Daily Beast . . . always has an agenda. Stirring the pot by showing money is being wasted by the military will encourage the “let’s cut the military’s bloated budget” crowd. No doubt there is waste. But this plane is early in its life cycle and will improve with experience. Neither the P-51 nor P-38 were particularly brilliant in their first iterations.
Moreover, no responsible journalist would talk about the aircraft without mentioning the huge role Congress, both Dims and Rats, had in screwing up this aircraft. It seems like it is assembled from pieces made in every Congressional district to ensure largess goes to the appropriate Congressman’s constituents. Navy backers insist on this, Marine backers insist on that, AF on something else, and suddenly the damned thing will hardly fly. Hearings were probably held on why it is not gender neutral and whether short females see can out of the cockpit.
These F-35 articles have become common and other than quoting a new “source” here or there, the articles are mostly the same. Nothing is going to change very fast here. The author is right, though, about us being committed to them whether we like them or not.
I’m glad my family members are not going to war in them.
Now a squadron of nice new shiny F-22’s? that’s a different matter!
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...
Sorry, but no airplane is worth a trillion dollars. All government agencies waste money. The DoD just seems to be able to waste it on an epic scale.