Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at at Digg and at Reddit and in Delicious and Stumbleupon
Just saying, is all.
I'd stopped the raiding of the DOD to fund memorials to Ted Kennedy, too.
I first thought the chow halls weren’t going to have ham, bacon, or sausage anymore!
Contrary to what most fiscal hawks reflexively assume, there is — or was — a case to be made for the development of two engine models for the F-35 from different suppliers. Without the competitive threat of an alternative engine capable of going into production, logic and experience with the F-14 engine and other equipment demonstrate that, over time, sole source suppliers tend to charge more and deliver lesser quality.
As military reformer Edward Luttwak noted years ago, much of what is reflexively condemned as "waste, fraud, and abuse" is inevitable and necessary on the leading edge of technology. After all, the Pentagon can rarely buy new and world best weapons and equipment off the shelf but first has to develop them.
In the private tech sector, a lot of capital is consumed by bad ideas that simply do not work out, prove second best, or are soon made obsolete by competition. Similarly, to model private sector practices, the best business strategy for the Pentagon is often to develop different weapons and equipment choices and then pick the best for production -- or even to pick more than one to keep rapacious military contractors in line through competition. And sometimes, that approach may mean developing two jet engines so as to have two competing suppliers.
As for the F-35 engine, GE has announced that they have enough confidence in the virtues of their model to continue working on it for now with company funds. Even if Congress approves killing off the GE engine, it may yet help to keep P&W on their toes and force them to deliver better price and value for their sole source engine.