Lockheed F-22 cast as nuclear substitute

Robert Stevens, chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp., speaks during the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington December 16, 2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp's (LMT.N) chief executive, seeking new orders for the F-22 fighter jet in the face of Pentagon resistance, cast the aircraft as a substitute for U.S. nuclear deterrence.

"In my mind's eye, there is almost a singular alternative available to a strategic nuclear deterrent and that would lead us to ... the F-22," Robert Stevens told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington on Tuesday.

The fate of the Air Force's F-22 program awaits a decision by President-elect Barack Obama on whether to extend the production line beyond the 183 aircraft delivered or on order.

The supersonic F-22 Raptor has been the subject of a running battle over affordability for years. In June, Defense Secretary Robert Gates ousted the Air Force's top military and civilian leaders amid a tug-of-war over the aircraft, which has never seen combat.

Designed to defeat enemy fighters and knock out advanced surface-to-air missile systems on the first day of a major war, it features the latest "stealth" technology to reduce detection by radar.

Stevens said the F-22 line would start closing gradually at the end of March in the absence of new orders. Re-opening it after a final batch is to be delivered in 2011, at the end of a three-year, 60-plane deal, would be "prohibitively expensive," he added.

Urging U.S. decision makers to look out as far as 20 years in considering potential threats, he argued against any move to "truncate" the fleet, which the Air Force hopes to boost with 60 more F-22s at a projected cost of more than $9 billion.

"The airplane has the characteristics of being able to penetrate the most significant area-denial capabilities that exist today," Stevens said.

That ability , he argued, could "dissuade an adversary without the application of nuclear weapons and I think that acts in a deterrence fashion without the necessity of bringing nuclear weapons into the discussion," Stevens added.

Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester for four years until February 2005 and a critic of what he has called the "super-expensive" F-22 program, dismissed Steven's argument as "amazing."

"Grasping at straws," he said, adding, "The nerve."

Richard Aboulafia, an expert on warplanes at Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia aerospace consultancy. said the F-22's stealth and precision "hardly rival the kind of fear you inspire from the threat of nuclear incineration."

Stevens said he expected that another multiyear purchase of F-22s would drive unit costs down. The F-22 costs about $142 million apiece, the Air Force said earlier this year, not including development costs.

Stephen Finger, president of Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) and maker of the F119 engine used by the F-22, said his company would be open to a lower price on the engine, depending on the terms of any new multiyear deal.

"Given all else being equal, we would expect to continue coming down on the learning curve," Finger told the summit. "It's something we would like to have a shot at."

Finger said continuing F-22 production for several more years made sense given the large number of jobs it supports, and the possibility of future exports to the closest allies of the United States.

Current law forbids any exports of the F-22, but one analyst said the U.S. Air Force was gearing up to push for a change in the law under the new administration.

The Pentagon's outgoing top weapons buyer, John Young, told Congress last month that continued F-22 purchases would jeopardize the ability to buy as many F-35s, a cheaper Lockheed Martin fighter, as needed to keep them affordable. The United States plans to buy 2,456 F-35 aircraft through 2027.

The F-22 and the F-35 are designed to work in concert. Stevens said Lockheed was hoping that the Pentagon would fully fund 17 F-35s in the next low-rate, initial production lot.

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Reporting by Jim Wolf and Andrea Shalal-Esa; editing by Tim Dobbyn)