Posted on 03/18/2016 6:40:44 PM PDT by maddog55
Officials are finally admitting the F-35 fighter has turned into a nightmare—but it’s too late to stop the $400 billion program now.
Way back in the early 2000s, the U.S. military had a dream. To develop a new “universal” jet fighter that could do, well, pretty much everything that the military asks its different fighters to do.
But the dream of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter turned into a nightmare. The program is six years behind schedule and tens of billions of dollars over budget. And now, 16 years after the JSF prototypes took off for their first flights, top officials are finally owning up to the trauma the $400 billion fighter program has inflicted on America’s finances and war readiness.
In a remarkable period, beginning in February and lasting several weeks, senior officers and high-ranking bureaucrats finally publicly copped to the warplane program’s fundamental failures.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
$400 billion isn’t squat compared to the trillions that zero has squandered. He has deliberately spent as much as he could on as many things as he could in an effort to bankrupt this country. He has succeeded.
Riiight. I am sure the Russians and Chinese will never bother us or use their own military forces ever again.
Such leftist politicians and officers are traitors. Until they are tried, convicted, sentenced, and executed for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, this damage to U.S. military capabilities will continue.
Trump will fix this crap
Trump will fix this crap
Obama’s fault, literally. At least the military industrial complex is happy. It’s about time we stopped focusing on these mega weapons systems and started focusing on personnel.
That’s USMC, sorry devil dogs.
Someone definitely needs to fix weapon system acquisition. Tremendously broken. Everything costs too much, takes too long, and fails to do what is needed.
Tough thing to fix because the bad ideas are thoroughly baked into the process. If Trump can fix it, he’ll deserve a spot on Mt Rushmore.
I love the military. The military needs a large budget. But waste fraud and abuse eat up probably a third of their money. They need major surgery of one sort or another to help them actually buy things intelligently.
I think you mean the F-111. The F-4 turned out quite well. The F-35 though is a much worse fiasco than the F-111. At least the Aardvark turned out to be a decent tactical bomber. The F-35 is mediocre on all counts.
To bad we scrapped the tooling for the F-14. The F/A-18 could not fill the shoes of either the Tomcat, Intruder, nor the Corsair II.
People in DC need to be in prison for a whole host of reasons. This is but one.
That's what nukes are for.
“How many F-22’s?”
Not many. The F-22 was unaffordable.
A F16 took out an F35 in one on one practice recently.
“People need to be in prison over this”
Yes sir, they do. Including a lot of Congressmen and Senators, and whole bunch of Admirals and Generals. Frog march them.
You might be interested to learn one of the problems with the plane is the helmet that attempts to incorporate many avionics. The weight of it is actually a threat to break a smaller (female) pilots neck under g-load...
Yeah because trump is an expert on fighter airceaft. Put down the coolaid.
The F-16 also had external fuel tanks mounted during the mock dogfight, and it could still out turn and out accelerate the F-35. There is a nice write up by a test pilot about the encounter and the deficiencies of the F-35's dogfighting capability (or lack thereof). It is based on a concrete grasp of the critical factors of ACM, as well an a full understanding of the F-35's performance envelope.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.