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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: 5, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:39PM
So, this program is going to cost over half a trillion dollars, and nobody's convinced it's going to be a significant improvement over the current state of affairs.
I propose a thought experiment.
Let's rewind the clock back to the eve of the Second Gulf War. And, instead of waging the war, we had packaged up $20 bills, an hundred per package, with a little parachute -- individual bundles of $2,000. And imagine we dropped 250 million such bundles from aircraft all over the major population centers of the Middle East. Making sure the bundles were brightly colored and easy to find, and so on. Half a trillion dollars in free money helicoptered in to the Middle East in a way that none of the governments there could control, a massive infusion of cash directly into the hands of the populace.
Would anybody here care to propose that the repressive governments there would be able to survive such a move? That the likes of DAESH would be able to convince the average residents to adopt lives of brutal piety when they were suddenly fantastically wealthy by any standard they were familiar with? That the governments could prevent the citizens from buying arms with which to defend themselves from the government? That the citizens would hate us the way they do today?
And just imagine all the ways that that money would come back to us -- all the international trade it would spur, all the local investments that would lead to stronger local economies and thus to exports, and so on.
I submit that the world would be a far better place today had we done that...and that we should seriously consider similar approaches to cleaning up the mess we instead made there.
For it seems the height of insanity to think that we can bomb ourselves out of a disaster we bombed ourselves into....
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:47PM
But dem ragheads *belong* in the stone age! Let's bomb until all they got is rocks!
/sarcasm (alas, not for everyone)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:54PM
> when they were suddenly fantastically wealthy by any standard they were familiar with?
With two, or even four or ten grand?
> That the governments could prevent the citizens from buying arms with which to defend themselves from the government?
People being able to fight their central government is EXACTLY why we are in the current mess.
Because we sponsored tribal-minded governments and groups. And the other tribes didn't enjoy being repressed and took arms.
You do need two reality checks.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 04 2016, @12:33AM
The real reason the Middle East is in the mess it is in is because of the Sykes-Picot agreement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:11AM
Wouldn't work. First, even though it would had been distributed evenly in geographical sense, most of the money would end in few hands of the strongest, meanest local criminals, or government officials. But even if it didn't, If everyone gets plenty money, it consequently becomes worthless, because all prices come up with elevated supply of money. And that's not all: money, even in single person's hands, being valuable, still gives this person only as much power as there can be extracted from surrounding society. If there is no use for the money (e.g. you are on deserted island sitting on a pile of gold or on stash of greenbacks) it is inconsequential. Pumping money alone into a backwater country does nothing. I know, you would say "but they could trade with the outside world...". No they couldn't, not on significant scale, because first, smugglers would want extra profit and would soon deplete their 2000$ stashes, and second their government can at least choke the smuggling operation down to a trickle, making the money useless again, or worse, they can just break down doors on every last house and confiscate at gunpoint all foreign currency they find.
And finally, with 2000$ in pocket, the smartest thing you can do is to try and emigrate to some First World country, as they do today, instead of trying to overthrown your heavily armed dictatorship.