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The F-35 Fighter Plane Is Even More of a Mess Than You Thought

posted by janrinok on Monday June 02 2014, @11:36AM   
from the buddy-can-you-spare-me-a-dime? dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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.

• Re:wow, budget cuts... (Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Monday June 02 2014, @06:18PM

  by JeanCroix (573) on Monday June 02 2014, @06:18PM (#50341)

  Excellent summary; I'm glad someone came along and spelled all that out. There's another major problem you neglected though - feature creep. Each year, particularly for the F-35, the Joint Program Office has been increasing requirements and spec - add this; change that; make it do just this one, no two, no three extra things; put in a newer widget here; etc. That's not a good idea to do a project that's already well past the design phase. So then everyone (Lockheed, Pratt, et. al.) have to go back and redesign things to meet the new, more difficult, changed spec. But what do you mean that's going to put them over budget and behind schedule? Outrage!

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