gain air superiority once a war starts. Of course, this is the airplane that will be involved in coming in, attacking other aircraft, attacking surface-to-air missiles, Scud launchers, and it will be very, very important in the early going in order to gain air superiority and to be able to cap the enemy so that they cannot get their aircraft off the ground. Once we do that, then we can bring in all the nonstealthy assets that we currently possess, like the F-15's, the F-16's, the F-18's, et cetera. But it is the enabler. That is why stealth is so important, not just for bombers but also for our fighter aircraft. So I believe that this is one of the two or three most important programs we are involved in.”