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COPYRIGHT 2005 Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News
By Sig Christenson, San Antonio Express-News Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Feb. 28--Two years after hammering Iraqi forces into "shock and awe," the Air Force has cut the number of recruits graduating from Lackland AFB and is battling to save a cherished fighter from devastating budget cuts.
Critics say those actions are classic symptoms of an Air Force locked in a technological "death spiral" -- powered in part, ironically, by its most promising fighter ever, the revolutionary F/A-22 Raptor.
Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force's chief of staff, calls such talk nonsense. The Air Force was forced to buy fewer Raptors than it wanted because of budget cuts, and fewer are needed because they're superior to anything that flies, especially when loaded with "smart" bombs that rarely miss their targets. But he also suggested the battle for a bigger Raptor fleet isn't over yet.
"I'm not going to fight anybody. I'm going to lay out the facts and let the facts present themselves," Jumper said in a recent interview at Randolph AFB. "And that's what we've...
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