Do you still want the F-35?
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 7:23 pm
There's a huge fight brewing in Canada over the F-35, a new fighter plane of which Canada promised to buy 65 a couple of years back, and which now looks like it's going to cost our nice northern neighbors somewhere north of $46 billion over the life of the airplanes. This has caused the Canadians to get a good close look at the lunatic way our defense industries operate down here and, as is also the case when they look at the way we deliver health care, the Canadians think we're all out of our minds, and that we've played them for suckers. They are, of course, correct on both counts.
There is no point for Canadians to ask why the aircraft Ottawa apparently committed to buy in 2010 is turning out to be much more expensive, and taking far longer to develop, than first projected. The answers to those questions can only be found south of the border where defence [sic] contracts have long had a way of ballooning way out of control. The questions for Canadians is: Why did Canada simply take the U.S. Defense Department's word that the plane would do all it was supposed to do at the cost that was then quoted?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the F-35 is an epic lemon even by our standards for defense-related boondoggles, which are epic in and of themselves. It is also our first trillion-dollar defense system. These two things are not coincidental.
Yet, when the F-35 was first conceived, there was (and is) no real "enemy" out there that it could possibly be used against. State to state conventional war among major powers - the only kind which can afford jets like these - is simply inconceivable today. So when the U.S. military was asked to dream up its requirements for a "fifth" generation fighter, it simply decided to have everything it could for any possibility that might arise. It was to be the flying version of the deluxe Swiss Army Knife.
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The sheer magnitude of the boondoggle in question may just be dawning in Canada, but it's been percolating down here for some time.
The F-35 program has had a troubled history. In 2010 the Pentagon disclosed that delays and cost overruns had resulted in a cost per aircraft that exceeded the original contract by 50 percent. Defense Secretary Robert Gates informed Congress of another 13 month production delay and budget increase of $3 billion. A 2011 Pentagon study cited 13 major problems. The F-35 integrated power package was described as unreliable and difficult to service. There were safety concerns about lightning protection and thermal management, as well as possible fire hazards in the fuel dump system. The study also revealed that the airframe was unlikely to last through the lifespan of the aircraft. If the F-35 were indispensable to the country's future security, cost considerations would properly take a back seat, but that is not the case. A Foreign Policy magazine survey of 76 top military experts in 2012 revealed that 26 of them rated the F-35 program as the top candidate for immediate elimination.
And, of course, it is nowhere close to being eliminated at all, even though, in one of the truly remarkable quotes of the year, an aviation expert named John Arquilla pointed out,
"We have had only one fighter shot down by an enemy fighter jet in the last 40 years. We simply don't need to spend over a trillion dollars on a new fighter at this point."
Maybe after Nick Kristof gets done running to ground those poor Appalachian children who are gaming the SSI system rather than joining the military where they belong, he can get right on this. And, in Washington, we're arguing about what we're going to do to people on Medicare so the richest people in this country can kick in the money they found on top of the chiffarobe. Calling this madness is to insult the insane
There is no point for Canadians to ask why the aircraft Ottawa apparently committed to buy in 2010 is turning out to be much more expensive, and taking far longer to develop, than first projected. The answers to those questions can only be found south of the border where defence [sic] contracts have long had a way of ballooning way out of control. The questions for Canadians is: Why did Canada simply take the U.S. Defense Department's word that the plane would do all it was supposed to do at the cost that was then quoted?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the F-35 is an epic lemon even by our standards for defense-related boondoggles, which are epic in and of themselves. It is also our first trillion-dollar defense system. These two things are not coincidental.
Yet, when the F-35 was first conceived, there was (and is) no real "enemy" out there that it could possibly be used against. State to state conventional war among major powers - the only kind which can afford jets like these - is simply inconceivable today. So when the U.S. military was asked to dream up its requirements for a "fifth" generation fighter, it simply decided to have everything it could for any possibility that might arise. It was to be the flying version of the deluxe Swiss Army Knife.
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The sheer magnitude of the boondoggle in question may just be dawning in Canada, but it's been percolating down here for some time.
The F-35 program has had a troubled history. In 2010 the Pentagon disclosed that delays and cost overruns had resulted in a cost per aircraft that exceeded the original contract by 50 percent. Defense Secretary Robert Gates informed Congress of another 13 month production delay and budget increase of $3 billion. A 2011 Pentagon study cited 13 major problems. The F-35 integrated power package was described as unreliable and difficult to service. There were safety concerns about lightning protection and thermal management, as well as possible fire hazards in the fuel dump system. The study also revealed that the airframe was unlikely to last through the lifespan of the aircraft. If the F-35 were indispensable to the country's future security, cost considerations would properly take a back seat, but that is not the case. A Foreign Policy magazine survey of 76 top military experts in 2012 revealed that 26 of them rated the F-35 program as the top candidate for immediate elimination.
And, of course, it is nowhere close to being eliminated at all, even though, in one of the truly remarkable quotes of the year, an aviation expert named John Arquilla pointed out,
"We have had only one fighter shot down by an enemy fighter jet in the last 40 years. We simply don't need to spend over a trillion dollars on a new fighter at this point."
Maybe after Nick Kristof gets done running to ground those poor Appalachian children who are gaming the SSI system rather than joining the military where they belong, he can get right on this. And, in Washington, we're arguing about what we're going to do to people on Medicare so the richest people in this country can kick in the money they found on top of the chiffarobe. Calling this madness is to insult the insane
