(I used to be "Himself" before I detonated my personal gmail)

So now you identify as something completely different, with new personal pronouns? This could get a mite confusing… 😉

The goal isn't a next generation fighter. The goal is to funnel cash to their friends. When you look at it from that perspective, obamacare and the f-35 are stunning successes.

Oh I agree completely. I've been saying the same thing for almost 5 years.

The goal of government boondoggles is to be precisely that – boondoggles. They function as large-scale Keynesian make-work employment programs that spend vast amounts of money for very little benefit.

The real tragedy of such boondoggles is that they end up killing people. Obamacare jacked up insurance premiums on healthy people to the point where paying a fine is often more economical than paying for gold-plated Cadillac plans for a whole family every month. And the F-35 is so unreliable in peacetime never mind in combat, that it will end up getting pilots killed no matter how it is used.

You have to understand how the deep state gubmint works.

The goal isn't a next generation fighter. The goal is to funnel cash to their friends. When you look at it from that perspective, obamacare and the f-35 are stunning successes.

Look at obamacare. What did they spend on websites? a billion? five billion?

Tom, Dick, and Mary can get an ecommerce site up for a few shekels. In a past life, I was the chief NW engineer/NW security dude for a medical lab. All our integration, all our dev talent and infrastructure wasn't more than a few million.

Well, if you think of it in terms of an abusive relationship, Lockheed has done a terrific job of ensuring that terminating that relationship will cause maximal pain.

Lockheed's management did something quite brilliant with the F-35's component sourcing and manufacturing. They spread out the parts acquisitions and subcontracted the manufacturing processes all over the USA, so that the cancellation of this trillion-dollar turkey would result in tens of thousands of jobs lost across the entire country, and most American states would be hurt badly. That bought them enormous amounts of political protection.

Bottom line is that the Joint Strike Flying Piano is going to carry on being manufactured until the American empire finally collapses, or until an actual shooting war starts up with a power capable of detecting and destroying those planes.

At this point, that amounts to Russia and China, and the Chinese have a long way to go before they can claim to have anything approaching a competent 5th-generation air force. Their Chengdu J-20 looks like someone described what an F-22 looks like, in English, down the end of a phone line to Chinese engineers on the other end. And the Shenyang J-31 looks like someone described an F-35 in the same way.

But they have the radar systems and missiles to take on the US Air Force and Navy, and win. The F-35 would likely get absolutely slaughtered in a shooting war in the Pacific, thanks to its epic unreliability and extreme mechanical problems.

It is true what they say. Most people do not lead their lives by logic but by feelings. This is no different than a person in a bad relationship. Staying when they should leave but they have spent so much time and money. The need to delude themselves that things will change or they must face the pain.

At this point the F-35 is like the battleship (mind you the Battleship had some role) before WW2. It took Pearl Harbor (and Midway) to change the minds in the higher up in the US navy and politics. It was too easy for it to be hit by Planes or Submarines and at the same time costly to maintain and provide little effectiveness in combat.
For Britain it was the lack of money after the War that force them.

Too much money, time and attachment has been place on the F-35. It will either take the money to run out (like the Brits) or during a war too many will be destroy (like Pearl Harbor). It could be due to Technical, mechanical or
easily shot down. They (or the people that replace them) will be force finally to admit the project was a failure.

A truly superior elite would shut us up through sheer competence.

True. And America hasn't had such a thing for a century now, maybe two.

Competent rulers, whatever the political system, do not suffer rebellion.

Correct. With the glaring exception of the God-Emperor's blessed reign, the past several Administrations have shown themselves to be highly incompetent and deeply dangerous to the freedom and security of the people. Rebellion and chaos are inevitable at this point; the only question is how long it will take for the Union to break apart.

Yeah I saw a version of that story on RT, which amused me no end in a very dark sort of way. The whole F-35 program really is a complete flying piano and an utter disaster in every way.

Yet again, Col. John Boyd's wisdom about designing cost-effective efficient tailor-made aircraft for specific roles and missions, instead of big fancy Swiss Army Knife planes that can do everything but cost insane amounts of money, has been proven 100% correct, accurate, and prescient.

msn.com/en-us/news/us/f-35s-list-of-flaws-includes-a-gun-that-cant-shoot-straight/ar-BBZtkV2?li=BBnbcA1&srcref=rss&ocid=iehrs