Last year, more than 1,000 pilots walked away from the Air Force, many of them citing similar problems as their reasons for leaving. Meanwhile, the Air Force spent more than $2 billion developing another sophisticated fighter, the F-22 Raptor.

In this episode of America's Defense Monitor, we'll take a close look at the Super Hornet and the F-22. Are decision-makers in Washington clinging to these programs at the expense of our fighting forces? You might be surprised at how far the US military is willing to go to get its fighter jet fix.

NARRATOR: Whether piercing the sky like supersonic darts, or nimbly touching down on a Navy aircraft carrier, high-tech fighter jets are dazzling to watch. Popular as video games, in TV commercials, and in Hollywood movies, fighter jets provide the perfect picture of power, speed, agility, and destructive power.

Today these jets play a number of important roles in American military operations around the world. Fighters keep the skies clear of hostile aircraft, protecting other combat assets, like aircraft carriers. They attack enemy forces in support of troops on the ground. Also, as seen in the Persian Gulf War, high-tech fighters can perform precision assaults on key targets in enemy territory.

The tactical aircraft used today by the United States military are the most advanced in the world, and no other nation or group of nations can compete with American air power.

But today, air power is at a crossroads. Fighters like the Air Force's F-16 Falcon and F-15 Eagle, and the Navy's F-14 Tomcat and F-18 Hornet, have helped the US military control the skies for more than two decades. But in the near future, large portions of the current 3,500-plane fighter fleet will begin reaching retirement age.

Rather than buy more of these planes to replenish the aging fleet, the military plans to spend about $120 billion to produce two new fighter models, the Navy F-18 Super Hornet, and the Air Force F-22 Raptor. The Navy and the Air Force have made these planes the centerpieces of their future forces.

Dr. Williamson Murray is the Charles Lindbergh Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. A strong proponent of Air Power and historian of military aviation, Dr. Murray is skeptical of the Pentagon's plans for the next generation of tactical aircraft.

MURRAY: I think there are a number of us who look at the larger strategic situation the United States is in, as well as the condition that the American services across the board are in, and this seems to be an expenditure which is simply unreasonable and doesn't make any sense.

NARRATOR: According to Dr. Murray, a new generation of fighters might be needed someday. But no potential adversary is planning to challenge American air power any time soon.

MURRAY: First of all, it seems pretty clear to me that for the next certainly two decades, and probably longer, there is not going to be a major peer competitor, and there may not even be a major regional competitor, the way the Pentagon talks about it, in terms of the high tech end of war.

NARRATOR: Under current plans, each F-18 Super Hornet will cost the Navy $80 million, twice as much as the plane it is designed to replace, the F-18 Hornet. The huge price tag has led to a watchful eye on Capitol Hill, and controversy has followed the Super Hornet program since itsinception.

The Super Hornet was originally sold to Congress as a modified version of the F-18 Hornet, a fighter jet based on the Navy's aircraft carriers. The Super Hornet would carry more munitions and more fuel than its predecessor, and have a new suite of avionics, the electronic systems through which the pilot monitors his plane's radar, weapons, and performance.

Because of the extra fuel, weapons, and electronics the Super Hornet would carry, its body had to be made about 25% larger than the Hornet's. As a result, the airframe had to be redesigned and rebuilt from scratch. In addition, the Super Hornet needed a new wing, a fact which program officials failed to report to the Secretary of Defense.

MURRAY: It's a new aircraft. It looks something the same, but it's a new aircraft. I think that certainly in terms of what Congress, in terms of its acquisition legislation, it should be considered a new aircraft. It's being called a follow on model so it can avoid part of the nightmare that Congress has created in terms of an acquisition program.

NARRATOR: By designating the Super Hornet as simply an upgrade of a current model, Boeing and the Navy were able to sign contracts involving hundreds of companies across the United States for assembly line production of the new plane, all before its capabilities had been proven. Last year, the Navy released $2 billion in production funds to Boeing for 20 aircraft.

MURRAY: ...well, I think both the Navy and the Air Force are pushing the production because of a sense that they want to cross, if you will, the line of departure as fast as they can to create a situation in which the cancellation of those aircraft becomes almost impossible.

NARRATOR: In the Navy's case, "pushing production" of the Super Hornet has included attempts to hide the plane's deficiencies. When flight tests revealed a problem with the Super Hornet's newly-designed wing, program officials waited a year to report the problem to the Secretary of Defense. The Super Hornet program was earning a bad reputation.

