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The Pentagon's $399 Billion Plane To Nowhere
schwit1 writes with an update on the U.S. government's troubled F-35 program, the cost of which keeps rising while the planes themselves are grounded. A fire in late June caused officials to halt flights for the entire fleet of $112 million vehicles last week. Despite this, Congress is still anxious to push the program forward, and Foreign Policy explains why:
Part of that protection comes from the jaw-dropping amounts of money at stake. The Pentagon intends to spend roughly $399 billion to develop and buy 2,443 of the planes. However, over the course of the aircrafts' lifetimes, operating costs are expected to exceed $1 trillion. Lockheed has carefully hired suppliers and subcontractors in almost every state to ensure that virtually all senators and members of Congress have a stake in keeping the program — and the jobs it has created — in place. "An upfront question with any program now is: How many congressional districts is it in?" said Thomas Christie, a former senior Pentagon acquisitions official. Counting all of its suppliers and subcontractors, parts of the program are spread out across at least 45 states. That's why there's no doubt lawmakers will continue to fund the program even though this is the third time in 17 months that the entire fleet has been grounded due to engine problems."
The whole program should be scrapped. It's time to cut the losses on this boondoggle. Lots of states will lose jobs? Oh well, guess you idiots shouldn't have fucked up the program so royally if you wanted to hang on to those jobs. Trust me, the money will be spent somewhere else and there will be jobs to be had there. Let's build a dozen nuclear power plants for starters and go from there.
Everybody with an IQ above that of a jellybean knows the main job of the congresscritters is to bring back the pork. The blue guys do it and the red guys do it.
The reason they can keep doing it and no one really gives a shit is because once you explain to Joe Schmoe that cutting program X or agency Y's budget means he or his cousin or his drinking buddy could lose their job, well Joe can rationalize keeping that program.
Americans all want pork cut everywhere except their home district. We are short sighted, have short memories, and aren't willing to endure short term discomfort in the pursuit of long term prosperity.
Anyone candidate that would be for cutting this kind of corporate welfare isn't viable on a national ticket. Eisenhower was right about this all by the way.
The F-35 probably shouldn't have been built. At least, it shouldn't have been built the way it was. "Been built" is the key phrase. Most of the excess cost is already sunk. Nine countries have signed on to buy it. We can't reverse time and get the money back, and starting over from scratch would both a) cost more and b) lose most of the partner countries, meaning the US would pay more of the cost.
Yes, maintaining planes costs money, and the F-35 is no exception. Is someone suggesting that the US should have no planes? Of course not, so maintenance costs will be incurred. There's no choice to be made there. I suppose we could spend nearly as much trying to keep F-15s flying. Would that be better?
The F-35 replaced the A-10 Thunderbolt II's role as a tank buster, CAS bomber...
With the money we have spent on the F-35s to date, we could have repaired, retrofitted, and maintained our supply of A-10s for several decades. Hell, the A-10 is practically a flying tank. It has some of the best armament and is the most rugged fixed-wing aircraft which America has. It was a ridiculously short-sighted move to replace it with another overexpensive "multi role, joint" fighter.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
You seem to misunderstand what sunk cost means. You're using the phrase as an argument to keep funding the project because "we can't reverse time and get the money back". In fact, the common definition of the sunk cost is opposite of your use. Generally only future costs should be relevant to an investment decision, otherwise you run into the danger of "throwing good money after bad". There is a lot of evidence that continued funding of the F-35 is in fact throwing good money after bad.
You also present a false dichotomy. One alternative option from spending upwards of a Trillion dollars on the F-35 is to manufacture more smaller, cheaper, proven fighters such as the F-18 or indeed the F-15. Keeping our current squadrons operable is less of an issue if we build more at lower cost.
The NASA budget is a little bit bigger than a few millon at about $18B.
This article doesn't mention the incredible upgrades of the F-35. It has incredible situational awareness (SA), highly networked to acquire SA from all sources, sensors onboard to provide SA, smaller that the F-22, more stealthy, and a range of other characteristics that the pentagon desires (wiki). Those capabilities are the top reason for the F-35 to exist at all. As development has progressed, then the money problems and failures came up as they always do. The capability needs don't justify the failures of the program, but they need to be taken into consideration when there's talk of changing or canceling the program.
Everyone has a different concern. Congressmen are probably concerned about money staying in their state to stay elected. The Pentagon is worried about capability and not being embarrassed over a big failure. The tax payers are worried about not wasting money and some of them about keeping an F-35 job. It's a complicated issue with lots of caveats.
AC knocking it out of the park again.....
Eisenhower called it like a true prophet.
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
The F-35 is a classic example of what is wrong with the military-industrial-political complex.
