Rep. John Fleming: Iran Accord “the worst possible deal one could make”

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Frank Gaffney: I’ve come to regard very highly a man who is in a key position in the front lines of the war for the free world on Capitol Hill, Dr. John Fleming, a representative of the people of the 4^th district of Louisiana in the United States House of Representatives. He serves on its Armed Services Committee notably on its subcommittees on Strategic Forces and Tactical Air and Land Forces. He is also a co-founder and co-chairman of the Congressional Long Range Strike Caucus, all of which will be directly relevant to our topic today. He is also a former Navy Medical Officer. Congressman Fleming welcome to back, it’s always good to have you with us sir. Thank you for all of this service both that you’ve rendered in the past and that you’re rendering today. It’s good to have you.

Rep. John Fleming: Well thanks Frank, it’s always a pleasure to be on with you and I was excited about speaking with you today.

FG: Good well thank you, as am I. Listen one thing I was particularly excited about is that it seems as though there may actually at long last be some movement towards modernizing a very important part of our military capabilities, mainly our Long Range Strike Capabilities through a decision announced yesterday on a new manned bomber. Can you tell us a little bit about both kind of the importance of modernizing that leg of the triad and otherwise giving ourselves strike capabilities we don’t currently have and the decision to award the contract to Northrop Grumman?

JF: Right, happy to do that. First of all, as you know Frank the Air Force Global Strike Command is headquartered in my district. It has control of all bombers in the entire Air Force nuclear enterprise, which includes of course ballistic missiles, and so this is very near and dear to my heart. The current fleet is mainly B-52s as you know, and still they’re very operative, they’re doing a great job out there, but look, grandsons are now flying these things of the original pilots and eventually there going to have to be replaced, and so we’ve been working on the development of the Long Range Strike Bomber the follow onto that, and that means that we will see in coming years the new Long Range Strike Bomber rolling off the assembly lines. Now for a lot of people they think a bomber is something like in the old World War II days, it goes overhead and drops dumb bombs, but the modern concept of the bomber as you know is it works sort of like an aircraft carrier in the air. It can deliver heavy but very precise laser guided munitions and can deliver that almost anytime, anywhere around the world so it’s just as important today as it was in World War II.

FG: But a lot more lethal.

JF: Yes absolutely.

FG: Yeah this is a point that is often lost on most of us is the difference between those precision guided munitions, which get their targets virtually every time and those dumb bombs, as you say Congressman Fleming, that often didn’t. Let me ask you this, this is a long term program, it’s a hugely expensive program at that, they’re talking about trying to bring these aircraft in at over half a billion a pop. Knowing what you know, Congressman Fleming, having wrestled with the budget demons on Capitol Hill; is it likely, in your judgment, that the funding will be there for this project over the decades, maybe multiple decades, of time it will take to bring it to fruition.

JF: Well I certainly hope so Frank. I mean the pattern has been that we get excited about a new type of system and then it fades. We have not constructed nearly the number of F-22s that we plan to. We’re seeing the same thing happen with the F-35s, however if you think about it the Long Range Strike Bomber is taking off the shelf technologies that have already been developed. In many cases with these other two platforms, so I think the chance of cost run-ups as long as we put out the number of units we expect which would be about 80-100, should be much more predictable and much more controlled. I think there’s less experimentation and less cutting edge technology. It’s more about putting together what we know today and what we can do today, which the B-52 does not do. As you know the B-52 in many cases has 1950s technology.

FG: Though there have been upgrades over the years of course but it is an ancient platform there’s no question about it. Congressman, speaking of the context of which all this is taking place, you’ve recently had your National Defense Authorization Act vetoed by the President. I know you’ve called for it to be overridden. We are also given to understand that there will likely be a vote on a two-year budget bill that will lock in essentially some growth for the national defense, but also considerable growth for nondefense spending. How do you see all this sorting out in terms of the authorities that are needed as well as the funding for projects like this among other critical defense priorities?

JF: Well I’m very disappointed the President vetoed the NDAA. It was an excellent bill, it was bipartisan bill, and there’s actually more votes in the Senate than necessary to override it and we’re right on the bubble to override it in the House, so I think our first objective is going to be to bring it back up again and see if we can get the overriding votes and then it’s a done deal. The President’s out of it, but also even though I greatly disagree with this budget that we’re going to be voting on today and I’m going to vote against it, I do expect it to pass. It’s going to have primarily liberal Democrat priorities in it, and unfortunately it’s going to actually include a little bit of a cut for defense below what we really had hoped for from our NDAA, but it’s going to fall about $5 billion short, which is not huge in terms of when your talking billions and trillions of dollars, but still and in the second year it makes up for that, but nonetheless I would have liked to see us do more Frank. I just think that we continue to deplete our military and as you know we’re beginning to act over in Syria and on the ground in Iraq and that’s going to require more cost, and I think we need better funding for our young men and women in uniform.

FG: Apart from the numbers themselves Congressman John Fleming of Louisiana, do you feel that the idea of locking the Congress in on these numbers both again defense and other spending for two years is inadvisable or is that a good idea for planning purposes and some stability?

JF: Well that is one of the few things I do like about it, is it’s a two year budget and it creates minimums, floors if you will, that neither side can violate, so we could actually plus up in the process of the next year or two but we can’t go below, and it creates more predictability for our war planners and also for the contractors, so I like that piece of it, and there is some trade off, even with with less spending if you have more predictability, you can actually spend more wisely and get more bang for your bucks, so that part of it I like. I don’t like the fact that we’re not dealing with and need to reform entitlements, we’re increasing social spending, and at the same time doing nothing to increase military spending which is so vitally needed.

FG: Especially in the wake of years now of sequestration and some trillion dollars or so I guess that’s come out of defense over that ten years. Let me ask you Congressman, in closing and very quickly, I know you have been a stalwart critic of the what I call the Obamabomb deal. In light of what has happened since Congress acted, or failed to act more accurately, on the deal, do you think this thing has gotten even more ugly, even more problematic, even more contrary to the national interest, and if so what should we be doing now?

JF: Well I’d definitely agree the Iran deal was a disaster. It was the worst possible deal one could make. You could only say that our negotiating position was simply ‘we’ll take anything as long as we get a deal’. The good news is that it was really was not confirmed by Congress in anyway and so in my view the deal is no better than the end of this presidency and the next president takes office.

FG: We’ll be watching that closely needless to say, as I know will you in a leadership role in the United States House of Representatives. Congressman, Dr. John Fleming of Louisianan, thank you very much for your time today and we’ll look forward to talking with you again soon.