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) by tangomargarine on Monday June 02 2014, @02:41PM
And none of those are fights where we would ever need a superadvanced stealth fighter. Because the world knows (well, other than Russia maybe) that it's just stupid to try to go up against the U.S. in any kind of conventional war. There's a reason it's all asymmetric.
Well, that and we like beating up on people who can't fight back, I suppose.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"