"Then We Realized We ARE Getting Paid Off!"

Read beyond the headline on this one:

Lockheed Martin will not spend any more time and effort trying to overturn Defense Secretary Robert Gates' decision to halt production of F-22 Raptor fighter jets, a top company official said Tuesday.

After making a vigorous case for the F-22 with Gates, other senior Pentagon officials and Congress in recent months, Lockheed plans to move on and meet its commitments for other major defense programs such as the F-35 joint strike fighter.

"We had our chance to lobby this matter," Bruce Tanner, executive vice president and chief financial officer, said in a quarterly conference call with financial analysts.

"We think we had a full hearing of that discussion," Tanner said. "We are disappointed by the decisions, but we will accept those and go on."

I don't know if you've ever seen the military-industrial complex in action over the past 50 years or so, but they frequently, um, don't take "no" for an answer. So the idea that they had a serious debate on the merits and came up short doesn't scan. But it does, if you add this additional information:

Loren Thompson, a staunch F-22 advocate with the Lexington Institute, said Lockheed officials realized that their company stands to benefit more than any major contractor from Gates’ defense-spending plans, including a decision to accelerate work on the F-35 [...]

Lockheed’s biggest program, the $300 billion F-35 joint strike fighter being developed in Fort Worth, is designated for $3 billion or more in additional funding in 2010 under the Gates plan to increase the pace of flight testing and production work.

The liberal supporters of Bob Gates' transformation strategy always seem to leave out the fact that it's a lateral strategy. Lockheed's going to do just fine under this new management. And the military budget will remain as bloated as ever.