The Pentagon is Screaming About the Sequester and Yet Now This...

So, let me get this straight. The Pentagon is crying bloody murder about a sequester it's had well over an entire year to prepare for. Yet, in spite of the coming money crunch and impending doom on Wednesday out came this little goodie about the F-22 Raptor:

"Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (FA8611-13-D-2850) with a ceiling of $6,900,000,000 for F-22 modernization."

Mind you this contract was released at 5pm on Wednesday February 20, 2013; or about twelve hours before the Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh announced that if the sequester goes through 70% of the U.S. Airforce's combat aircraft will be non-combat capable by July. This means that, if General Welsh is to be believed, 70% of the aircraft that actually do something and/or can perform their intended missions without killing their pilots (you know the F-15, F-16, A-10, etc...) will be joining the F-22's on the deck. Either someone is full of it, or someone should lose their job given we are about to render combat incapable 70% of our tactical fleet so that we can modernize "the world's best fighter plane" so it can do more of this:

• Kill its pilots, or force many of them to put their careers on the line in protest because the F-22's oxygen system does not work leading to pervasive illness as well as death.
• Since it became operational in 2005 the F-22 has sat on the runway, in the hangar, flew in circles in safe airspace, but it has flown not one combat mission during a period of time when the U.S. has been at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and supporting combat missions of our Allies (France to name just one).
• What's more, the F-22 does all of this while pricing in at a cool $350 million apiece for 188 aircraft. From there, and in the past two years, we have also seen the Pentagon fork over another $7.4 billion of the taxpayer's money to Lockheed for upgraded capability and enhanced combat performance. Now, if you add this newest $6.9 billion fleecing of the taxpayer to the contract issued two year's prior all of this means that the taxpayer has spent well over $400 million per F-22.

Again, all of this "bang for the buck" is for an aircraft that has managed to miss the three wars our country has been directly involved in since it became operational; and has killed more of its own pilots than it has of the enemy. And yet this plane deserves another $7 billion thrown at it while the part of our Air Force that actually is combat effective will be thrown to the boneyard? One way or another heads should roll - and it would be nice if this time the heads that rolled were not those of the brave personnel flying these aircraft and risking their lives for our country.