A great deal of this is really done to win political favors (Senator X needs a big federal program in his state), or to reward lobbyists (the guys at Lockheed really helped me out in the last election), and to provide a jobs program (lots of people are basically unemployable -- let's have them "build an airplane" for a few years).
It's amazing that we ever get a weapon system that functions.
And, oh by the way, when we DO get a weapon system that functions, we work very hard to kill it -- like the A-10 or the F-22.
An updated Harrier would have made a lot more sense.
The fighting men and taxpayers suffer.
I don’t know why they don’t do competitions like they do for drones. The apparatus thinks they can make better design decisions than demonstrations of performance.
Part of the problem is that we no longer buy special purpose weapons. Since every weapon must perform every mission each customer, marines, fighter squadrons, bomber squadrons insist that the next vehicle must perform their mission before all others. The compromises are just that, compromises, in all senses of the word. You end up, every time, with a camel instead of a race horse.
F-35 is a high priced flying computer game that can’t do half of what an A-10 can. Its like government bailing out GM only with aircraft instead of autos.
It's designed to be the M-16 of the air — something that will need tons and tons of R&D [and therefore money] to fix it, this without regard to actual field-conditions.
Article after article after article exposing just how terrible this airplane is and how much of a complicated and costly failure it is.
If there were any honor, honesty or integrity in the leadership the program would be scrapped and the F-22 production restarted but this time by someone other than the failed Lockheed crap works. The F-15SE would be produced in numbers and a suitable combat team would be produced.
There is no honor, honesty or integrity in the leadership of this country though. It is all for sale to the highest bidder.
Couldn’t the A-10 be modified for carrier duty?
And it cannot carry some of the ordinance it needs to do the job ...
Where do the taxpayers go to get their money back?
Obola has an uncanny ability to always pick the loser. One of his first orders was to scrap the F-22 in favor of the troublesome F-35. Almost as if he planned it to create the most chaos