The F-22 has survived repeated attempts on its life. It draws its political strength from the obvious sources — the jobs it sustains and the political contributions of its contractors. But seasoned observers of the process say the F-22 also owes its longevity to less quantifiable forces.

One is the fear of an uncertain world and its security threats. Gates has argued that the perils the aircraft was meant to deter — Russia and China, essentially — are not significant enough to justify spending more money for more Raptors, or more C-17s for that matter. With 187 F-22s and 205 C-17s, the Air Force will have enough, he argues.

The system’s backers say the F-22 is the lone Air Force plane capable of evading or defeating the world’s most dangerous fighters and surface-to-air missiles. The fighter the Fa?`22 is replacing, the F-15, has been in service for more than 30 years. Though the armed forces are engaged in a primarily ground-based conflict today in Iraq and Afghanistan, the F-22 supporters say, they may need advanced air power tomorrow.

The question of the F-22’s status also takes on emotional urgency for some lawmakers, since the jet has become, despite some developmental glitches, the finest in the world — and the people who make it among the most skilled at what they do.

That intangible appeal is hardly lost on Lockheed Martin Corp., which recently released a series of advertisements for the F-22 prominently featuring the flag and proud American workers.

“The campaign for F-22s has relied heavily on the fact that Americans want to feel as if the things they’re providing for the military are the best possible products that money can buy,” said Travis Sharp, a military policy analyst at the liberal Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. That stable of ideas “stirs people’s hearts,” Sharp said.

Triage for a Transport

The prospects for the C-17 are cloudier. Though Congress has added money for more of the planes to the Defense budget since fiscal 2007, when the Pentagon wanted to halt production — much as it did for years to keep building the C-130 transport — proponents of the C-17 have been comparatively silent in the wake of Gates’ plan. It is very much in contrast to the vocal support that the F-22 enjoys.

C-17 supporters may have been caught short by the timing of Gates’ announcement during Congress’ spring recess. But their silence may also be due, in part, to the backlog of outstanding C-17 orders. Boeing Co. has yet to deliver 20 of the 205 C-17s the Air Force has ordered — and it has as many as 11 orders in the works for international customers.

In fact, the C-17 seems to be falling victim to a sort of lobbying triage, in which the aircraft that could do the most for a company or community gets the first help. A telling example is in Connecticut, where Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp., makes the engines for both the F-22 and the C-17. Because of the backlog of C-17 orders, the firm can count on continued business making engines for the transport jet for a few more years. And a single production line produces engines for C-17s and commercial aircraft, so those workers will still be employed even without the C-17. Not so with F-22 engines, which have a unique line at the plant. Before the new F-35 fighter, a project Gates supports, comes fully online, the potential loss of F-22 business could cost Pratt & Whitney and its suppliers 2,000 jobs, the firm says.

In response, the entire Connecticut delegation wrote Obama last week to endorse continued production of only one plane: the F-22.

A similar dynamic is occurring in Georgia. Parts of the C-17 are built in Georgia. But the F-22’s final assembly plant is in Marietta, which make it potentially the bigger loss for lawmakers there. That’s why they’ve so far been silent about the C-17, but all but one Georgia House member signed a letter to Obama about saving the F-22.

Such calculations work to the tactical advantage of the Gates plan, observers say. Since lawmakers and contractors suddenly have to defend a slew of projects from budget cuts, they pick their battles and let certain lower-priority projects languish. “The net effect is, there’s so much in play it’s really difficult for all of these to be attacked and reversed with equal vigor,” said David J. Berteau, who heads the Defense Industrial Initiatives Group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Even the Air Force Association, an organization that promotes the service’s programs, is listing the F-22, but not the C-17, among its top priorities in its campaign against Gates’ program cuts. The Air Force officer corps itself is staying mum, a silence that hurts efforts to defend the targeted programs.

Doubling Down

So the strongest arguments against cuts are out in fullest force behind the F-22. Advocates for the program say letting go of it now would cost jobs in the middle of a recession, imperil an indispensable part of the U.S. defense industry and endanger U.S. national security.

The F-22 has weathered challenges before, and, indeed, it is probably the most resilient veteran of the Capitol Hill budget wars. The biggest attempt on the program’s life came just over a decade ago, in the summer of 1999, when California GOP Rep. Jerry Lewis , then the new chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, tried to cut $1.9 billion from the $3.1 billion request for the jet and require additional testing before full-scale production could begin. A firestorm ensued. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, weighed in behind fully funding the plane. And Senate Republicans John W. Warner of Virginia and Ted Stevens of Alaska, were prominent F-22 advocates. In the end, the Pentagon got about half of the $1.9 billion cut restored. And the program lived on, at least for another decade.

The program doesn’t lack for widespread geographic support — a key survival tool that critics call “political engineering.” Georgia workers build the plane’s forward section and pull together its final assembly. The aft end is made in Washington state and the center in Texas. In addition, some 1,000 suppliers work on the program in 44 states. Total employment tied directly or indirectly to the program is 95,000, according to Lockheed Martin figures.

So far, support in Congress for the F-22 — engineered or otherwise — has been impressive. The recent letters from the Georgia and Connecticut delegations to Obama were not the first. In January, 194 House members wrote urging the new president to keep producing F-22s, and 44 senators sent their own version. In February, a bipartisan group of a dozen governors wrote the White House, stressing the unemployment that would result from killing the program.

Sometimes the rhetoric has gotten heated. “America has maintained air dominance in every conflict since the Korean War, and now this administration is giving that advantage up and is willing to sacrifice the lives of American military men and women for the sake of domestic programs favored by President Obama,” said Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss , a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement.

Observers say that a less belligerent version of the same logic could end up carrying the day for the project: Since no one can say for certain whether more F-22s will be needed a few decades from now, the finality of halting production gives many in Congress pause. “That uncertainty about the future makes it very difficult to calculate what risk you’re taking and therefore makes it harder to determine whether it’s acceptable to foreclose your options before you know you can do without them,” said Berteau. “That is a powerful argument for Congress to be considering.”

Courtney McCarty contributed to this story.

FOR FURTHER READING: Congress and the F-22, CQ Weekly, p. 62; Future Combat Systems, 2008 CQ Weekly, p. 811; Air Force budget battles, p. 622.