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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 02 2014, @01:16PM
Extend that methodology to the rest of the gov and you can see why our budget is a complete mess.
Was not paying attention anymore did they finally pass a budget like they are required to?
I have been watch many older 60/70s shows. You can see little clips of newspapers or hear 'news summaries'. It is funny how people act like this sort of thing is new. It has been going on for a *very* long time. I have been also watching dragnet (good show btw) I tell my wife it is like listening to the internet argue.
This is what kills me about people not wanting to axe part of the budget (except parts they dont like). We could easily loose 3/4ths of all parts and still have a well functioning gov. But the pork train is too large at this point. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ [usdebtclock.org]
Politics, regulations and bureaucracy
The last one I want to speak to. Take our standing army. They can not say how many boots they own. Something every single one of our soldiers must own. They can not say how many bullets they own. Something every single one of our soldiers needs to know how to use. They have a horrible procurement system. In many cases they overbuy then overbuy again because they simply did not know they had enough already.
Gov spend and incorrect regulation has become a boat anchor on the American people.
Also think about this http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html [usdebtclock.org]
Some of those countries do not have the crazy standing army we do and they have even worse debt problems. What could we do if we fixed our debt problems?! Think of the amazing infrastructure we could have?! We have a chance but it is fading.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 02 2014, @05:46PM
Obama floated that idea for the best place to spend the stimulus money, but Congress shot it down fast because, first, it was something that Obama wanted, and second, that would have mean a lot of money would have gone to construction companies, and a lot of them might be (gasp!) union (i.e., vote Democrat). Keep in mind that this was all done very soon after a major Interstate bridge collapsed and there was a lot of media attention on the crumbling and aged infrastructure, so if you can't get Congress to spend money after a fucking bridge collapses, what chance do you think you can get it to happen now?