TYT: Trillion-Dollar Jet Wasting Your Tax $

[ihavenobias]

Via Wired: "The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the supposed backbone of the Pentagon's future air arsenal, could need additional years of work and billions of dollars in unplanned fixes, the Air Force and the Government Accountability Office revealed on Tuesday. Congressional testimony by Air Force and Navy leaders, plus a new report by the GAO, heaped bad news on a program that was already almost a decade late, hundreds of billions of dollars over its original budget and vexed by mismanagement, safety woes and rigged test results.

At an estimated $1 trillion to develop, purchase and support through 2050, the Lockheed Martin-built F-35 was already the most expensive conventional weapons program ever even before Tuesday's bulletins...".* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur shares the kicker, which is that 12 other countries are looking to buy the plane after it's completed even though US taxpayers are behind the R & D for the project.

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[zbdent]

1. but think of the profit margin!!!

A profit of ... um ... uh ...

[wxgeek7]

2. actually, a trillion for the 50yr life of the entire fleet

Cenk makes it sound like it costs a trillion for a single jet. But according to a reuters article (below), it's actually the projected cost for the approx. 2400 aircraft fleet (i.e. for the next 50 yrs). But still, that roughly makes it a half billion each! Ouch!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/26/us-lockheed-fighter-idUSTRE81P0RV20120226

[tech3149]

3. From my point of view the most effective air platform we have is the A10

It's old, slow, and not very sexy but bang for the buck and skills to answer any current threat put it head and shoulders above the F-22 and F-35. The only thing those two turkeys are good for is to put mucho dinero into the coffers of the manufacturers.

The F14 through F18 are still good platforms but we really don't have a threat that requires them. Even if we had such a threat we could build new, upgrade avionics and weapons systems quicker than shit.
Why throw away proven platforms for an over-priced gold-plated widget that you don't even know will work?