CUNNINGHAM: I was very critical of this when it came in. I didn't wanna build this plane. It was risky, it was only about 15% common with the F/A-18, the engines weren't developed. But all of those fears have been put to rest because it has become a very good system.

NARRATOR: Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham represents California's 51st District. A former flight instructor at the Navy's "Top Gun" fighter weapons school, Cunningham was one of the nation's top fighter pilots.

CUNNINGHAM: They were having some problems with the FA-18 E/F, the wing-drop problem....

NARRATOR: Carrier-based aircraft have folding wings, designed to save space on the carrier's deck. A problem with the fold in the Super Hornet's wing caused the plane to wobble unexpectedly during test flights. To solve the problem, the contractors eventually decided on a new covering for the wing-fold. Representative Cunningham's concerns about the wing-drop problem were put to rest when he took the Super Hornet for a test drive.

CUNNINGHAM: I took it in every area. I looked at precisely where they were having the problems. The G-loadings, the speeds, the altitudes, and put it through all the paces and couldn't duplicate the problem that they had, and if there was I problem there, I could duplicate it.

NARRATOR: Since the discovery of the wing-drop problem, other concerns about the Super Hornet's performance have surfaced. Tests have shown that the Super Hornet may be less maneuverable in the air than its less-expensive predecessor, the F-18 Hornet, a disadvantage in aerial combat.

In addition, tests on the Super Hornet's engine revealed cracking, and incidents have been reported of engines stalling in the crucial moments before the plane is catapulted off a carrier's deck. Despite these glitches, Boeing and the Navy argue that the Super Hornet's increased weapons load and advanced avionics compensate for its weaknesses. Randy Cunningham agrees.

CUNNINGHAM: First of all, look at the ordnance level you have here... Just the number of weapons that you can bring to bear on a target means you may not have to fly there as many times, 'cause you can put more bombs or missiles on targets....

Another good thing, the aircraft, just like a computer, is user-friendly. You can take a very junior aviator, put him in this airplane, and the airplane itself is easy to fly.....

I can find my target, I know where the bad guys are. And my systems, like Buck Rodgers, it goes [simulates computer bleeps] 'MiG-29, MiG-31', so I know his capabilities, how close can I let him get and still continue my mission….

NARRATOR: If the Super Hornet program does fulfill its promise, it will bring enhanced weapons capability and more sophisticated avionics to naval aviation. But according to Williamson Murray, the Super Hornet's innovations do not justify its high cost.

MURRAY: I think one can say that the FA-18E and F does not represent any substantially new technologies. It does not carry any substantial tactical advantages over ...the F-18 Cs and Ds, except 50 to 60 or 70 miles additional range, which is not a heck of a lot of range.

NARRATOR: One of Murray's concerns is that limited range of the Super Hornet may force aircraft carriers to operate closer to trouble spots in the future, and that the plane's high cost will leave the carriers with fewer defenses.

MURRAY: ... if you focus all your money on the F-18E and F so that you can have enough aircraft on your flight decks, then you... you end up making decisions such as basically having no mine clearance capabilities, and destroying, if you will, or substantially downsizing your anti-submarine forces.... because the money isn't there. And we will see this increasingly once the F-18E and F goes into full production.

NARRATOR: Dr. Murray recommends cancelling the Super Hornet program and sticking with the currently-used version of the F-18 Hornet. He argues that the Super Hornet's new technologies will not give US forces an added advantage in the likely conflicts of the future.

MURRAY: The real issue is that, in the kinds of wars and contingencies the United States is going to most likely be confronted with, we're going to need manpower, Marines, soldiers on the ground... Perhaps we can do a little bit away with the sort of emphasis on sophistication, which is, I think, the bugbear of the American military right now.

NARRATOR: Addressing a conference on Air Force doctrine, another strong supporter of the military, Congressman Ike Skelton of Missouri, also warned his audience to beware the technology bug.

SKELTON: The promise of yesterday's technology has become the reality of today's vastly increased capabilities. Yet at the same time I would caution technology enthusiasts to temper their enthusiasm…. If budgets remain flat, then can we really afford tactical aircraft programs? The F-22? The Navy F/A-18 E&F? This group, you, can either reaffirm current thinking or propose realistic alternatives. I challenge you to that.

