Wednesday, July 16, 2014

F-35 News. What everyone is missing...


What people are missing.

SecDef Hagel is finally doing the hard thing.  I'm guessing but from my chair it looks like for the first time in his tenure he's gone against the wishes of Lockheed Martin, the USAF Chief of Staff and the Marine Corps Commandant as well as the Joint Program Office.

This leads to a lessons learned.

This program isn't as "too big to fail" as everyone believes.  That idea gets shit canned when the importance of the F-35's appearance at this airshow coupled with the hit it would take publicity wise is considered.

The Brits needed this puppy to show up, the Commandant of the Marine Corps needed this puppy to fly to Europe, Lockheed Martin desperately hoped that this would be the sales commercial to help them dominate the market and Hagel basically said fuck you.

What will happen now.

We can expect many to take the Singaporean way of doing things.  Call it a wait and see approach.  The Singaporeans won't buy a half baked airplane and will only seriously consider it once its been developed as a weapon of war...not as a test bed.

Sequestration...the elephant in the room.

Next year will be interesting.  The services have nothing else to cut and the US Navy in particular is having to forestall other more important projects just to keep the myth that they're interested in the F-35C going.  The need to replace the Ballistic Subs is the biggest issue affecting the Navy's ongoing participation in this program.  If sequestration continues then the pressure for them to drop out of the F-35 program will be too much to ignore any longer.  There is nothing else to cut.  The USMC has already eviscerated its Infantry Battalions, the USAF has already savaged its aircraft inventory.

The death spiral is here.

The plane has destroyed the defense budget, ruined many airforces and has left the US military in a terrible place.

I'll go on and say I told you so now.  You can thank me later.