Posted on 11/23/2020 4:27:40 AM PST by Kaslin
When Republicans and Democrats actually agree on something that doesn’t compromise their principles, it better get done. So why are we continuing to pour billions of dollars down the drain on the wasteful F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program? The 2020 budget called for $2.1 billion, and bizarrely included more F-35s than the Trump administration actually requested. The U.S. government already has 600 F-35s.
The JSF program is the most expensive weapons system in history. When Lockheed Martin landed a contract with the government in 2001 to produce the F-35s, the fighter jet was supposed to be an affordable replacement for the A-10 and the F-16. But Citizens Against Government Waste found that the program has been “plagued with cost overruns, delays, and poor performance.” There are many flaws, including seven serious ones (down from 13 at least) that could endanger aircrew and aircraft.
The JSF program accounts for 12.9 percent of all the earmarks across the 2020 federal budget — even more than last year. The lifetime operation and maintenance costs will total $1.727 trillion according to Bloomberg. And the Defense Department has underestimated expenses. It has requested $78 billion over the next five fiscal years, but the cost analysis unit says $88 billion will be needed.
The Pentagon is investigating why the company that is providing the engines, Raytheon Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney division, only reports 3 percent in cost savings for recent contracts, while Lockheed Martin found as much as 15.3 percent in cost savings for the rest of the plane. There are plenty of problems with subcontractors under Lockheed Martin not being held accountable for costs.
Many of the problems with the F-35 arose because the decision to buy it was made before it had been fully developed. Whenever problems were identified after purchase, they had to be fixed, adding to the initial cost. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in 2015, then-Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James stated, “The biggest lesson I have learned from the F-35 is never again should we be flying an aircraft while we’re building it.” In February 2014, then-Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall referred to the purchase of the F-35 as “acquisition malpractice.”
The JSF program has a terrible record of tracking and managing spare parts. This has resulted in $300 million for extra labor charges. GAO auditors found that, from May to November 2018, F-35s were unable to fly 30 percent of the time due to a shortage of spare parts — which were probably just misplaced. This is an incredible level of mismanagement.
Some of the items found during inspections were not authorized under the program. They include large screen televisions and vehicles, including golf carts.
Many of the parts are made in Turkey. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has asked the Pentagon to stop buying from Turkey due to the country’s authoritarian drift under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and its human rights violations in Syria and Iraq. But the Department of Defense is moving slowly on transitioning to other manufacturers, with some parts from Turkey scheduled to be delivered in 2022.
Compounding the problem is all the earmarks that have been added to the JSF program, ostensibly for “health and disease” research under the Defense Health Program. The National Guard Counter-Drug Program allows for the use of military personnel in domestic drug enforcement operations. But the Drug Enforcement Administration already covers this area. Millions of other dollars in earmarks are going to “sustainability” measures.
Members of Congress blatantly admit they are funding this overpriced rip-off in order to stimulate the economy and add jobs. In fact, the Program On Government Oversight states that “the program’s architects deliberately scattered subcontracts across 45 states,” apparently to create so many jobs few members of Congress would balk at voting for it. It’s been called “too big to cancel.”
Yes we need a strong defense, and in recent years ours has been focused on air power. The F-35 is used by the Air Force, Navy and Marines. But we are on the verge of withdrawing more troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
We don’t need a defense program that comes with massive waste. That is something that can be fixed. POGO explains how to resolve the problem, “Pentagon leaders could go a long way toward solving this dilemma by pursuing simpler programs from the outset. The pursuit of dazzling yet unproven technologies inevitably results in programs that waste billions of taxpayer dollars on weapons that failed to live up to the lavish promises made at their beginning.”
There are other large aircraft manufacturers to consider for fighter jets such as McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. Boeing already produces a similar fighter jet, the F-15EX. Both the Obama and Trump administrations made reductions in their budgets for the F-35, and the Senate Appropriations Committee is calling for more transparency and reports, so there is evidence Republicans and Democrats agree here. Problems have plagued this program for almost 20 years; it’s overdue to start looking at an option B instead of continuing down a path of waste.
Bullshit
The F-35 is a decent representation of where we are as a society in terms of “knowledge” these days.
It’s not really a new plane anymore.
About half the people think it’s utter crap.
About half the people think it’s the best thing ever.
Half the people think COVID is a terrible plague.
Half the people think the government response is the terrible plague.
Half the people feel guilty about Climate Change.
Half the people don’t think we have anything to do with Climate Change.
We no longer seem to “know” very much. But we have strong feelings.
