Slashdot Mirror
There Is Plenty To Cut At the Pentagon
Hugh Pickens writes "William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, writes that although we have been bombarded with tales of woe about the potentially devastating impacts of cutting the Pentagon budget 8% under the sequester, examples of egregious waste and misplaced spending priorities at the Pentagon abound. One need look no further than the department's largest weapons program, the F-35 combat aircraft, which has just been grounded again after a routine inspection revealed a crack on a turbine blade in the jet engine of an F-35 test aircraft in California. Even before it has moved into full-scale production, the plane has already increased in price by 75%, and it has so far failed to meet basic performance standards. By the Pentagon's own admission, building and operating three versions of the F-35 — one for the Air Force, one for the Navy and one for the Marines — will cost more than $1.4 trillion over its lifetime, making it the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken. And in an era in which aerial combat is of diminishing importance and upgraded versions of current generation U.S. aircraft can more than do the job, it is not at all clear that we need to purchase more than 2,400 of these planes. Cutting the two most expensive versions of the F-35 will save over $60 billion in the next decade."
The F35 has had problems and is an easy target for scapegoating, but these are because of cutting edge designs and advances in material science more than any other reason. It also employs tens of thousands of our nation's best and brightest engineers.
Not to mention that the money isn't being thrown away into a pit. Because of Lockheed Martin's pricing model, they keep very little of it, and almost all of it goes to labor (and a big chunk returns in taxes, if not all in economic activity).
If you want an easy way to save money, turn Afghanistan back over to its rightful owners (the Taliban), and lets stop pissing away money on mercenaries committing warcrimes.
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