Sferrin wants to be a jerk about the F-35 and whether it brings value?
Ok. I'll play. Via Military.com
The Army would shrink to 380,000 troops, the Marines Corps to 150,000. The Navy would lose three carriers, and the Air Force would begin mothballing its B-52 bomber fleet under a worst-case budget scenario outlined Wednesday by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
&
The choice under the automatic budget cuts of sequestration came down to one between troops and new weapons systems, Hagel said. Defense leaders who led the review favored funding cyberwarfare, and such weapons systems as the F35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Littoral Combat Ship over personnel.Combat experience is being sacrificed on the altar of technological superiority. But even that is in doubt when you consider the fact that the F-35 Program Manager has been quoted as saying that the secrets to the F-35 have shown up in Chinese aircraft under development and that he isn't sure that the contractors have secured their information against further hacking.
"We did not find any particular capability that we could do away with" and still maintain overall combat power, a senior Pentagon official said at a later background briefing of the proposed new weapons systems.
Winnefeld said the review was the result of a "deep and very painful look into every corner of our institution."
"Nobody was very happy" with the outcome, he said
So with an Army that needs a new Ground Combat Vehicle and Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle...A Marine Corps that needs a new Amphibious Combat Vehicle...A Navy that would like to maintain 12 carriers.
Is the F-35 worth the cost?
Blame the sequester, not the F-35. Politics is to blame here, along with the total inability of either party to fully address the issue of sequester.
ReplyDelete"People, Ideas, Hardware.... in that order!"
ReplyDeleteIf those cuts are what our 'Defense Leaders' think, we're fucked. This is officially beginning of the end. The brass must be bucking for jobs as LM, Boeing, General Dynamics. These douchbags have been unwilling to dispense with the Cold-War organizational relics that are our services and they are paying the price.
We need to fire our 'defense leaders' and replace them the officers who've actually been in combat and can see the impact that valuing platforms over people will have.
the F-35 was questionable BEFORE the Dark Days of the Sequester.
God Fucking Damn them, this shitty administration and our congress have done more to harm our nation than a dozen years of war, and it keeps on coming
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that now we have to build it -- we have to field the capabilities if the Chinese have our stolen "secrets" in development, or we'll end up outmatched against Chinese armed with our own next-gen capabilities that we decided not to build. And we don't have a substitute we can field in time to prevent the asymmetry.
ReplyDeleteUnce upon a time there was a nation at war using modest numbers of "technological superior" jet fighters against an enemy featuring vast numbers of "legacy" piston engine fighters... They lost the air war. The ground war too.
ReplyDeleteHistory repeats, if you forget the lessons.
that is exactly right.
DeleteIf the F-35 cost what it was advertised to cost, an additional approximate $200B would be available over the procurement of the system. It will even get worse when the O&S costs end up double what was advertised (remember it was sold as being cheaper to operate than an F-16!). So yes, Blame F-35. When by far the largest DoD program doubles in cost it is going to have dramatic impacts on all other DoD expendatures.
ReplyDelete