The Defense Department recently confirmed that it’s blocking the sale of 66 F-16 C/D fighters that Taiwan had wanted to buy to update its air force. The repercussions may surprise you.
The move was no great surprise: Red China has been making a rumpus about the promised sale for months, even threatening in a People’s Daily editorial to use “the financial weapon” in retaliation if the sale went through — and what America’s biggest debt holder wants, it’s bound to get. Besides, the F-16s were going to be built in Texas, not exactly this administration’s favorite state.
The Pentagon is trying to soften the blow by offering an upgrade package for the F-16s Taiwan already has. But everyone knows this is a major setback for relations between us and one of our traditional allies in Asia. “We’re so disappointed in the United States,” one Taiwan official said.
But blocking the sale doesn’t just hurt a friend in need. It also limits our own power projection in the Pacific region — precisely why Beijing has been so adamant about stopping the sale.
And it’s going to cost American jobs, and deal a sharp blow to one of our biggest and most beleaguered defense contractors.
It may even hurt our own future defense capabilities, for reasons few policy-makers understand when they talk about big budget cuts at the Pentagon.
The F-16 is this country’s principal export fighter, seeing service in more than 20 air arms around the world. The $8.7 billion sale would have included the Pentagon’s 3.8 percent surcharge on all military hardware sales to foreign countries. That’s real money in its pocket, not just another congressional authorization.
Or would have been — because now, wherever Taiwan does decide to buy its new fighters, it won’t be in the United States.
In addition, building those 66 planes would’ve kept Lockheed Martin’s Dallas-Fort Worth F-16 production line running at capacity, helping to lower the price tag of the F-16s Iraq and Oman have announced they are thinking of buying — and meant adding new assembly line and engineering jobs.
Then the hundreds of subcontractors in 44 states that supply parts, engines, and electronic systems for the Fighting Falcon would’ve been adding new workers — by one published estimate, as many as 87,000.
Add in the $768 million in federal tax revenue Lockheed and those subcontractors would have paid, and the lost opportunities begin to add up.
Now, killing the deal could cost 2,000 existing jobs, at an aviation company still reeling from Obama’s cancellation of its F-22 Raptor program and thousands of layoffs last month.
But the costs of cancellation don’t stop there. Lockheed Martin continually upgrades the US Air Force’s own F-16s, and keeping the production line going helps to lower those costs and maintains efficient upgrade capabilities. Now those planes may suffer, as well — or cost millions more to add new systems.
If an angry Taiwan turns down the upgrade offer on new radar and missile systems which our planes also use, that’ll be still another blow to hopes of keeping our own F-16s combat effective and in the air.
Loss of jobs, loss of revenue, loss of capabilities, and loss of face: It’s a preview what America can look forward to with other weapons programs if current plans to cut the Pentagon budget by $900 billion over 10 years go forward, leaving a ripple effect through the economy but also in our force effectiveness.
Republicans in Congress agreed to those plans with President Obama. Perhaps, under a new, Republican president (especially if he happens to come from Texas), they might reverse this disastrous and self-destructive course, and not just on the Taiwan sale.
Some skeptics think the deal is dead. In dealing with Obama, “Beijing’s kung fu is better than Washington’s [meaning Congress’],” is the way one attendee at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition put it. We’ll see.
In the meantime, our current defense policy seems to be largely shooting ourselves in the foot — again.
Arthur Herman, author of “Gandhi and Churchill,” is completing a book on the the World War II “Arsenal of Democracy.”