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The US Air Force today announced that its first operational squadron of F-35A Lightning II fighters is ready for combat duty. The announcement was made just a day into the five-month period that the Air Force had been given to reach operational levels with the 34th Fighter Squadron, based at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
The "initial capability" declaration comes after two Air Force F-35As joined two Marine Corps F-35s at July's Royal International Air Tattoo at the United Kingdom's Fairford Royal Air Force base and after an accelerated pace of operational tests for the 34th over the past few months. The first F-35A aircraft were delivered to the 34th in September of last year. They've been modified several times after delivery, including getting software updates to the avionics that have eliminated some of the "instability" problems previously experienced (including radar system crashes that required reboots while in flight). Since the most recent software upgrades, the squadron has flown 88 individual aircraft sorties without a software problem, according to an Air Combat Command statement.
[...] However, as stealthy as it is, the F-35A currently has a limited punch. The aircraft won't be able to carry the full suite of weapons used by the F-16—the aircraft it is intended to replace—until 2020, when the Air Force begins accepting aircraft at full-rate production of 150 per year.
Eventually, the Air Force plans to purchase up to 1,800 F-35As at a final price tag of $100 million per aircraft (plus the buried costs of the long-delayed development of the aircraft). The total cost of the program to the US and its allies is expected to exceed $500 billion (~£375 billion).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 04 2016, @10:06PM
Deep water ports with direct freight rail, airports interconnected with the cities they serve (looking at you LAX, you make even ORD look good), canals which work, bridges and dams which are not structurally deficient, light rail at useful density, tunnels that decongest critical highways, water networks which don't leak, dykes that don't collapse and other flood-mitigation tools, reservoirs for droughts, sewers which don't overflow into lakes a few times a year, earthquake/hurricane/florida_sinking mitigation measures, and burying all the f--ing power and phone lines get get ripped out at the first gust of wind...
Sorry, I don't see any 21st century infrastructure in there. I guess my point here is that there is remarkably little that actually counts as 21th century infrastructure. As to the infrastructure list you mention, my view is that the US needs to decide what it wants to fund. There's not the budget for the current large combination of entitlements, pork, military spending, and infrastructure building (even counting the overlap between categories).
Sure, you ain't gonna do NY-LA even in a high-speed train, but any two major metropolis less than 600 flat miles apart should have high-speed links. I know Americans are less stupid than Europeans and Chinese, but remember the airline prices and the TSA.
You just mentioned airlines. We shouldn't be doing trains because TSA. After all, the TSA could be thoroughly inspecting train passengers now. Create enough high speed trains and they'll have the incentive and political backing to do that. But then, from the viewpoint of infrastructure building, the TSA is negative infrastructure and would be eliminated as an obstacle which by itself would make air passenger flight much better.