Where does the buying decision belong...

Regular readers will have noticed the link to Danger Room over on the left side of the page, and some of you may have even clicked over to see what it is.

Danger Room is a blog over at Wired that focuses on national security issues with an occasional foray into pop culture (a military analysis of the recent Star Trek movie, and How to Stop a 500-Foot Monster part 1 and part 2 are worth reading for their entertainment value...)

Today, Danger Room did another follow up on the battle between the Pentagon and Congress over the F-22.

Congress is trying to force the Pentagon to buy more of the F-22 Raptors, while the Pentagon has decided that they already have enough, and do not want to spend any more money on them.

It brings up an interesting point. Nominally, Congress retains the right to make buying decisions for the country -- it comes with the power to tax and write appropriations. Yet for all practical purposes, congress assigns this power to different government agencies that use their institutional expertise to determine how to spend the money.

It seems reasonable that the Pentagon knows more about weapons being bought -- their strengths, weaknesses, and appropriateness for current and future military threats -- than the current members of congress. Of course, the person in charge of the Pentagon, is a political appointee, but in this case, President Obama has kept President Bush's appointee. So the current Sec Def is likely about as non-partisan as possible.

Now the Pentagon is more than just the Secretary of Defense, and there are likely a lot of folks there who have independent opinions and may still think that we need the F-22s. So Senators and Representatives are able to find "defense experts" who think that we need more Raptors, but let's be honest -- The congressmen and congresswomen pushing for more F22s are the ones whose districts benefit from their construction.

At $250 million a pop, the decision to add 7 more run to about $1.75 Billion -- with a B...

While the Commission feels strongly that congress should be independent of the executive branch, in issues of defense procurement, there should be a pretty high bar before congress starts meddling in individual weapon-systems procurement...

By why is the Commission interested in this, you ask? Secretary Gates is now making an economic argument -- every dollar spent on the unwanted planes is a dollar taken away from our forces in Afghanistan...

Is this accurate, probably not. But if the broader media picks up on this, you can bet it will be effective...