Senior lawmakers seek to end production of F-22

By John Crawley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and his former Republican White House rival, Senator John McCain, found common ground on Monday to try and stop efforts in Congress to expand the F-22 fighter jet program.

"As (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates and the military leadership have determined, we do not need these planes," Obama said in a letter to lawmakers that threatened to veto massive legislation containing the $1.75 billion plan for Lochkeed Martin Corp to build seven more aircraft.

"To continue to procure additional F-22s would be to waste valuable resources that should be more usefully employed to provide our troops with the weapons that they actually do need," Obama wrote.

Senator Carl Levin and McCain, the top Democrat and Republican, respectively, on the Armed Services Committee, offered an amendment to overturn the panel's earlier decision to expand the program beyond 187 planes already budgeted.

McCain acknowledged that he and Levin did not at the moment have enough votes to kill the F-22 expansion. The F-22 program touches most states economically, Levin said, making it important to many members of Congress during a time of recession-fueled job losses nationwide.

"We have to make some tough choices in this budget and other budgets and this is a choice our military is urging us to make," Levin said. "We cannot continue to produce weapons systems forever."

The F-22 is just one of several big-ticket procurement programs facing elimination or cutbacks in the legislation that sets military budget priorities for 2010.

Senate leaders would like to approve the legislation this week.

Gates wants to cut back many of the military's weapons programs and transition from the F-22 to three models of Lockheed's Joint Strike Fighter F-35, co-developed with eight countries and built for export.

House and Senate lawmakers in committee have also voted to put extra money toward an alternate engine for the F-35 to be built by a team from General Electric Co and Rolls-Royce Group Plc.

Obama opposes the second engine but has not issued a veto threat over it.

(Reporting by John Crawley; editing by Gunna Dickson, Leslie Gevirtz)