Slowdown in weapon modernization expected. Is the F-35 on the list?

via National Defense.

As it finalizes its budget request for the next fiscal year, the Pentagon has to find a way to close the approximately $15 billion gap between the amount of topline funding it hoped to receive and the level that was agreed upon in the recently passed Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, Comptroller Mike McCord said during remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
“There will probably be some slowdowns in some modernization programs,” he said.
The changes can be expected in “a few places,” but he declined to specify whether the F-35 joint strike fighter or other high profile programs would fall victim.

They're being cheeky.

The F-35 MUST be on that list because there is no other low hanging fruit left, every other project has already been delayed beyond reason and troop levels/benefits have been sliced to the bone.

So the real question becomes...why not state the obvious and say that the F-35 is going to be slowed down?

Easy.  They don't want to spook partner nations.  They don't want to feed "the trolls" (I'm probably included in that category).  In short they don't need the bad publicity.

The program office has climbed out on a limb, called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs a liar in his testimony to the Senate, stated that high ranking USAF officers didn't know what they were talking about when they said that the Air Force was looking at buying F-15/16/18s so they're in a hurt locker.

I've noticed all this and soon so will the mainstream media.  Ultimately this means that the program, which once touted itself as being the most transparent in history is anything but.

Death spiral?  Nope.  Flat spin headed out to sea?  Yep.  We've just taken a step closer to the inevitable.  The F-35 is about to suffer the same fate of the F-22, and B-2.  Its about to have a severely truncated production run.