The F-35 Boondoggle: What Were They Thinking?

Wikimedia Commons

Over the past couple decades I've read or heard numerous references to the F-35 program that was designed create a next level fighter aircraft for the 21st century. Simultaneously, I've repeatedly read that this is one of the government's biggest military boondoggles ever. 

Since I knew so little about it, and today saw a couple references to the F-35, I decided to ask one of the popular AI programs (a) what is the F-35 and (2) what are some of the problems with this new high-tech jet. Here are the answers I received. Like many things government undertakes, the intentions may have been good, but in the end, "What in the world were they thinking?" 

Q: Please briefly summarize the F-35 program from initiation to present.

ANSWER: The F-35 Lightning II program was initiated in 1995 as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. The goal of the JSF program was to develop a new generation of fighter aircraft that would be common to all branches of the US military. The F-35 was selected as the winner of the JSF competition in 2001, and the program entered the development phase in 2002.

The F-35 is a fifth-generation fighter aircraft that is designed to be stealthy, supersonic, and highly maneuverable. The aircraft is also equipped with a variety of advanced sensors and weapons systems. The F-35 is available in three variants: the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant, the F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) variant, and the F-35C carrier takeoff and landing (CATOBAR) variant.

The program has been plagued by problems since its inception including massive cost overruns and schedule delays. The aircraft has also experienced a number of performance and maintenance issues.

Despite the problems with the program, the F-35 is now in full production and is being delivered to the US military and its allies. The F-35 is expected to be the mainstay of the US military's fighter fleet for many years to come.

Here is a timeline of the F-35 program:

• 1995: The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is initiated.
• 2001: The F-35 is selected as the winner of the JSF competition.
• 2002: The F-35 program enters the development phase.
• 2006: The first F-35A CTOL variant makes its first flight.
• 2008: The first F-35B STOVL variant makes its first flight.
• 2010: The first F-35C CATOBAR variant makes its first flight.
• 2011: The first F-35A CTOL variant is delivered to the US Air Force.
• 2015: The first F-35B STOVL variant is delivered to the US Marine Corps.
• 2019: The first F-35C CATOBAR variant is delivered to the US Navy.
• 2023: The F-35 program is in full production and is being delivered to the US military and its allies.* 

Q: What are some of the problems with the F-35 that our government has created.

ANSWER: The F-35 is the most expensive military aircraft program in history, and it has been plagued by problems since its inception. Here are some of the key problems with the F-35:

• Cost overruns: The F-35 program has experienced massive cost overruns, with the total cost now estimated to be over $1.7 trillion. This is more than twice the original estimate.
• Schedule delays: The F-35 program is also behind schedule, with the first operational F-35s not being delivered until 2011, seven years behind the original schedule.
• Performance issues: The F-35 has also experienced a number of performance issues, including engine problems, software glitches, and weapons integration problems.
• Maintenance problems: The F-35 is also very expensive to maintain, with some estimates putting the cost of maintaining a single F-35 at over $35 million per year.  [EdNote: The implication here is that the more planes you make, the more money it costs just to own them.

The US government has been criticized for its handling of the F-35 program. Critics argue that the government has failed to adequately oversee the program and has allowed Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the F-35, to get away with cost overruns and schedule delays.

The F-35 program has also been criticized for its lack of transparency. The US government has refused to release key information about the program, such as the cost of each aircraft and the specific performance issues that the aircraft has experienced.

The F-35 program is a major financial and technological undertaking, and it is important that the US government be transparent about the program's problems and that it take steps to address them.

Here are some of the potential consequences of the problems with the F-35:

• Reduced military readiness: The F-35 is a key component of the US military's air superiority capabilities. If the F-35 program is not successful, it could reduce the US military's ability to project power and protect its interests around the world.
• Increased costs: The cost overruns with the F-35 program are taking money away from other important military programs. This could force the US military to make cuts to other essential capabilities.
• Damage to US credibility: The F-35 program is a major international undertaking. The problems with the program could damage the US's reputation as a reliable partner and could make it more difficult for the US to secure allies in the future.

It is important to note that the F-35 program is still ongoing, and it is possible that the problems with the program can be addressed. However, it is also possible that the problems will persist, and that the F-35 program will not be the success that the US government was hoping for.

[EdNote: I smell a skunk. Worst of all is that they have wasted so much money on this project that they can't back out of it now.]

“There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity!”
~Burl Ives as Big Daddy

Related Link

Championing Responsible National Security Policy

Has the Pentagon Learned from the F-35 Debacle?

*According to ChatGPT the F-35 achieved full-rate productionn last year, but according to Google this was not achieved until Mar 12, 2024.

Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August: A Crucial Read for Government Leaders Today

THROWBACK THURSDAY

The current horrors in Israel/Gaza left me speechless here for a number of days. Today I felt that this 2009 blog post had something important to say. 

