SO instead of sending $65 Billion to corrupt Ukraine, our military could have purchased 3 times as many F-35’s.
Must be nice to be the Chair Force.
Phew what a relief. I was very concerned about the stockholders of Lockheed Martin for a second .
Sell Taiwan 100 on lend lease, another 100 for Japan and South Korea each, and 200 for Poland, all on lend lease. Also India if they play ball and stop playing footsie with Rissia, China and Iran.
That is half the cost of the military hardware the idiot Biden left in Afghanistan. That will stand forever as one of the most stupid, most incompetent decision a United States president will ever make. The disastrous consequences of that decision by that one fool, and allowed to happen by countless other fools, will reverberate throughout history for the next thirty years, if not longer.
They should have called Lockheed on Feb. 24 and inked the deal on Feb 25, basically matching what Carter/Reagan did after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Not doing it until now removes any linkage to Ukraine.
Building up the military is an excellent way to send a message to Russia regarding Ukraine. The other excellent way, again what Carter/Reagan did, would be to drill, baby, drill.
Obviously drilling, or expanding US energy production in any form for that matter, is off the table, and this order for planes likely would have occurred Ukraine or not.
So, better late than never, but means little to nothing regarding Ukraine.
That information is vital to determine how effective the program truly is. Luckily, other federal agencies provided some of that information. The Government Accountability Office included them in a July 2021 report. The GAO found that the entire F-35 fleet averaged a full mission capable rate of 39% in 2020, which was an improvement from the 32% the year before. The Air Force’s F-35A variant performed the best with a fleet average of 54% that year, a rate of performance that is still far below the 80% mission capable rate needed for an effective aircraft fleet (and even significantly below the program’s low 65% availability standard). The Marine Corps’ fleet of short takeoff and landing F-35Bs and the Navy’s fleet of F-35Cs, which are tailored for use on aircraft carriers, lag far behind. The F-35B fleet’s full mission capable rate got worse between 2019 and 2020, dropping from 23% to 15%. The F-35C fleet showed some improvement during that period, but that is not saying much. That fleet’s rate went from 6.4% to 6.8%.
The rest is equally eye-opening.
How many members of Congress with advance knowledge of this deal bought stock in Lockheed Martin stock?
"F-35 Program Stagnated in 2021 but DOD Testing Office Hiding Full Extent of Problem"