‘There is no plan B’: Marines defend $385bn cost of F-35 fighter jet programme
‘There is no plan B’: Marines defend $385bn cost of F-35 fighter jet programme
Hailed as the Pentagon’s priciest arms purchase programme, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project has proved highly controversial.
The commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps on Friday defended the short take-off version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, insisting the aircraft’s test performance is improving and that it is critical to the Marine’s military future.
The Air Force’s entire fleet of F-22s is grounded because the oxygen system is actually feeding carbon monoxide to the pilots! The $2 billion USS San Antonio, a 700-foot amphibious transport ship used to support shore assaults, can only operate in calm seas. Delivered in 2005, the ship has had only one deployment, notable only for almost ramming another ship in the Suez Canal. Finally put back to sea last May after extensive and costly repairs, the ship is again in the repair ship with problems in all four of its engines! Two other U.S. Navy ships, the USNS Bejamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford, built 25 years ago at a cost of $300 million, are headed to the scrap yard without ever serving an actual day of service. The Army’s $2.7 billion Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) crashes all the time and the search engine doesn’t work very well, when it works at all.
The United States Government spends more money on the machinery of war than Russia. China, and all of NATO put together; more than any other nation in all of history and most of what it buys for that cash is unusable techno-junk. Remember how much cash was dumped into the “Star Wars” Ballistic Missile Defense project with no tangible results? Stories of Pentagon waste and corruption are the fodder for Hollywood movies like “The Pentagon Wars” and deservedly so.
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
– Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation
“This world in arms in not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” — Eisenhower’s “Cross of Iron” speech
“We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.” — Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation
History’s message is clear: We cannot afford costly useless military toys any longer!
Maybe we can outsource the building of our military equipment to China…