Word: nationalization
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...trouble. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress that its recent cost and schedule snafus were "unacceptable." And while the Pentagon is not about to kill the program, the rush to push the plane down the assembly line and into the skies highlights the nation's continuing inability to pit its limited resources against real threats...
While the nation was preoccupied waging two wars, the F-35 was lurking in the background, devouring dollars like there was no tomorrow. New data suggest that the program - the most costly in Pentagon history after the even more expensive F-22 fighter, which Gates killed - has been out of control. "Affordability," declared an internal Pentagon report critical of the F-35, "is no longer embraced as a core pillar." A too-ambitious design lashed to a too-ambitious schedule has driven up costs so fast and so high that even the Pentagon - long practiced at ignoring such mismanagement - couldn...
...overruns over the past year, this department has taken a number of steps to fundamentally restructure this program," Gates told a House panel on Wednesday. "I have replaced the [F-35] program manager ... while withholding more than $600 million ... from the lead contractor" - that would be Lockheed Martin, the nation's biggest defense firm, the same company that built...
...perhaps it is the strategic thinking underlying U.S. military spending that is the problem. Under current plans, the U.S. military will have 1,000 more warplanes than any other nation by 2020, as Gates himself told the House panel. When it comes to the most modern category of fighters, in 10 years the U.S. is expected to have 20 times more than the Chinese, and 15 times more than the Russians. And that doesn't include the punch provided by the Pentagon's fast-growing fleet of armed drones...
...However, this is but a singular lens through which to view a very abstract construct. Someone studying the more conservative interpretation offered by Larry Schweikart’s "A Patriot’s History of the United States" will hold a countervailing perspective on the events that shaped this nation. When a debate over curriculum arises, either side will maintain that their’s is the true history, while the other’s is but partisan indoctrination. This either-or attitude does little to advance the critical analysis that is necessary to fully understanding our past. There...