Cohen Wins F-18 Funding

The House National Security Committee Thursday morning restored full funding for the Pentagon's most expensive program, the $80 billion McDonnell Douglas Corp. F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet contract, after Defense Secretary William Cohen protested a decision by the procurement subcommittee to drastically cut the program's fiscal 1998 funding.

The Navy requested $2.1 billion to buy 20 new Super Hornets. But Military Procurement Subcommittee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., followed the lead of the subcommittee staff, and in his mark recommended spending only $340 million on four E/F models, $1 billion on older model C/D versions and another $90 million as a down payment in later years for four more C/D versions.

The once 1000-aircraft program already had been cut under a new Pentagon strategy to between 548 and 800 aircraft.

Cohen wrote an unusually strong letter to National Security Chairman Spence and ranking member Ronald Dellums, D- Calif., saying, "Our warfighters require the most advanced technology available."

"The future of the program is looking much better now," Kristin Young, a spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Talent, R-Mo., told the Associated Press.