This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 17, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama is threatening his first veto over funding for the F-22 fighter jet.

Christopher Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, says he's right to do so. The F-22 is as clear a case as I've seen in recent memory of a weapon system who which has

outlived its usefulness or more accurately it was designed for a different sort of fight in a different sort of era

It has continued for many years driven by political considerations, by parochial

economic considerations, namely there are people employed by this program, although

not nearly as many people as the advocates would have you believe.

And the argument that we need to build this plane in order to be safe and secure into the future

does not withstand scrutiny.

Most importantly, the plane itself is extraordinarily

costly. I've written on this at some length on a per aircraft basis when you

factor in all the money that's been invested in the F-22 program

for the beginning to today. It's about $366 million per plane which makes it

by far the most expensive fighter aircraft in history.

In recent days, we have learned that it is also

the most expensive plane to maintain.

By far, the maintenance costs are truly

astronomical, about $44,000 per flight hour, which is two or three times that of comparable aircraft.

Now the F-22's defenders on both of these points say that it is worth what we spend relative to the capabilities it brings to the table and that because it is an expensive aircraft it is therefore more expensive to maintain.

People who own Mercedes-Benz as opposed to a Ugo, I think would dispute that argument, but

you know there is some kind of superficial plausibility to the notion that

something with more bells and whistles has more bells and whistles to fix. But

...