The A-Bomb and the F-35 Debacle

[unhappycamper]

http://www.nextgov.com/defense/whats-brewin/2013/03/-bomb-and-f-35-debacle/61886/

The A-Bomb and the F-35 Debacle

Want some perspective on the $397 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program? Check out its cost and timeline versus the cost and time it took to develop the atomic bomb in World War II.

~snip~

This means the cost to develop and buy just fewer than 2,500 F-35s comes in at staggering 15 times the bill for the A-bomb, a far more challenging, and truly scientific task.

Government-backed research and development of the A-bomb lasted slightly more than five years, from June 1941 until July 16, 1945, when the first bomb was successfully tested at the “Trinity” site, east of Socorro, N.M.

The Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday that the F-35 will not be ready for combat operations – or full production – until 2019, 23 years after Lockheed Martin won its first contract for the plane in a fly-off competition with Boeing.

[leveymg]

1. 23 years from contract to delivery - would be like going into WW2 with a plane designed in 1918.

Has the pace of technological change slowed that much, or is this just another obsolete aircraft?

[Sherman A1]

2. I believe it would have to improve by several magnitudes to reach the level

of obsolete aircraft.

It's unnecessary junk and vastly overpriced unnecessary junk at that or perhaps better described as welfare for the military industrial complex.

[leveymg]

3. I think they made some performance promises they couldn't keep. Big-time contract fraud.

My understanding is that the stealth profile was based upon known parameters of the F-117A, and they simply ran off a bunch of bogus computer models which underplayed the essential differences in the two designs. It became obvious after the contract was awarded that LM couldn't deliver to specifications, and that's why this whole program was put into the go-slow track for the Too Big to Junk but too inadequate to throw more money into timely development type program.

It's a fundamentally sub-standard, if not totally fraudulent, procurement.