Obama arms plans hit snags in Congress

By Jim Wolf - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First came Defense Secretary Robert Gates with what many deemed watershed plans for reshaping billions of dollars in U.S. defense spending.

Now pushback has begun in earnest in Congress, opening what may become pitched political fights over pricey arms programs with lawmakers, lobbyists and other critics of President Barack Obama's military spending priorities.

The House of Representatives Armed Services Committee fired what amounted to the first big salvo early Wednesday.

Defying Obama and Gates, the Democratic-led panel recommended keeping alive at least three programs the administration hopes to kill or cap in the 2010 budget.

The most significant was Lockheed Martin Corp's top-of-the-line F-22 fighter jet, which has emerged as a symbol of what Gates wants to end in favor of more spending on lower-tech arms for Iraq- and Afghanistan-type irregular conflicts.

The plane, which has never seen combat, received an unexpected 3 a.m. shot-in-the-arm when panel members voted 31 to 30, led by Republicans, to authorize $369 million as a kind of down payment for 12 more to be purchased in 2011.

In another headache for the administration, Gen. John Corley, head of the Air Force's Air Combat Command, said ending F-22 production as proposed would put current U.S. military strategy at high risk.

"To my knowledge, there are no studies that demonstrate 187 F-22s are adequate to support our national military strategy," Corley said in a June 9 letter to Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, where the plane undergoes final assembly.