It's bloated. To an extreme nearly unimaginable. Layer on layer of bureaucracy and self interest slathered immeasurably deep. It's not possible for this to be efficient or effective.
The problem is NOT the concept of the plane or its implementation. Nor is it with the inevitable startup issues. Any design no matter how brilliantly conceived would have similar problems when constructed by the set of institutions that are in play here.
What I am afraid is that the only thing that will change this is a real existential threat to the United States. Only then will we see focus on what is really important. The sort of focus that led the United States to an economic output greater than the rest of world combined during WWII.
Much more cost effective, especially since they don't need to be designed to support the limitations of human pilots (like g-force limits). And with a much lower cost we can build a lot more of them.
You cannot continue to go out and fight with older weapons though.
Nominally, the F-15/F-16/F-18 are not as survivable in a modern air war.
A proven fighter is one that has been through the teething problems that the F-35 is going through now.
It may well be that it would be better to start over, but we would then have to start another project, because the above mentioned fighters are getting long in the tooth.
emt 377 emt 4
The F-35 replaced the A-10 Thunderbolt II's role as a tank buster, CAS bomber...
With the money we have spent on the F-35s to date, we could have repaired, retrofitted, and maintained our supply of A-10s for several decades. Hell, the A-10 is practically a flying tank. It has some of the best armament and is the most rugged fixed-wing aircraft which America has. It was a ridiculously short-sighted move to replace it with another overexpensive "multi role, joint" fighter.
Yeah, F-35s replacing the A-10 good luck with that. The idea of the F-35 flying into the operational environment of the A-10, i.e. 0-3000ft which in a real shooting war is likely to be saturated by scrap fire and dominated by Manpads, full blown SAMs and mobile Flak such as Shilkas and Tunguskas and having the same survial rates as the A-10 always struck me as funny. Stealth is pretty much useless down there most of the kills are done with heat seeking missiles and the good old Mk.1 eyeball. Experience has shown several times now that no matter how many smart weapons they cook up there is no replacement for getting in good and close and blasting the shit out of the target with a 30mm gun.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Just buy some Eurofighters...
If we just put the trillion in the bank at 4% interest rate, you would get 40 billion dollars a year, It could pay 1 million people 40K a year. None of these projects ever create even a large fraction of a million jobs. Even if it uses the money to hire half million people to dig a trench and the other half to close it up it would provide greater economic impact to the economy than such boondongles.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So, 4.5% of this ONE SINGLE Defense Department program, then. Yeah. I see your point. /sarcasm
You cannot continue to go out and fight with older weapons though.
Nominally, the F-15/F-16/F-18 are not as survivable in a modern air war.
The F-35 is a compromise design.
Mostly it compromises its ability to loiter on the target, carry large amounts of munitions, and dogfight.
So as long as you don't want to do any of those things, the F-35 is better than older weapons.
A proven fighter is one that has been through the teething problems that the F-35 is going through now.
Ha! The F-35's issues are not "teething problems," they are R&D problems.
The F-35 is a procurement disaster of such epic proportions that tomes will be written to warn future generations on what not to do.
Just to stay on topic, one of those tomes will talk about engine problems and why the military should source 2 different engine designs.
It will also mention that, because of the F-35's unprecedented budget overruns, the second design was canceled.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And most important of all and ignored totally by everyone is that every single plane the airforce has ever developed had these same growing pains. They all have massive cost overruns, groundings and unexplained crashes.
They've spent the bulk of the money quoted for the planes. All those R&D dollars are gone. At this point the planes cost about $120 million a piece to build, which isn't that much more than an F-18. That's nothing, but because they include the R&D that's already spent you end up with dollar amounts that look massive. The less we buy the higher the amortized costs are.
The F-35 is likely to be the last manned fighter ever produced. We've signed almost a dozen countries up to buy some and spread the costs out. It's going to totally streamline all the parts acquisition and maintenance and leave us with a single plane that handles almost every manned role. In time robotic aircraft or drones are going to take over all the dangerous roles. But that time is still decades off and we need something to keep our defense better than everyone else until that point. Air power and navy are two areas I have no problem with out government spending money on. They can be used to deny an enemy entry to the Americas and our separation from the Asian continent is one of the things that provides our best protection.
Drawing comparisons to WWII is ironic, because the F-35 program is exactly the kind of program that the US did not invest in during the war. A program that consumed lots of resources on the promise of radical advances without delivering anything actually useful onto the battlefield now.
Germany in contrast, spent lots of time on such projects even into the final desperate days.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
The parent is wrong. Nothing has replaced the A-10. The Pentagon tried to kill the Warthog earilier this year until everyone who actually uses them screamed bloody murder.
This fricken plane is airworthy with half a wing and an engine missing. Could the F-35 do that?
