F-35 counter propaganda war falters. Mainstream media picking up the story...

The Commandant tried to deliver the masculine version of the feminist passive aggressive rant of "the debate is over" with regard to the F-35.

I told ya before that it wasn't and this is further proof.  The mainstream media is picking up the story and the counter story/propaganda of the meme that the F-35 is a done deal is faltering.

First from the National Interest...

Instead, the F-35 is designed to be lethal at well beyond visual range through a combination of stealth, sensors, superior information processing and electronic warfare capability. There are reasons to wonder how effective the F-35’s bag of tricks will be into the future, especially as counterstealth systems evolve, and I’d like to see it carry more and longer-ranged weapons, But the trial back in January tells us precisely nothing about the effectiveness of the F-35 in the regime it was designed for.

Why do I highlight a conservative, pro defense mag article that generally shouts the same excuses we hear from the fanboys forum over at F-16.net?  Simple.  Its a direct copy of the story that first ran in the EXTREMELY pro F-35 think tank blog the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

When the best that your opponents can do is to simply parrot the weak arguments from the Pentagon and the F-35 program office then they're losing.

And losing badly.

But check this out from the Weekly Standard.  Oh and its another conservative, pro military but ANTI Govt waste mag...

At a total cost of more than a trillion dollars, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive weapons program in history. The U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — not to mention the air forces and navies of more than a dozen U.S. allies — are counting on the Lockheed Martin plane to replace aircraft currently in service and take over a number of missions to include close air support and air superiority. The plane is supposed to be able to do it all. But last week, as David Axe reported in War Is Boring, a leaked report from a test pilot who recently flew an F-35 against an F-16 – a plane that first saw service in the 70s – in a series of mock aerial engagements called the JSF an inferior dogfighter.

The article is basically a copy and paste of the arguments being made by War is Boring blog and the whining, whimpering, crying statements being made by F-35 supporters.

Why is this significant?

Simple.

That cost issue.  The plane is suppose to be able to do it all and now we have quantifiable proof that it can't.

The White House, Pentagon and services are all involved in a silly dance of death.  The White House gets its social change and the Pentagon/services get this dog of an airplane in exchange.

But with papers like the Weekly Standard moving from a buy to neutral stance on supporting the airplane we're seeing critical mass arriving.

About fucking time.

Sidenote:  What is the Pentagon/Lockheed Martin propaganda campaign?  Well Lockheed Martin released about 20 photos of the F-35 operating from a Marine Air Station and the Pentagon let loose the photo below...supposedly to celebrate social media success...its so obvious though that the public affairs officer should be fired for stupidity.