F-35 claims another victim. Norwegian military near bankruptcy.

via Firearms Blog

It seems the Norwegian military is in financial trouble! The Norwegian Ministry of Defense has issued a statement saying that they will no longer be able to equip officers and other personnel with both a rifle and pistol, and therefore pistols issued to such personnel should be turned in immediately. According to an article in AftenPosten, machine translated below:

Frustration and despair are great in the Army, not least in the professional departments and hurtigreakjonsstyrkene.
For Brigade North can no longer afford to equip officers and professional soldiers with both rifle and pistol.
It is modest Aftenposten has received, and as Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Jankov, spokesman for the Army, confirmed to the newspaper.
– We do not think this is something all right. But we have to implement the measure, for economic reasons, says Jankov.

Read it all here. 

I predicted this long ago.  The Norwegian military is killing everything so that the F-35 may live.

The problem?

The F-35 is a voracious beast that will not stop.  It will soon start to consume itself.  The Norwegians will be forced to cut F-35 orders...I talk about the death spiral hitting the USMC and how we're gutting our combat power to pay for the airplane but my worries pale in comparison to what they're going thru.

IF we were good allies we'd give them a way out of this program so that they can maintain a credible military force...but we won't.  The F-35 won't kill enemy planes, but when it comes to military budgets its the undisputed Top Gun of the world.