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The US Grounds All F-35 Jets (bbc.com)
Thelasko tipped us off to this story. NBC News reports:
The U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marines -- as well as 11 international partners who participated in the program -- grounded all F-35 fighters on Thursday as part of an ongoing investigation into a jet that crashed in Beaufort, South Carolina, late last month.
"The pilot in that incident ejected safely but the aircraft was destroyed," reports the BBC, adding "the problem has already been identified as faulty fuel tubes. Once these are checked or replaced the aircraft will be back in the air."
The U.S. has spent more than $320 billion to build their fleet of 2,400-plus F-35 jets, according to a recent GAO report -- or roughly $130 million for each one of the planes. The BBC calls it "the largest and most expensive weapons program of its type in the world."
"The pilot in that incident ejected safely but the aircraft was destroyed," reports the BBC, adding "the problem has already been identified as faulty fuel tubes. Once these are checked or replaced the aircraft will be back in the air."
The U.S. has spent more than $320 billion to build their fleet of 2,400-plus F-35 jets, according to a recent GAO report -- or roughly $130 million for each one of the planes. The BBC calls it "the largest and most expensive weapons program of its type in the world."
That's an excellent quote, and it's a sad testament to the poor state of education of this day that anyone saying anything similar presently no doubt would be harassed and heckled beyond belief for being a "socialist" or "commie".
Same for Roosevelt btw. "People who are hungry, people who are out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." No wonder the right is so keen on creating jobless and hungry people.
At a billion dollars per unit, it had better be good :)
Also, even if it did avoid a few deaths (say 10), $32 billion per life saved is awfully high. Put the money into something like biomedical research or infrastructure improvement, and you could save more lives for less money.
And no, military lives aren't worth more than the lives of anyone else in the US.
Shame the Republican party now worships a senile actor who consulted astrologers.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
What, no one remembers the F-111? Swing-wing, twin-engine, single-tail, was supposed to do everything for everyone, and it ended up being a mediocre low-level bomber and a quite capable electronics warfare platform, but it didn't do anything the sales brochure said it'd do.
The navy rejected it.
The Air Force grudgingly kept it.
The F-35 is more of the same. Specialized missions require specialized aircraft, there is no jack-of-all-trades in fighters.
Interceptor / fighter - F-15, F-22. Expensive, rather rare, yet still the most unfair fighters ever produced, full-stop.
Low-cost fighter - F16. Cheap to buy, cheap to fly, but rather limited in what it can haul. But it does 95% of the jobs out there for fighters.
Close Air Support - A-10. This one needs no writeup. You know it, or you don't. If you know it, you love it.
Marines support - Harrier. Always a rube goldberg, the marines still love it because they can take it and base it pretty much anywhere.
And this last trio is what the F-35 tried to replace -- it was supposed to be the cheap fighter, and the CAS airplane, and the vertical-takeoff bird, and it can't do any of those things well. The Air Force, supposedly, privately, wants the A-10 fixed up for the next few decades because they already know the 35 is a loss.
My tax dollars at work. Fuck them. Build more F16s and come up with a new CAS airpane, a bespoke one like the A-10 was.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Defense spending has dropped significantly as percent of the budget since the 1960s. The bulk of the budget is now Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements. We already spend $2.6 trillion dollars per year on the types of programs you're advocating. Adding $18 billion would hardly make a difference. At this point you're advocating removing sand from a molehill to try to make a mountain bigger.
Point out one country which doesn't spend money on a military. There isn't, because everyone country which tried it was invaded and conquered by another country. Like it or not, the world is not unicorns and rainbows. The bottom line is that it's nearly always cheaper to forcibly take resources away from a neighbor than it is to cultivate/harvest/mine/develop them yourself. So there will always be an incentive for countries to invade and conquer other countries.
Having a military to defend yourself with is the most economically sound way to dissuade a potential invader. You have $200 billion in assets, but no defense. An invader figures they can spend $5 billion to invade you and take away your $200 billion, for a net profit (to them) of $195 billion.
But if you spend $5 billion of your assets on a military which can inflict $200 billion in damage, that changes the math. Now the invader estimates it will lose $205 billion from invading you, for a net loss of $5 billion. So they leave you alone. Yes you had to spend $5 billion, but it resulted in you not losing $200 billion.
This is an unfortunate oversight in a lot of people's thinking. They assume the status quo would continue to exist even if they eliminated one factor, ignoring how that factor contributes to the status quo. Like people who think because the air is clean, we don't need clean air regulations. The country being free from invasion is not its natural state. If you eliminate military spending and the "murder weapons" as you put it, someone else would simply waltz in and take away everything you own, probably murdering several or most of your family in the process. I know because it's what happened to my country (Korea).
However, the only real difference between this political killing and those in our "Civilized West" (besides all the coverage) is the borderline honesty of it all; we know that "MBS will deny but the twinkle in his eye does belie."
It's a brief glimpse of how the world really works... and everyone's horror and outrage reveals how little knowledge or understanding of actual history (much less current reality) they possess.
Tell you this: I certainly wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of anyone like him... but he might be the least dishonest of any nation's leaders. ;)
USAs relationship with the Saudis has always puzzled me. The Saudis were mostly responsible for 9/11 and funded much of the Islamic terrorism around the world. So why does the USA give them a free pass?
The most simple explanation, is Saudi Arabia promised to always sell oil in USD in return for protection. The Petro dollar is critical to the USD, and every country that has dared sell on the world stage in another currency has met with the wrath of either the CIA or US military.
This relationship is criminally sad.
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It's worth pointing out because there are people who actually argue that America needs to spend $600 billion a year to defend itself from Russia, Iran and North Korea.
"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong." - Ronald Reagan
Weakness invites challenge. Any student of history knows this. Britain and the US tried this after WWI and the world reaped tens of millions of dead as a result. That is but one example of many throughout thousands of years of human history. The surest way to avoid war is to have such overwhelming might that no other state in its right mind would ever consider taking up arms against you.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky