How urgent are U.S. "emergency" Iraq funds?

By Richard Cowan - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An "emergency" request to the U.S. Congress for funds to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is strewn with money to buy military goods that cannot yet be used in either country.

Buried in President George W. Bush's 159-page request for additional war funding are plans to give the Pentagon $230 million for an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft purchase.

That's a small portion of the more than $100 billion in war funds the Bush administration wants Congress to pass. White House Budget Director Jim Nussle told lawmakers last week that failure to do so by late May would harm Pentagon operations.

But it is part of a Pentagon strategy to help modernize a war-sapped military with money outside its regular budget.

Nussle's urgent appeal failed to note that Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is still in the developmental stage, not entering service until around 2013.

The F-35 has been in the works since at least 1993, so it's not exactly an unexpected cost of war in Iraq or Afghanistan, which the emergency spending claims to address.

The Pentagon said the F-35 funding request was relevant because the fighters will replace F-16 jets lost in Iraq.

"We don't feel that it makes sense to replace existing losses with old technology," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He acknowledged the Pentagon might have considered replacing lost F-16s with technology now available if war losses, and therefore the need for replacements, was greater.

Placing some longer-term expenditures in emergency war-funding bills is a way of getting around caps on the Defense Department's regular spending and "makes more money available in the regular budget to meet cost overruns," said Amy Belasco, a Congressional Research Service defense analyst.

Chronically, major Pentagon projects have exceeded cost projections, according to government auditors.

Besides the F-35 request, the Pentagon wants $492.5 million in "emergency" funds to buy the Air Force five CV-22 Osprey aircraft that can take off and hover like a helicopter and make long-distance flights like an airplane.

The aircraft, manufactured by Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. and Boeing Co., will not be operational until 2009 at the earliest, with a total of 50 CV-22 aircraft delivered by 2017, according to the U.S. Air Force.

Another high-tech aircraft, Boeing's EA-18G Navy plane, would get $375 million. But this precision attack aircraft also won't even become operational for another year.

Democrats running for president are promising that if they occupy the White House in January, they will immediately begin phasing out the war in Iraq and possibly have it over with before some of these weapons are widely available.

THE UNCERTAINTIES OF WAR?