[Ciaphas Cain]

Fairly long but excellent article.

[marktwain]

Yes. A very well done article.

It shows how terrible Robert McNamara was.

[AndyJackson]

I am not sure what the point of this article is. There is a crying need to take a hatchet to the defense acquisition process, a process that is incredibly lucrative for inside the Beltway contractors who do nothing to bring weapons systems into production except by using money to curry favor especially by hiring swamp critters at high salaries.

The quality and productivity of folks who design and build weapons is measured by their inverse distance from Ground Zero.

[Liaison]

Thanks for sharing the article. My air power studies are lacking. I did not remember the High/low concept for tactical missions with strategic bombing added for a third leg. However, I am wondering if the next tier for air supremacy will near-space or space UAS kinetic attack systems with ECM/ECCM.

Those that have a star to their backs have the advantage in air/space combat.

[Mariner]

To suggest these memes are the exclusive work of the left is naive. And counter productive.

The defense establishment is constantly inflating the threat from potential adversaries. They take at face value the claims of the Chinese on their weapon systems, uncritically.

And their new systems are always facsimiles of real, US weapons.

But junk.

[PGR88]

the Messerschmidt Me-262 and the Arado-234 – too late to go into combat.

While never a serious threat, the Me-262 did see combat. Chuck Yeager, first pilot to exceed the speed of sound, was a P-51 pilot in WWII, and was the first American to shoot one down

[BBell]

B-58 Hustler. Awesome jet but but not too practical.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

I thought this would be about the Iver Johnson Target Sealed 8. A true junk weapon.

[Thrownatbirth]

We’re smart enough to buy the all logistic support to sustain the weapon system. That’s also a big chunk of the total price.

[Tenacious 1]

That was informative. I learned stuff.

Can the F-22 be put back in production?

[Menehune56]

After many years spent as an aerospace engineer, this was a really interesting article. I had to keep doing side searches to get back up to speed. One tactic used this day to cancel programs goes like this:

Program cost is too high
Cut production quantity to reduce program cost
Unit cost is too high
Buy more units to reduce unit cost
Program cost is too high
Cancel program