NARRATOR: But like the Navy, the Air Force has made a super-sophisticated tactical fighter, the F-22 Raptor, its top funding priority. Since the program's inception in the early 1980's, $20 billion has been invested in the F-22's development. The F-15, which the F-22 was designed to replace, cost $3 billion to develop at the height of the Cold War. The Air Force plans to spend about $200 million dollars each for some 341 F-22 Raptors. That's four times the unit cost of the F-15, the most capable fighter in the world today.

MURRAY: The F-22 is the leading edge of technology. Absolutely no doubt about that. Of course, that's one of the reasons why it is so expensive per copy. But it is very clearly far and away, and will be far and away for the next thirty, maybe forty years, the premiere tactical fighter in the world.

NARRATOR: Unlike the Super Hornet, the F-22 truly is a new and revolutionary design and, as Dr. Murray observed, that is one reason for its high cost. For example, the process of joining the F-22's central fuselage to the rest of the plane takes 69,000 man-hours of labor-equal to 35 people working full-time for a year. By comparison, a fully equipped F-16 fighter takes 26,000 man-hours to assemble from the ground up.

The new shapes, surfaces, and materials were designed to make the F-22 more aerodynamic and maneuverable, and less visible to enemy radar than currently used fighters. Col. Al Piccirillo managed the F-22 program in its early stages, from 1983 until his retirement from the Air Force in 1987. He recalls some of the innovations built into the plane's early design.

PICCIRILLO: That stealthy shape includes internal weapons bays, rather than carrying the air-to-air missiles under the wings like we do on a conventional airplane, they are carried on an internal bay, for reasons of stealth. They're ejected or put out in the air stream and fired in a very brief period of time and then the doors are closed and the airplane is highly stealthy.

NARRATOR: Like the Super Hornet, the F-22 promises a leap ahead in fighter avionics.

PICCIRILLO: ...with the embedded systems that he has in the airplane that can help him identify targets at very long range, tell where friendly aircraft are, where his own members of his flight are, he will be able to coordinate his attack on enemy targets.

MURRAY: It's going to have wonderful, superduper downlinks from satellites. You'll be able to zap any fighter systems out there with AWACS support. It is a wonderful, tactical fighter. Absolutely no doubt about it.

NARRATOR: The seemingly limitless promise of the F-22 is matched by the high level of risk the Air Force is taking in its commitment to the plane. The high cost of the F-22, like the Super Hornet, will force other priorities to take a back seat.

NARRATOR: The Air Force may have to make cuts in other programs, including personnel, in order to afford the F-22. Supporters of the program argue that the F-22's capabilities will compensate for its high cost, and will also make up for the smaller force which could result from the tremendous expense. But the plane's critics argue that this only demonstrates the lengths a military service will go in order to hang on to big-ticket weapons programs.

STEVENSON: I once had a two-star Air Force general tell me, he said, "don't think that the Pentagon is about setting strategy. It's about everybody fighting for budget share. And whenever you see the Air Force take a position, it's always to justify an increased share of the military budget."

NARRATOR: James Stevenson is an expert on military aviation and the author of several books on tactical fighter programs. The former editor of the Top Gun Journal has in recent years turned his attention to the F-22 program.

STEVENSON: To put everything into one airplane, and make it do all jobs for all missions, and have all kinds of capability, is a very expensive proposition, and may not be the right way to go.

NARRATOR: Stevenson and other critics point out that many of the F-22's capabilities remain unproven to this day. One such capability is stealth-the ability to avoid detection by enemy forces. Questions remain as to whether stealth technology, which includes special shapes, surfaces, and electronics systems, is really effective and reliable.

STEVENSON: I'm not saying that stealth isn't a great concept, and I'm not saying it doesn't work, what I'm saying is, that we don't know if it works and we have to rely on people who have a bias towards telling us that it works, who have a history of telling us things are the way they are, when in fact they aren't. MURRAY: It works. We put two F-117s over the heart of an operating Iraqi air defense system with the best Russian and French equipment available, and they didn't see it...

NARRATOR: Despite the promises of Stealth technology, and its apparent success in the Persian Gulf War, an F-117 stealth fighter was recently shot down over Yugoslavia-a harsh reminder that no plane is invisible.

MURRAY: The aircraft has some deficiencies. The deficiencies are that, unlike the B-2, its range is limited. For example, at a recent war game up at Carlisle, the F-22, flying out of Diego Garcia, required seven refuelings to get to its targets in the Middle East. That's not acceptable.....

