Time to Get Real About the F-35

[unhappycamper]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-melton/time-to-get-real-about-th_1_b_5942080.html



Time to Get Real About the F-35
James Melton
Posted: 10/07/2014 4:50 pm EDT Updated: 10/08/2014 3:28 pm EDT

I understand the reluctance to simply walk away from the Pentagon's plan to buy a fleet of Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighters. But the time has come to either cancel or significantly downsize the program.

On an emotional level, that's a hard recommendation to make. The plane, which is being developed to replace several fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft now on use, is a sleek, technologically advanced thing of beauty. And, if we could ever get it to work the way it should, it would be an amazingly capable and lethal weapon of war. In short, the F-35 is - or at least has the potential to be - very cool.

Add that the usual Washington considerations - like bureaucratic inertia, jobs in key Congressional districts and lawmakers' innate desire to keep key defense contractors well fed - it would be hard for the Pentagon and Congress to completely give up on the F-35.

However, after years of big cost overruns and delays, along with scary technical glitches and performance problems, it's still not clear when, if ever, the F-35 will be deployable. A beautiful fighter plane loses a lot of its allure if it can't be used in combat. Like a vintage Italian sports car with a bad transmission and an oil leak, the F-35 is cooler in theory than it is in reality. That's especially true when one considers the cost.