Lockheed Marine Corps ($243 million dollar) F-35 Gets Two Extra Years to Fix Glitches

[unhappycamper]

Lockheed Marine Corps F-35 Gets Two Extra Years to Fix Glitches
By Tony Capaccio - Tue Dec 07 21:17:38 GMT 2010

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will recommend giving the Marine Corps as much as two additional years to develop its version of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 fighter to correct technical and manufacturing glitches that have delayed testing, according to two defense officials.

Gates told General James Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, of the decision in a Dec. 3 meeting on the fiscal 2012 budget, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified because the session wasn’t public.

The Marines’ short-takeoff and vertical-landing aircraft, the most complex version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has had flight-test schedule delays, some caused by parts shortages or reliability.

The U.K. in October said it decided in a budget-cutting move against buying the more expensive short-takeoff variant of the jet. The co-chairmen of President Barack Obama’s debt commission last month proposed terminating the Marine Corps version of the F-35, a move they said would save $17.6 billion between fiscal years 2012 and 2015.

The extra two years would be in addition to an earlier 13- month extension, to November 2015, that Gates ordered in the F- 35’s overall $30 billion development phase.



unhappycamper comment: The oligarchs just will not let this pig-in-a-poke die.

[Supersedeas]

1. Defense Contractors charge it and then get tax breaks too--a win-win for hostage takers