NARRATOR: If the F-22 is used to attack targets from a long distance, it will have to approach enemy territory in formation with other fighters, refueling tankers, and numerous other aircraft. Such an expeditionary force will be easier for an enemy to detect than a few fighters attacking from close by. The F-22 is also an extraordinarily large fighter plane, and according to Jim Stevenson, larger aircraft are more vulnerable to being shot down in a dogfight, regardless of their sophistication. Even if stealth technology does work, it may not help the F-22.

STEVENSON: when I was at Topgun, we used to have these, what we called Battle of Britain, where we'd go out and send, you know, 20, 30, 40 airplanes out, or as many as we could get, and it was always the largest airplane that died first. And, guess what, the F-22 is the largest plane in the inventory..... First sight wins the fight.

NARRATOR: According to Colonel Piccirillo, the Air Force compensated for the F-22's size by giving it added speed and maneuverability, in addition to a variety of munitions.

PICCIRILLO: There are almost certainly going to be cases where all of the sudden, people do get into close in fights, eyeball range fights. And that's why the Air Force insisted on that high degree of close-in maneuverability and capability with the F-22 .... It's certainly a highly capable airplane. It's a large airplane, it's an expensive airplane. That's a fact and no-one can ever change that.

NARRATOR: In addition to concerns about the F-22's cost, its size, and its suitability for future missions, observers worry that the sheer complexity of the single-seat F-22 could overwhelm its pilot. Much is riding on the success of the F-22's advanced suite of avionics.

STEVENSON: The idea of the avionics is to so automate this airplane, that the pilot's workload is reduced. And, indeed, if you see the flight demonstrator, with all the avionics in it, it's a marvel.

NARRATOR: Early in the F-22's development, its avionics suite was wired into a passenger jet for testing.

PICCIRILLO: That's right, the pilots were flying in those flying avionics laboratories, and they simulated operating the system as though they were flying the F-22... Boeing used a 777... and essentially they went out and flew the kinds of avionics, prototypes of the kinds of avionics that would eventually go into the F-22.

NARRATOR: Testing avionics in flying laboratories and building flight demonstrators like the one shown here are important steps in developing the new technologies. But the F-22 team is still a year or so away from producing a prototype F-22 with the full suite of avionics. It is difficult to predict how systems tested in a passenger jet will make the transition to the F-22.

STEVENSON: When it's in development, there are still a lot of unknowns. And they're going to be building this airplane probably for a couple years before they've got all of the testing done.

NARRATOR: Normally, a new fighter has complete about 25% of its required testing program before the military will make a decision on whether to start production. By then, most potential problems with the new design are usually discovered and addressed. When the Air Force approved the F-22 for production in 1998, only four percent of its testing program was completed. This type of irregularity, coupled with concerns that funding now going to the F-22 could be better used elsewhere, may force a new round of Congressional scrutiny of the F-22 program.

STEVENSON: Politically, I think the program has some very rough seas. I'm not so concerned with Lockheed's ability to build the airplane, or with the Air Force's ability to keep Congress excited about the airplane. They're both very good at that. What I'm concerned with is that there's not enough money in the budget. The Air Force is in denial in terms of how much money it has...

NARRATOR: To date, Lockheed Martin has signed contracts with nearly 400 companies in 36 states for work related to the F-22. The decision last December to go ahead with production of the F-22 shifted this army this army manufacturers into high gear. Members of Congress, and civilian leaders in the Defense Department will face tremendous pressure to keep funding the F-22.

But the greatest pressure to stop funding the F-22 and the Super Hornet may end up coming from the military itself. Stories abound of military units suffering from a lack of training and reliable equipment. Key personnel are leaving the services in droves. The military must decide whether it can afford to continue funding weapons programs like the F-22 and Super Hornet while the day-to-day needs of its fighting forces go unmet.

MURRAY: if we'd asked the Soviets to send somebody over to design a program that would spend the most money for the least results, they couldn't have done any better than we've managed to do.

NARRATOR: The future of our fighter jet fleet is uncertain; the risks are real, and the stakes are high. Certainly, aging equipment should be replaced. But spending billions of dollars to put The F-22 and the Super Hornet into production, before their time is a costly mistake. There is no threat to American air power which justifies risking $120 billion dollars, not to mention the safety and effectiveness of our military personnel, on these unproven technologies.