Critics and proponents of an Air Force-crafted multiyear procurement plan for the F-22A fighter are on a collision course that will help determine the fate of the plan, one senior lawmaker says.

The F-22A multiyear proposal definitely will be an issue for debate when House and Senate defense authorization conferees meet in coming months to hash out differences in their versions of fiscal year 2007 Pentagon spending bills, Senate Armed Services Committee member James Inhofe (R-OK) said this week.

“Yes, I think this is going to come up” in conference, Inhofe told reporters during a July 26 briefing on Capitol Hill. While the Senate- and House-approved defense authorization bills both approve the multiyear plan, the prominent Republican said because of several key lawmakers who will lead the conference talks, it could be debated during the compromise talks.

The conference deliberations will convene later this year, though no formal date has yet been set. Those talks could result in lawmakers nixing the entire Raptor multiyear plan from the final version of the bill, keeping the Air Force-hatched strategy or tweaking the plan.

The Oklahoma Republican is a proponent of the multiyear plan. He spoke to reporters along with the Senate’s leading voice for multiyear procurement for the next-generation fighter, fellow Senate Armed Services panel member Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) during the July 26 briefing.

After it was axed by the Senate Armed Services Committee in its version of FY-07 defense authorization legislation, Chambliss revived the strategy by successfully tacking an amendment onto the bill on the Senate floor that would allow the service to buy 60 Raptors over a three-year period. If adopted by lawmakers, the service would buy 20 F-22As each year, beginning next fiscal session.

The full Senate approved the Chambliss amendment by a 70-28 vote, effectively reversing language championed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) and panel member Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that would have blocked multiyear procurement.

Defense observers say that the Senate bill is now in line with the House defense authorization bill on this specific item. Should a multiyear contract be signed, it would lock in buys of the aircraft through fiscal year 2009 and into the next administration.

For his part, Chambliss said conference leaders who oppose the service’s buying strategy would have to ignore majorities in both chambers to nix the plan in the final version of the defense authorization bill.

“I think that you have approval in the House, you have approval in the Senate [and] you have approval by both appropriations committees saying it will save $225 million,” he said in defense of the measure. The two senators spoke to reporters 24 hours after a July 25 Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee hearing that looked at the multiyear deal.

The political furor surrounding the F-22A purchasing plan erupted in Washington this week as revelations made in The Washington Post exposed financial ties between the Alexandria, VA-based Institute for Defense Analyses and F-22A subcontractor EDO Corp.

According to a business-case analysis completed last month by the defense think tank, the move would save the Air Force an estimated $225 million in F-22A procurement, with as much as $3.7 million per aircraft.

The strength of support for the Chambliss amendment was based largely on IDA’s findings.

According to the Post, however, while he was involved in compiling the business case analysis, IDA President Dennis Blair held stock options in a New York-based defense contracting company that holds a multimillion-dollar support contract on the F-22A program. The former Navy admiral is also a current member on the company’s board of directors.

The IDA chief defended his ties to EDO in a July 26 letter to Warner, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, stating emphatically that he did not play an “active role” in the organization’s review of the F-22A multiyear plan.

“It was an important research project, and I received routine reports of its progress but did not play any active role in its conduct or review,” Blair wrote in the July 26 missive.

He also said that he never attended the two “in-process review meetings” held by IDA analysts over the course of the F-22A study. He added that he had not even reviewed the final report until a version had been sent to Pentagon acquisition chief Kenneth Krieg for review.

“I am responsible for the overall technical excellence and objectivity of IDA’s research” Blair said. “However, IDA has hundreds of projects ongoing at any time, and I do not play an active role in all of them.”

But during the July 25 subcommittee hearing, McCain and Warner took advantage of the disclosure and hammered away at service and Defense Department officials over the study’s validity.

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said that he was “surprised” by the IDA chief’s connections to the F-22A subcontractor, during his testimony before the panel.

Wynne appeared before the airland subcommittee, along with Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology James Finley and Comptroller General David Walker.

“I really think it taints the validity of the report,” Warner said of the disclosure. “The report can no longer be considered as an argument for the proponents of this matter.”

However, Chambliss noted the next day that it appears to him that Warner had decided to fight the multiyear proposal in conference long before the IDA findings raised new questions.

“Let me just say that it seems like [Sen.] Warner had his mind made up early on that he was going to make this a conference issue,” he said. “ I think the will of the people is the multiyear, and if there are those who try to override that, we will have to [resolve] that in conference.”

Chambliss noted that he had informed Warner early on in the mark-up process of the Senate’s defense authorization bill that he planed to introduce an amendment that would restore the multiyear plan.

When asked what the powerful Virgina Republican’s response was to his intentions, Chambliss said flatly: “He didn’t support it.”

Inhofe said that he has “talked to conferees in both the House and the Senate and I think everyone is pretty solidly behind us. I have every confidence that we are going to go forward with this program.” But he hedged his statement a bit by adding: “Senator Warner is the chairman of the conference and he can bring up anything he wants.”

The two multiyear proponents also addressed the IDA’s chief’s ties to EDO.

For his part, Chambliss dismissed the notion that Blair’s ties to EDO influenced IDA’s findings.

“I doubt that there is a former military officer that has gone out into the private sector, who doesn’t have some ownership of some stock in some company that does some business with the federal government,” Chambliss told reporters. “The fact of the matter is IDA has a very strong policy on conflict of interest and they followed that policy.”

Inhofe characterized the disclosure of Blair’s financial interests in the fighter program as a “last-minute effort” to derail the Chambliss amendment.

“But it just can’t just be a coincidence that someone leaks information to the media. . . for a story that is written the morning of the hearing, to try and saboatage what we are doing,” he said.

Inhofe said he does not believe McCain and Warner are trying to kill the fighter program outright. Instead, he said, the duo “is trying to change the program funding, and indeed any change to a multiyear funding jeopardizes the program.”

One senior congressional staffer contacted this week categorized the connection between Blair and EDO as a “trivial matter” and dismissed the notion that the issue would prompt more lawmakers to move against the plan.

“I don’t see how you dismiss the votes of 70 members in the Senate when you go to conference,” the staffer told Inside the Air Force.

But in his testimony, Walker said the EDO-IDA connection is symptomatic of a number of weaknesses in the Defense Department’s procurement and acquisition policies.

“This raises a larger question: What are the independent standards that so-called independent think tanks and subcontractors have to meet in order to be able to be deemed to be independent,” he said.

When asked if Blair’s ties to EDO would provide enough political fodder to derail the multiyear spending plan, Chambliss replied: “There is nothing that came out of the testimony . . . that did anything but support the multiyear [plan], so it should not be considered in conference.”