F-35 News. The Chairman of the JCS says that the F-15 is 50% cheaper to operate!

The F-15 is 50% cheaper than the F-35A on operating cost, JCS Chairman Gen Dunford tells House committee today.

— Steve Trimble (@TheDEWLine) March 26, 2019

I knew it!

It wasn't about the buy it was about operating the plane!  No one will dare dig into this much but I'm betting between operating cost, ALIS issues and INFRASTRUCTURE that the F-35 is a pure mess!

Stealth planes just ain't cheap to maintain.

They never have been and obviously never will be.

I fully expect the F-35 fan base to get even more rabid in an attempt to pushback against this news. But at least we're seeing the turn.

Today's Generals owe it to future generations to build a credible force for the next war.  We don't have that in the form of the F-35A.  We've sacrificed future armored systems, rotor winged platforms and more for the promise of this plane and now we desperately need to catch up.

Does the budget mess and the issues with the F-35 solely account for the US lagging now?  No.  You can add Bush Jr's ill conceived war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Obama's recently ended playground in Syria for it too but we're back to the 1970's.

We've raised our heads out of an extremely long counterinsurgency war, and we see our competitors racing ahead while we've been distracted.

My hope is that we'll power forward now that sanity seems to have returned but it'll be harder than it should have been.

Others saw this folly before I did.  I can't crow about this because they warned about this issue and I helped shut them down.

To those dudes I apologize.

To the F-35 fanatics?

Get over yourself.  This plane just isn't delivering on cost/maintenance.  You've said listen to the generals, now you don't like what they're saying?