Display of 1962 Soviet Missile in Havana

I wrote this in 2009 while listening to an audio biography of Robert Kennedy by Evan Thomas. I felt inspired to share these thoughts when I reached the chapter dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis. RFK later published a book based on his memoirs during this crisis called 13 Days, which led to a pretty good film by the same name.

13 Days is about a critical moment in the Cold War. Robert Kennedy was Attorney General at the time, with his older brother John serving as President. The adversary during this critical juncture in history was Nikita Kruschev. When it was discovered that the Soviets had begun setting up nuclear missiles in Cuba, the president and his team of advisers had to determine what course of action to take.

It was decided that the president would go about “business as usual” so as to not alarm the press or the public, while his brother RFK led the brain trust that would work out scenarios and a path of action. Amongst this inner circle were Adlai Stevenson, McGeorge Bundy, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, and trusted friend/aide Kenny O’Donnell.

Several important events preceded the crisis: the Bay of Pigs debacle; the building of the Berlin Wall the previous year, which revealed the nature of their adversary; the riots in Oxford Town several weeks previous when James Meredith was to be enrolled at Ole Miss, which showed Bobby how inept and unprepared the military was for a crisis; and the January publication of Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August, which spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and which both JFK and RFK had read. This is a book that changed history.

The insights from Tuchman’s tome had a riveting effect on RFK when the brainstorming began and he perceived how hawkish men like Dean Rusk and the others were. In evaluating courses of action, Berlin was not a city with free people inhabiting it, but rather a bargaining chip. What’s worse, the Pentagon agreed that it was highly unlikely a pre-emptive strike would take out every missile silo in Cuba, so we would most likely lose at least one and maybe more major U.S. cities.

Tuchman’s book, primarily a description of the first weeks of World War I, was the wakeup call. Tuchman showed how the drums of war create their own momentum. Because of this book Bobby was probably the first to understand that military action very likely could lead to World War III, something no one in a nuclear age could ever hope for. And as a result, the brothers dug in their heels against being drawn down that slippery slope by overly-confident military exuberance.

As an aside I thought the following anecdote from the RFK biography was amusing. The magnitude of the resistance to the integration of the University of Mississippi had an unsettling effect on RFK. The violent clash at Ole Miss left two dead including a French journalist covering the story for a London paper. 48 soldiers and 28 U.S. Marshalls were wounded by gunfire. When a few weeks later he learned that there were nuclear warheads in Cuba aimed at the United States, the younger Kennedy quipped, “Think they could hit Oxford?”

This morning I want to thank God for Barbara Tuchman and her efforts to put down in lines the insights she’d gained from her dedicated research. This incident is living proof of the power of the written word. It is not a stretch to imagine that her book saved many lives, if not the world.

Is the U.S. Media a Mouthpiece for the State? Stephen Kinzer Argues "Yes"

Those of us who grew up during the Cold War were constantly reminded that Pravda, the state news vehicle of the Soviet Union, was primarily a channel for Soviet propaganda.  The word pravda means truth and its primary function was to spread the Party's message to the rest of the world.

The unspoken message here was that our media was the voice of the good guys and that it was not propaganda. It was a free press reporting real news as it happens.

A couple nights ago I was listening to an interview with Stephen Kinzer on National Public Radio. Kinzer is a journalist and author who was formerly with the New York Times. On NPR Kinzer stated that he and the Times parted ways over the issue of journalistic integrity, especially with regard to being a channel for the U.S. propaganda. (This was how interpreted what he said on the air.)

As one who has written about this topic on numerous occasions (eg. He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People, and The Purpose of Propaganda: Social Engineering) it made me interested in learning more about Stephen Kinzer, his ideas and experiences, so I asked Google Bard for a summary of Mr. Kinzer's views on the U.S. media as a mouthpiece for our government and the Pentagon.*

Bard Replied:

Stephen Kinzer is a journalist and author who has written extensively about the role of the U.S. media in foreign policy. He argues that the U.S. media has a long history of serving as a mouthpiece for the government and the Pentagon.

Kinzer points to several examples of this, including:

• The media's uncritical reporting of the lead-up to the Iraq War, which was based on false claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
• The media's failure to challenge the Bush administration's justification for the war in Afghanistan, which was based on the claim that the Taliban was harboring al-Qaeda.
• The media's reluctance to report on the human cost of U.S. wars, such as the war in Iraq, which has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Kinzer argues that the U.S. media is not simply passive in its role as a mouthpiece for the government. He believes that the media is actively complicit in promoting U.S. foreign policy interests. (EdNote: emphasis mine) He cites the example of the media's coverage of the Arab Spring, which he argues was largely supportive of U.S. intervention in the region.

Kinzer's views on the U.S. media have been controversial. Some critics have accused him of being too critical of the media, while others have said that he is right to point out the media's biases.

* * *

This is exactly what Seymour Hersh was shocked to find when he came to D.C. to be part of the Washington Press Corp. DC journalists enjoyed hobnobbing with the government elite. As a result they became bedfellows and were reluctant to be real reporters.