The Iraqis don't want us to send troops over there to deal with the ISIS business. They have plenty of troops of their own. What they have asked for is some air support. Immagine what a couple of A-10 squadrons would do there..
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Blame the voters - they put those politicians into office.
Voters that work at Lockheed or associated sub-contractors... Other voters that sell stuff to the first set of voters... Ultimately, we'll all be directly or indirectly building F-35s. It's turtles all the way down.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Drawing comparisons to WWII is ironic, because the F-35 program is exactly the kind of program that the US did not invest in during the war. A program that consumed lots of resources on the promise of radical advances without delivering anything actually useful onto the battlefield now.
Germany in contrast, spent lots of time on such projects even into the final desperate days.
The Nazi leadership was blinded by the "grass is greener beyond the next hill" syndrome. If they had put the Heinkel 280 which first flew in 1941 into production and put some serious resources into making the HeS-8 and HeS-30 engines reliable enough for service they'd have had a workable jet fighter in 1943 with less of a performance advantage than the Me-262 but that would still have mopped the floor with most of the Allied opposition at the time. The Nazis failed to understand that fielding a mediocre jet fighter in time is better than fielding an outstanding one when it is too late. They were defeated by their aversion towards doing what Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond called "...the most un-German thing possible, a half-assed job".
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I blame (D) and (R) who are so stuck on bringing home bacon, that they screw the people they clam they serve while getting all sorts of re-election donations for the very people they should be de-funding.
How is that for what to blame?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's just socialism. This is how we do socialism in the United States. We don't have enough work for people to do any more. Too much outsourcing and too much automation. So we either start letting people die in the streets or we start redistributing wealth.
Thing is we spend most of the 50s-90s talking about how Socialism is Evil (tm) . It's heavily engrained in our populace. So we needed a form of Socialism that Americans could stomach. Enter the "Military Industrial Complex". Eisenhower built it up out of fear of another recession and regretted it. It pretty much warps our entire society...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The A10 was a wonder of an aircraft, but I'm not entirely sure it would still be useful in a serious war.
Against ISIS it might be useful, assuming that they're fighting in open terrain. An A10 is not particularly useful against targets in the middle of a city - if anything an aircraft that can loiter at altitude might be more useful for dropping bombs on designated buildings - nobody is going to be swooping over city blocks and hitting the right building visually.
Really the advantage of the A10 over other aircraft is that it can potentially use terrain masking to protect itself from large SAM emplacements. That doesn't matter in a place like Iraq. It could matter in a serious war with a modern defender. The reality is that we don't know how effective modern SAMs will be against things like the F22, and we also don't know how effective aircraft like the A10 will be at getting past them. The former is going to depend greatly on the F22's stealthiness and maybe its ability to maneuver, and the latter is mainly going to depend on tactics since the only advantage the A10 has is terrain masking and that is very situational.
Sure, the A10 can land with half of a wing left, but it is still out of action even if the pilot makes it. Modern aircraft are really hard to replace - it isn't like they'll be rolling out by the hundreds from assembly lines during a war making the pilots the major limitation. We of course should try to protect the pilots, but that isn't going to make the plane all that much more useful in a war.
All that said I wouldn't look to get rid of them either. The reality is that we don't know what the next serious war will be - better to hedge your bets especially if you can do it with really cheap aircraft. I imagine you could field a lot of aircraft like the A10 with some modern redesigns for far less than you're going to pay to make something in the class of the F35 and F22.
Or, don't work well. Does nobody remember the lessons of the infamous F-111? It was going to replace fighters, attack planes, light bombers, nuclear strike bombers, for both the Air Force and the Navy. The plane went WAY over budget, and in the end, the the F-111 turned out to be a pretty good light attack/recon aircraft, but not much else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... Instead of a plane that's excellent at say, dogfighting, you get one that is mediocre at dogfighting. And VTOL/STOL. And attack. It's like using a leatherman when you could be using actual tools.
We can't.
Our two new aircraft carriers can't support anything other than helicopters and VTOL/STOL aircraft. This is thanks to the fuckwits in Whitehall, deciding that we wouldn't add the electric catapults, and thereby save a few million quid.
These catapults would have allowed us to use cheap F-18s, at least in the short term. We scrapped our Sea Harrier fleet a few years ago (they were well past retirement).
So, we've spent billions on two useless flat-tops, while we wait for the F-35 programme to go into a death-spiral.
I predict a +5B quid project in a few years time - adding catapults - the hard way.
Still, it's not like the 12B quid they pissed up the wall, on the useless NHS patient records system. At least we have some working mobile helicopter platforms to show for it.
I was modded "insightful" but was going for "funny" - go figure.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
US gets the F-22, the rest may get the F-35, which one is better? not the F-35. It's a project to have the rest of the world pay for aircraft development.
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