U.S. Sen. David Perdue calls J-STARS delay 'malfeasance' during Warner Robins visit

WARNER ROBINS -- U.S. Sen. David Perdue on Tuesday called delays in getting new planes for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System at Robins Air Force Base "bureaucratic malfeasance."

Perdue, a Georgia Republican, made the comment to reporters at the Museum of Aviation following his first visit to the base as a senator. His tour included the depot maintenance area and J-STARS, a unit that tracks ground movements of enemy forces.

Recently, a top Pentagon official, citing budget concerns, raised doubts about whether funding will remain in place to buy new J-STARS planes. It's just one area that could be targeted in a shift known in some quarters as "strategic agility."

Perdue, who was briefed on the J-STARS mission during his tour, said the unit is called on to "cover the world" with a fleet of 16 planes that are decades old.

"If there is a poster child for bureaucratic malfeasance, it's this one," he said. "If we don't do anything, the timing to get J-STARS up and running with a new platform is going to create a gap to fulfill our mission."

The issue relates to what he said are the country's two most pressing issues: the global security crisis and the federal debt.

"In light of the current events going on around the world, it just heightens the importance of how we have got to support our military," he said. "I'm on the budget committee, I'm on foreign relations, and I see a need of how that is inter-related, how we need to solve our debt crises so we can deal with this global security crisis."

He said defeating ISIS will probably take "boots on the ground," and he said that should be a coalition of forces led by the U.S. He called on European nations to spend more on defense.

On another front, he said Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. should be dealt with "very carefully."

"I think Americans have always managed humanitarian requirements, and I think we will do the same thing here," he said. "But I think our federal government is called to protect the United States first, and I want to make sure the administration has the right vetting processes, ... not just of Syrian refugees but any refugees."

Perdue, a Perry native serving his first year in the Senate, said he is concerned that "not one serious question" about the debt has come up in the Republican presidential debates.

Asked what he thought of front-runner Donald Trump, Perdue chuckled then said "I think anybody on the Republican docket right now will be better than what we see on the Democratic side."

He noted that Trump and two other candidates doing well in the polls, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, are not politicians. Perdue also had never held political office when he was elected.

"Washington is broken," he said. "They've touched a nerve out there, and it's a similar nerve to what I touched as the outsider in my race."

To contact writer Wayne Crenshaw, call 256-9725.

This story was originally published November 24, 2015 at 5:25 PM with the headline "U.S. Sen. David Perdue calls J-STARS delay 'malfeasance' during Warner Robins visit ."