Since World War II, and maybe even before that, America's defense establishment has been firmly in the hands of "fighter jocks." And with all due respect to their derring-do, our nation's taxpayers have picked up more and bigger tabs for them than we should have.

Hand in hand with senators and representatives happy to have airplane-construction contracts in their states and districts, hotshot pilots promoted to general have foisted one high-speed, state-of-the-art aircraft after another upon a thin-spread treasury, while non-sexy items such as education and health care remain mysteriously unaffordable.

Even when the airplane in question is a gem, our country buys more copies of it than we need — then all too soon it's off to the boneyard with the latest "ultimate" flying machine, and from the drawing boards comes the "absolute" best one ever ...

Our enemies, meanwhile, have morphed from superpowers manufacturing their own brass-pleasing planes into guerrilla bands and suicide warriors walking around with dynamite strapped to them. Their hideouts, often as not, are in the crannies of mountains — where supersonic fighters' pilots blink and miss 'em. In Afghanistan, for example, one of our most effective Taliban hunters is the U-28 — a Swiss-made craft with the propeller in its nose; a civilian version is a private/business plane.

But don't pay any attention to the realities of today's wars, warn the guys with stars on their shoulders; we've got to have more, and better, fighters ...

So imagine their surprise when, on Monday, none other than Sen. John McCain sided with the Obama administration to eliminate a $1.75 billion boost to next year's defense budget to buy more F-22 Raptors. These are the "air superiority" planes introduced in 2005 but already proposed for mothballing.

McCain, one of America's great air heroes, notably for withstanding years of misery as a captive in Vietnam, knows his fighters. Still, he says he'll support an Obama veto if the F-22 expenditure makes it through Congress. Coming from the guy who so recently lost the presidency to Obama, that's class.

Not that the nation would be short of Raptors: We'll wind up with 180 or so anyway.

And McCain is well aware that the F-35 Lightning, designed for use by our Air Force and our allies', has already been test flown and should be showing up at our bases in a couple of years.

B-b-but more F-22s mean more jobs, say lawmakers from Georgia, Texas and California, where most of the manufacturing is done.

To that comes the response of a patriot who's also a bit of a fiscal conservative: Keeping the F-22 or any other weapon system should never be about job creation, but about defending the nation, says McCain.
F-22s cost about $140 million each; the F-35 is supposed to come in at $83 million a copy, and offer sharper electronics than the F-22 does. Besides, he didn't have to bother saying, there'll be plenty of F-35 sub-contracting money to go around ...

The fighter-pilot lobby has been conjuring up such villains as China and North Korea to justify more of its pet plane — but McCain and Defense Secretary Robert Gates note that we're not short of cool aircraft; but we are low on money. Blowing nearly 2 bil on Raptors we don't need could cost dollars we need to support our ground forces.

This may be a small victory for folks questioning our pro-military spending priorities — but coming from John McCain, it carries weight.