Thanks for the article Peter...
via Foreign Policy...
What is remarkable is that the major news outlets and "opinion-shapers" are all coalescing around the idea that the F-35 isn't worth the cost.
That is the new danger for the F-35.
via Foreign Policy...
Burying bad news before a long holiday weekend, the Pentagon announced just before 9 p.m. on July 3 that the entire F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet was being grounded after a June 23 runway fire at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.The article itself is unremarkable...
The grounding could not have come at a worse time, especially for the Marine Corps, which had lots of splashy events planned this month for its variant of the next-generation plane, whose costs have soared to an estimated $112 million per aircraft.
Effectively saying that the most expensive warplane in American history is too dangerous to fly is a huge public relations blow for the Pentagon, which has been under fire for years for allowing the plane's costs to increase even as its delivery time continued to slide right. The plane's prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, could also take a hit to its bottom line if the F-35 isn't cleared to fly to the United Kingdom for a pair of high-profile international air shows packed with potential customers. One thing the grounding won't do, however, is derail the F-35, a juggernaut of a program that apparently has enough political top cover to withstand any storm.
What is remarkable is that the major news outlets and "opinion-shapers" are all coalescing around the idea that the F-35 isn't worth the cost.
That is the new danger for the F-35.
