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The US military's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft is proving to be a pain in the neck in more ways than one. Not only did the Pentagon spend almost $400 billion to buy 2,400 aircraft - about twice as much as it cost to put a man on the moon - the F-35 program is 7 years behind schedule and $163 billion over budget. This at a time when cuts in the defense budget are forcing the Pentagon to shrink the size of the military. CBS 60 Minutes took a closer look at the troubled fighter plane a few months back, but their rebroadcast on Sunday evening seems like as good a reason as any to revisit one of the biggest ongoing budget debacles in U.S. military memory. David Martin gets an inside look at what makes the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter the most expensive weapons system in history.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 02 2014, @12:54PM
It's a little late now. Too bad my country (Holland) decided to join this mess and spend precious tax payer Euro on an aircraft that nobody needs (we have perfectly fine F16's). I'm still waiting on some kind of story coming from the States that would read something like, US government spends 1 billion to feed refugee children of Syria. But hey, what's the use of that, better spend orders of magnitude more just to be able to kill off more people more efficiently.
(Score: 1) by No.Limit on Monday June 02 2014, @01:33PM
So let's summarise:
The US, Australia [soylentnews.org] and Holland are all involved in this F-35 debacle.
Meanwhile, Switzerland just got over the Gripen [wikipedia.org] debacle.
While we're at it, there's also an interesting read one paragraph [wikipedia.org] above regarding Norway's evaluation of the F-35 & Sweden's Gripen:
There seems to be a clear trend when it comes to countries wanting to replace their fighter jets.
Well, this all seems in alignment with the corruption & bureaucracy of politics [soylentnews.org].