Hersh began ruffling the status quo with stories like his unearthing the My Lai massacre and by tracking down Lt. Calley, the Viet Nam War atrocity scapegoat. (Recommended: Reporter by Seymour Hersh is a Must Read for All Young Journalists)

Regardless of one's views on Kinzer's specific arguments, there is no doubt that the U.S. media plays a significant role in shaping public opinion about foreign policy. Many believe Kinzer's work has helped to raise awareness of the ways in which the media can be used to promote government interests. 

* It should be noted that AI systems are sometimes unreliable. The Bard's views seemed like a fair description to me.

Throwback Thursday: Numbers Games

THIS POST ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN 2008

Every picture tells a story. So do numbers. Here’s another page of numbers that speaks volumes.

In answer to the question, “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what’s right – just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?”
In 1958: 76% said “just about always” or “most of the time”
In 1970: 50%
In 1976: 33%

Number of buildings the Pentagon owns or rents around the world, 2008: 316,238
Number of sites where these building are located: 4,668
Number of sites that are in foreign countries: 761
Number of sites located in foreign countries in 1967: 1,014

Percentage of persons classified as poor in U.S. who have air conditioning: 85%
Percentage who had air conditioning in 1971: 36%

Percentage of persons classified as poor in U.S. who have a color TV set: 97%
Percentage in 1971: 40%

Percentage of U.S. poor who own an automatic dishwasher: 40%
In '71: 20%

Percentage who own a refrigerator: Almost 100%
In 1970: 75%

Total Federal spending, 1968: $774 billion
Total Federal spending today: $2.5 trillion
Current Federal Wall Street/AIG bailout package: $700 billion

Number of persons in prison with drug crimes as most serious offense: 400,000
Number in 1980: 24,000

Number of persons worldwide who have died from starvation in the last hour: 2,738
Number in past hour who died from malaria: 342

Percentage of Haitian babies born with low birth weight: 25
Percentage of Haitians using adequate sanitation facilities: 30
Percentage of world illness caused by unsanitary drinking water: 80

Approximate number of deaths caused by 1998 civil war in Congo: 2.9 million

Number of live nuclear warheads in U.S. arsenal, 1966: 32,040
Estimated number of warheads in Pakistan today: 60-80

Number of synapses in human brain: 100 trillion

Number of web cams today: 100 million
Number of cell phones: 3.3 billion
Number of corporate email messages sent a day: 77 billion

Estimated number of times average person blinks in a day: 17,000

Estimated number of times average person laughs: Not enough

Honduras: Are We On The Wrong Side?

A month ago I went to a retirement party for a friend and got into a conversation with someone who is intimately connected with Honduras, whose family is still there. Naturally, with Honduras being in the news I had to ask if he could explain what was happening there.

It was a clean and concise summary. Essentially, the properly elected president did not wish to follow the country's own Constitution. The military deposed him not because it was striving for power, but because of the president's unconstitutional behavior. Unfortunately, multinational organizations like the U.N. and O.A.S. want him reinstated.

I just finished watching the film Black Hawk Down, which shows the consequences of a military incursion in Somalia in 1993 in which 19 soldiers and 1000 Somali citizens lost their lives. The film shows the action which took place, but the book details the backdrop. The Somalia situation was this. The country was a wrecked mess run by gangs. The most powerful had been top dog for quite some time, but he was hated and ruthless. The one good thing he did was to unify all the rival gangs in their common hatred of him. They banded together and ousted him.

But this ousted gang leader, who had diplomatic ties to the U.N., persuaded the U.S. to intervene and help him regain his "rightful place." It was a disastrous, ill-conceived response. I highly recommend this book.
Based on my understanding of the situation, we are very possibly doing an instant replay. On Sept 4 it was announced that the U.S. cut off aid to Honduras, which is already one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere. Two letters that I have received from Honduras indicate that the people are in dire straits.

Here's a brief summary of the background on this story.

One of the most amazing features of the United States has been its example of the peaceful transition of power. Right from the start our history has been a role model that is worth noting and quite a contrast to most of history. George Washington, who was nearly godlike in stature, stepped down voluntarily from the equivalent of a throne, the U.S. presidency. Keep in mind there were no term limits in those days.

When our second president John Adams handed power over to Thomas Jefferson, this was the first time in history that power was given voluntarily to an opposing party. These two were adversaries. Adams and Jefferson both lived by the principle of Rex Lex, that is, Law is King. There is something higher than the men and women who run the country.

That tradition has followed us to the present time where ideologically contrary presidents have handed over the baton, or sword, or whatever symbol you'd like to call it, without resorting to guns, hand grenades, etc. If the disrespect shown on the floor of congress last week (Mr. Bush was booed in 2005 on one occasion in a similar vein) is the worst of what we do, well, we're probably not doing too badly.

As for Honduras... Based on a lifetime of reading and certain anecdotal observations from friends and acquaintances over the years, my guess is that there is a divergence of opinion on the matter within the State Department itself, or the Pentagon and the executive branch. Let's pray our leaders make wise decisions and exercise care as they evaluate courses of action.