Back in the halcyon days of the second incarnation of TOP GEAR, starring the three blokiest blokes ever to bloke across a TV screen, there was a long-running joke in the later seasons concerning the Morris Marina, which the Three Wazzateers maintained was the most hideously awful motoring abomination ever inflicted upon a quivering and terrified Mankind.

A significant part of that saga can be seen right here:

The sheer hatred that the hosts had for this excrescence of a vehicle was so great that they ended up dropping pianos on the damn things simply to kill them off.

I bring all of this history up both as a way of refreshing our memories of a beloved and wonderful TV show, and in order to make a point about the latest round of problems – yes, there are MORE problems – with the US military’s Joint Strike Flying Piano:

A US decision to limit the F-35C’s supersonic flight capabilities instead of fixing an issue that increases the risk of tail damage will put a strain on pilots and deal a huge blow to the fighter’s combat power, analysts warn.

The F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) – a Pentagon agency responsible for developing and acquiring the F-35 fighter jets – recently revealed that a specific construction issue could cause damage to the Navy F-35C jet’s tail section if it flies at supersonic speed for a long time. However, it said that this was “not worth fixing,” mostly due to the high projected costs of a revamp.

Instead, the JPO said the jet’s very ability to fly at such speeds would be reduced to short bursts. The US media already noted that such changes would severely limit the F-35C’s ability to intercept airborne targets – something for which a fighter jet is specifically designed. In addition, it is also expected to negatively affect its maneuverability in the event that it needs to a avoid a missile or survive a dogfight.

God Almighty. I mean, just… God ALMIGHTY.

I can only surmise from this particular bit of news that the US Navy absolutely HATES its own gigantiferous supercarriers, in the same way that the (former) hosts of (THE GREATEST TV SHOW OF ALL TIME!!!) TOP GEAR hate the bloody Morris Marina.

That is the only explanation that I can think of for why they dropped the F-35C onto the decks of their brand-spanking-new Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford carriers.

I mean, seriously, the entire point of the F-35C was to replace the existing fleet of F/A-18s with something lighter, faster hotter, stealthier, and more versatile. And one of the biggest selling points of the entire turducken plane concept was that the plane would have supersonic cruise ability, just like its big brother (and far superior plane), the F-22 Raptor.

But now, the US carrier fleet is basically crippled in terms of its ability to project power because the US Navy decided to put all of its chips on the F-35C.

This isn’t entirely a bad thing. It simply accelerates the pending obsolescence of the entire concept of the supercarrier. We already know that the two nations that are most likely to go to war with the USA in either the Atlantic or Pacific maritime theatres, Russia and China, have hypersonic missile systems that are fully capable of sinking US supercarriers and cannot be defended against (at this point). We also already know that China has a “system of systems” that go way beyond hypersonic missiles that are all designed to kill carriers that try to intervene in the inevitable takeover of the South China Sea that the ChiComs will mount sometime within the next 30 years.

The fact that the F-35C has now basically destroyed the US carrier fleet’s ability to maintain air supremacy, is therefore not at all a bad thing. This will simply force the globalist idiots within the Deep State to avoid going to war with China and Russia, because that will result in such a colossal military disaster that their grip on power would be shattered instantly.

The article from RT goes on to point out the following:

Apart from that, the decision not to fix the tail issue would only put additional psychological strain on the pilots, Krasnoperov warned. In a real combat situation, a pilot should not have to think about risk of damage to his jet’s tail if he somehow flies with an afterburner on for too long, he said. “Such construction deficiency would still seriously affect pilots’ safety.”

Fabrizio Poli, an independent aviation consultant and CEO of the Orville Aviation, an aircraft sales, private jet management & aviation consultancy company, also believes that the limitation of supersonic flight would eventually make the jet “less versatile,” affecting its combat capabilities. He also compared the fallout from the decision with the Boeing 737 MAX scandal that rocked the US civil aviation industry in 2019 and early 2020.

A particular issue arising from the decision to tie F-35C supersonic flight to an afterburner is that it might hurt the jet’s stealth capabilities – another much-hyped feature of the aircraft, said Vladimir Karnozov, an aviation expert with avia.ru. Even a short supersonic afterburner burst makes it an easy target due to a powerful jet exhaust, Karnozov explained. He also noted, though, that even fighter jets capable of moving at supersonic speed without engaging the afterburners are still much easier to detect than aircraft moving at subsonic velocity.

In fact, limiting the F-35C’s supersonic flight capabilities to short bursts brings it closer to the so-called ‘four-plus’ generation jets such as Russia’s Su-35, which also have similar capacity, Vadim Lukashevich, who worked as an aircraft engineer for Sukhoi between 1985 and 1992 and later became an independent aviation expert, told RT.

Essentially, this makes the USA’s $1.4 TRILLION flying piano inferior to far cheaper and supposedly less effective Russian and Chinese rivals, such as the Su-57 and the Chengdu J-20. In fact, the only reason why the Russians don’t have a fighter that can fly circles around the F-35 at present, is simply because they don’t have the engine technology required to make the Su-57 a true supercruise air superiority fighter.

At this point, the only version of the Joint Strike Flopter that actually seems to work sort of as advertised is the Air Force version. The Navy and especially the Marines are now stuck with literal flying pianos that cannot do what they are supposed to do.

Honestly, the Navy and Marines might as well take a page from TOP GEAR and just drop the damned things right on top of their carriers and sink them that way. After all, their carriers are now basically useless anyway.

Oh, but wait, it gets better – or worse, if you’re an AirHead or a Pentaloon:

Tests being carried out on the delayed and over-budget F-35 have been suspended as part of a bid to contain the spread of coronavirus, the Pentagon has announced. The fighter plane has already suffered a string of pricey setbacks.

Activities necessary to complete the F-35’s operational test phase have been halted at Edwards Air Force Base in California, which has shut its doors to all non-essential personnel.

Flight tests have been indefinitely paused, but “select lab and ground test activities are ongoing,” said Brandi Schiff, a spokesperson for the F-35 joint program office.

The setback could also mark yet another delay for the fighter’s Joint Simulation Environment (JSE), which will allow the Pentagon to run threat scenarios in which the F-35 is matched up against military hardware from countries such as Russia and China.

Truly, there appears to be nothing that Nurgle’s great plaguebearer, Corona-chan the Mighty, cannot do. Grounding the biggest waste of time and money that any military force has ever committed to, is most definitely a Good Thing.