Time to start the disarming, so that we can get our asses kicked in the next war, and the Democrat (and RINO) dream of the US being put in its place will FINALLY be accomplished.
Having spent nearly my entire career in the military industrial complex, I am conflicted on the F-35. Every weapon’s system is overpriced for a huge number of reasons. A civilian product can take advantage of scale and limiting subcontracting (which ads significant expense and administrative/technical costs) and limiting the numbers and locations of suppliers, (the list of differences would take an hour or so to type.) A military product requires political buy-in (votes) and thus you have to purposely do things to send costs to various states and districts to, essentially, buy a political vote. At a guess, this doubles the cost of the end product. On top of that, every contract I ever read had cost adders having nothing to with the product; gay and lesbian outreach, environmental requirements (which can add huge costs and even adversely affect reliability and sustainability.) On the other hand* if the tech works as it has been sold, it will limit losses and allow the use of less expensive systems on the ground if you can guarantee air superiority above those systems. Whether it will continue to do so for a significant enough period to pay for itself is questionable. But it raises the cost of defense to the point where many potential rivals may be unable to compete. Is the system worth the cost? Who knows. Only time will tell. Why is Congress upping the total request? To send more money and jobs to their districts. (Incidentally, this is a horribly inefficient way to send money to your state or district.)
*Harry Truman famously said he wanted a one-armed economist. When asked why he said, “Because I am tired of hearing them say, ‘On the other hand.’”
Was this an aircraft McCain was pushing???
The left mpw begins the agitprop bilge pish campaign to weaken our military.
The Crappolla will get worse.
But we will have to lose the looming battle of the South China Sea, just to wake up the RINOs. The Dems are irretrievably treasonous, no hope for them util they are voted out after we get rid of Dominion voting machines.
I feel that you may be on to something. But then, I feel like I disagree strongly enough to break windows.
Exactly right!! I love how the politicians are saying they are going to fix things, they are the ones who caused the problem to begin with!!
New F-22’s are no longer possible without a massive retooling effort, so let’s cut down on our cheaper, less capable stealth platform as well. Does the author have rocks in her head? Not all of our wars will involve plinking guerrillas without an air force of their own.
+1.
I had the privilege of working on this program in a small way from 2005 to 2015 and can tell you that this may be the most capable aircraft ever designed for any purpose. That said, it may not be the best ground support platform or the best air superiority fighter in our inventory, but is better at everything than anything in ours or any other country’s inventory.
If blame needs to be placed it need to go to congress when they decided that only one platform was required for all services mission requirements. That decision was BS then and it still is. Every service has a different core mission and one size never fits all. It is the hundreds of modifications to the one airframe and weapons systems that have drive cost sky high. It is Congress’ fault, not the Services. The contractors involved could have undoubtedly been more economical with their expenditures, but at the heart of it, capability may have been compromised by doing so. The F-35 is and will continue to be the best aircraft in the free world’s inventory for decades. Just my $.02
Well said. Particularly your last line.
Despite the F-35’s troubled history, it is earning raves from fighter pilots and its current per unit cost compares favorably with the available alternatives. Israel, a clear-eyed judge of military aircraft, wants more of them as soon as possible, as do many of our other allies. Dropping the F-35 now would be foolish.
The financial shinanigans of the F35 program are just the latest example of the corruption and coverup that exists in DC; corruption that is now multi-generational.
There is the horrible example during WWII where torpedo production continued, even when it became known that the torpedoes didn’t work. This put submarine crews at risk, obviously, in that they would take the risk of engaging the enemy, only to find when they fired their torpedoes, the torpedoes failed to detonate on impact.
https://www.historynet.com/us-torpedo-troubles-during-world-war-ii.htm
“I love how the politicians are saying they are going to fix things, ...”
And when they do take action to fix things, they really “fix” things and make whatever it was that presumably needed fixing at least a magnitude worse. Then they will find someone else to blame (today it really helps to call that someone a racist, woman hater, a radical right winger, etc) for the decline, and say they will now fix things to make it right ... repeat sequences. Political entropy.
“We no longer seem to “know” very much. But we have strong feelings.”
And we will know even less and with the big tech and media with their environmentally friendly, corporate high tech book burning /censorship. Then an attempt will be made to marginalize us, and we will have no basis for our feelings, but the other side will.
How many F-22 Jets could have been built instead???
bookmark
I don’t agree with Democrats (i.e., communists) on anything. If a Dem told me the sky is blue, I would run to the window to confirm.
Good summary.
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