Here's the only direct statement I can find by Obama on the F-22. It came during a Q & A with voters in Cedar Falls, Iowa on 15 August 2007.
Q Thank you. John Mikulski (sp) from Dubuque.
The biggest, most powerful special interest group we have in this country is the military-industrial complex. And they keep protecting very expensive pork projects that are not needed for our national defense. Senator Biden, Senator Edwards and Governor Richardson have said that they would cut the F-22 fighter, a very expensive piece of flying pork. Will you pledge to cut that program, sir?
SEN. OBAMA: What I have said in audiences in Iowa and across the country is that one of my first acts when I call together the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of Defense is number one, the mission to get our troops out of Iraq. Number two is I want a review of our Pentagon budget. It's bloated. It is still designed for the Cold War instead of some of the new challenges that we're going to be facing in the future.
I have not specifically identified individual spending projects or programs because I think that there's a lot there. You know, the Osprey is an example of something where it's not clear that it's working the way -- in fact, it's fairly clear that it hasn't performed the way it was supposed to. The F-22 is another example.
Alas, it's possible to read too much into this statement. Obama is not taking a policy position on either program. His comment about the F-22 seems more like a polite pander than a firm belief. The fact that he arbitrarily raised the V-22 as an archetype of ineffectual acquisition -- without prompting -- could be interesting.
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