Word: wednesdays
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...response to what I consider to be unacceptable delays and cost 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...
Unfortunately, that was last year's logic. Gates said on Wednesday that Pentagon officials had bamboozled him with "overly rosy forecasts" that were more thorn than flower. After burrowing into the F-35's cost and schedule, President Obama's Pentagon team - including Bush Administration holdover Gates - recently discovered deep-rooted problems. "Things are more complicated than people imagined they were going to be," Ashton Carter, the Pentagon's top weapons buyer, told reporters earlier this month. "You can't control costs, you can't control schedule if you're being unrealistic about costs and schedule...
...even as lawmakers were fretting on Wednesday that the F-35's troubles spelled risk to U.S. security, Gates urged them to keep cool. He said he had expanded the development period by an additional 13 months and thrown in nearly $3 billion more for the testing program (which completed only 16 of 168 flights slated for 2009). He also slowed production of the plane. Gates insisted that while the program's management had been poor, its technology was sound. "It will become," he said, "the backbone of U.S. air combat for the next generation...
...Obama Administration over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Having twice delayed his departure as his team negotiated with U.S. officials over a set of confidence-building measures that Israel would offer the Palestinian leadership in order to coax them into talks being orchestrated by Washington, Netanyahu finally left town Wednesday night with no accord. Officials from the two sides are to continue negotiating on the issue in the coming days. Netanyahu's visit, if anything, reinforced the idea that the current Israeli government is at odds with the U.S. over the question of settlements, East Jerusalem and how to achieve...
When Facebook users in Argentina logged on to the social network Wednesday, they may have noticed that something had disappeared - their friends' profile pictures went missing...