"Yet if the Navy, and Young, were upset with the Air Force, the Air Force was upset with the Marines. "This is a jobs program for Marine aviation," says retired general Merrill McPeak, Air Force chief of staff from 1990 to 1994. "The idea that we could produce a committee design that is good for everybody is fundamentally wrong." He scoffs at the Marine demand for a plane that can land vertically, saying, "The idea of landing on a beach and supporting your troops close up from some improvised airfield, à la Guadalcanal, is not going to happen."
Focused on waging two post-9/11 wars, the Pentagon let the F-35 program drift as costs ballooned and schedules slipped for a decade. The Marines' F-35 was supposed to be capable of waging war in April 2010, the Air Force's in June 2011 and the Navy's in April 2012. In a break with Pentagon custom, there now is no such "initial operating capability" date for any of them; each is likely to be delayed several years.
Regardless of the plane's merit, the lawmakers pushing for it are hardly disinterested observers. The then 48 members of the Joint Strike Fighter Caucus, many of whom sit on key Pentagon-overseeing panels, pocketed twice as much as nonmembers in campaign contributions from the F-35's top contractors in the 2012 election cycle. Those lawmakers' constituents, in turn, hold many of the F-35 program's 133,000 jobs spread across 45 states. (F-35 builder Lockheed Martin says jobs will double once the plane enters full production.)"
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
-- Dwight Eisenhower
Prior to the 2012 election, Congressman Norm Dicks (D-Wash) received $29,500 and Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-Texas) received $45,700 from the JSF contractors in PAC money.
Other top recipients of Lockheed money include Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), the former Appropriations chairman, who has received $144,250, and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who also represents Fort Worth and has received $129,950.
The 133,000 jobs number is inflated to suggest that those workers are solely working on the fighter project and nothing else.
With the growth of drones, developing next generation strike fighters is like building super battleships when everyone else has moved onto aircraft carriers.
One big issue I have? Why develop a hybrid plane for every branch? So it doesn't do a great job for any one branch.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
