The dire price of victory or failure

President Obama has proposed to slow Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter programme, the Pentagon’s costliest purchase at about
$300bn over the next 25 years.

The Defense Department wants
$10.7bn to continue F-35 development and to buy 43 of the radar-evading
fighters in fiscal 2011, down from $10.8bn this fiscal year, according
a Pentagon budget overview.

The following is a list of how Obama would fund other major weapons programs:

 *
The Navy would spend $1.9bn to buy 22 Boeing Co F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
fighter jets, up from $1.7bn for 18 in the fiscal 2010 budget enacted
by Congress.

 * The Navy would spend $1.1bn to buy 12 Boeing
E/A-18G carrier-based electronic attack aircraft, down from $1.7bn for
22 this year.

 * The Pentagon would spend $1.86bn for new
unmanned Predator and Reaper planes built by privately held General
Atomics, up from $1.18bn.

 * The Army would spend $1.25bn on
Boeing CH-47 helicopters, and $587m on AH-64 Apache Longbow
helicopters, also built by Boeing.

 * The Air Force budget
includes $864m to begin replacing its aging KC-135 refueling planes, a
competition that pits Boeing against Northrop Grumman Corp and its
European partner EADS.

 * The Pentagon would spend $3.4bn to
sustain the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle program in fiscal
2011 after adding $1bn to complete the programme this year.

 *
The Pentagon also would spend $9.9bn on ballistic missile defense
programmes, up from $9.2bn. The funding includes $1.56bn for Lockheed’s
Aegis missile defense system, $1.3bn for the company’s Terminal High
Altitude Area Defense missile system and $1.3bn on a ground-based
midcourse defense programme run by Boeing.

 * The budget would
spend $12.9bn for munitions and missiles, including $1.2bn for Trident
II ballistic missiles built by Lockheed, more than $700m for Standard
and Tomahawk missiles made by Raytheon Co and $253m for
precision-targeted Joint Direct Attack Munitions made by Boeing.

 *
The budget includes over $25bn in procurement and research funding for
Navy shipbuilding programmes. These include $2.73bn for a new carrier
built by Northrop, $2.97bn for DDG-51 Aegis destroyers built by
Northrop and General Dynamics Corp and $5.4 billion for Virginia-class
attack submarines, also built by GD and Northrop.

 * Spending
on space programmes totals $9.9bn in the fiscal 2011 base budget and
war supplemental budget, a decline of just under one percent from a
year earlier. The request includes $911m for a next-generation
communications satellite built by Lockheed, $598m for an additional
Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite, also built by Lockheed and
$1.2bn for launch vehicles built by a Lockheed-Boeing joint venture.