F-22s may be based at Nellis

Tuesday, Aug. 3, 1999 | 11:33 a.m.

LAS VEGAS SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON -- The military has committed $18.6 million for an F-22 fighter jet base at Nellis Air Force Base, and today the Air Force's top officer said he is confident the full Congress will reverse a House decision to delete $1.8 billion earmarked for manufacturing the plane.

"Our assumption is we're going to get the F-22," Gen. Michael Ryan, the Air Force chief of staff, told reporters this morning.

Ryan said he and Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters met Monday night with Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee and a leading force behind the drive to put an indefinite hold on the Air Force's plan to build 339 new F-22 fighters.

Ryan declined to say whether he believed he had changed Lewis' mind. Lewis and others question the wisdom of investing another $40 billion in the F-22 while the Pentagon also is investing heavily in two other new fighter projects -- the Navy's upgraded F/A-18E and the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter.

Ryan said he believed that if Congress forced the Air Force to delay the start of F-22 production, as the House voted to do last month, the project's contractors would walk away from the project.

"Any pause ... will probably kill the program," Ryan said.

The Air Force plans to base 17 F-22s at Nellis as early as 2002. That would add 360 people to the base.

Jay Cranford, spokesman for Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said in July that the F-22 remains "the top priority" with the Air Force and that the Air Force is "committed to making Nellis the premier fighter weapon's school in the country."

The Nellis project includes an F-22 aircraft maintenance hangar to be built at a budgeted cost of $7.8 million, a composite and fabrication shop for $7.5 million and a parts warehouse and operations addition for $3.3 million.