Fail! The $400 Billion Military Jet That Can't Fly in Cloudy Weather [View all]

http://www.alternet.org/fail-400-billion-military-jet-cant-fly-cloudy-weather?paging=off



The F-35 joint strike fighter is an unbelievable failure, and the perfect illustration of everything that's wrong with our military industrial complex.

Fail! The $400 Billion Military Jet That Can't Fly in Cloudy Weather
By William Boardman
March 17, 2013

According to one of its supporters, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is not "what our troops need," is "too costly" and "poorly managed," and its "present difficulties are too numerous to detail."

The F-35 is a case study of government failure at all levels - civilian and military, federal, state, local, even airport authority. Not one critical government agency is meeting its obligation to protect the people it presumably represents. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who wrote the F-35 critique above, is hardly unique as an illustration of how government fails, but he sees no alternative to failure.

Up for re-election in 2014 and long a supporter of basing the F-35 in Vermont, Leahy put those thoughts in a letter to a constituent made public March 13. This is Leahy's most recent public communication since December 2012, when he refused to meet with opponents of the F-35 and his web site listed a page of "public discussion" events mostly from the spring, including private briefings with public officials, without responding to any substantive issues.

The F-35 is a nuclear-capable weapon of mass destruction that was supposed to be the "fighter of the future" when it was undertaken in 2001. Now, more than a decade overdue and more than 100% over budget, the plane is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over its useful life, of which about $400 billion has already been spent.