Democrats keep quiet for fear of looking weak on defense and canceling the Marine Corps’ F-35B

[DickMcManus]

Democrats keep quiet for fear of looking weak on defense and canceling
the Marine Corps’ F-35B

January 30, 2012: Secretary Panetta recently swooped in and freed the
“F-35B,” (aka the stealth STOVL) - Joint Strike Fighter) winning
friends in USMC HQ and Lockheed Martin. Few in the active duty
military has the courage to go off the script and say what they really
think about their service’s dogma and pet projects.

Domestically, the F-35 employs 130,000 people and 1300 domestic
suppliers in 47 states and Puerto Rico. The only states missing the
gravy train are Hawaii, Wyoming, and North Dakota. Internationally,
there are already cooperative development/production plans involving
nine countries, and more are in the offing.

The (STOVL) F-35B for the Marine Corps to replace its AV-8B Harrier
jump jets and its F-18C/D fighter/bombers but the it is not needed.
The Marine Corps needs to be honest about how much STOVL capability it
really needs to maintain its close air support capability aboard
amphibious shipping, how soon unmanned aerial systems can fill that
gap, and what the best option is for the rest of our close air support
needs.

The Harrier (a vertical and short take-off jet aka STOVL) has surely
been a large part of Marine aviation since 9/11, but its STOVL
characteristics were rarely, if ever, critical to the conduct of
operations. If anything, the capability was a liability when it came
to the requirement for long on-station times, multiple ordnance
options, and tedious scanning of compounds and cities with targeting
pods in support of troops on the ground.

While Harriers have conducted some forward rearming and refueling at
shorter strips, these were more driven by the Harrier’s limitations
and the desire to validate its expeditionary capability than a value
added to the fight. That is, while a Harrier was rearming and
refueling, a Hornet would be overhead, sensor still on target,
refueling from a KC-130, more weapons still on the wing. Marine
generals love to argue it gives them the capability to go fight close
to the front lines, without air bases, but never bother to add how
many truckloads of fuel and supplies and men and defense weaponry will
have to be hauled over land to that forward base, and at what cost and
vulnerability to enemy attack.

No program better illustrates the pathologies of the weapons
acquisition process as it is currently practiced by the Military –
Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) than the entirely
predictable, and in this case, predicted, problems dragging the F-35
Joint Strike Fighter into a dead man’s spiral. The STOVL
specifications (F-35B) have caused untold compromises in the already
heavily compromised F-35 design.

The cost to develop and buy 2,443Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) (LMT)
F-35 fighters with engines from United Technologies Corp. (UTX) (UTX)
has increased about 4.3 percent since 2010, according to new Pentagon
figures. The Pentagon estimated the cost to maintain and support
2,443 of the F-35s worldwide, including fuel, pilot training, and
maintenance, rose to $1.1 trillion up by another $100 billion. If we
hadn't invested in the F-35, our national debt would be almost 3
percent less than it is now.

The 2010 bipartisan Bowles-Simpson Commission on deficit reduction
suggested canceling the Marine Corps's version of the F-35, and
halving the number of F-35s for the Air Force and Navy--replacing them
with current generation F-16s, which cost one-third as much. This
would save close to $30 billion from 2011 to 2015.

Here is an example of successful fights over US fighters.

They prevented the F-15 from going down the same pathway to swing-wing
oblivion as the F-111, and then conceived the lower cost, high-
performance F-16 and the lethal A-10 attack aircraft. Together these
three airplanes were produced at sufficiently high production rates to
modernize and expand the tactical fighter force in the late 1970s
through the mid 1980s — something not achieved by any other major
category of force structure. Ironically, the bulk of these airplanes
were purchased with money appropriated during the Carter
Administration. Costs skyrocketed and production rates declined as
soon as the Reagan Administration began to flood money into Pentagon,
because the contractors loaded these planes with bells and whistles …
and raised prices, sometimes quite arbitrarily. Reagan and Bush Sr.
lied about the Soviet threat and as a result added up $3 trillion to
the national debt.

http://news.yahoo.com/watchdog-pentagon-buys-weapons-backwards-165258881--abc-news-topstories.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/the-f-35-a-weapon-that-costs-more-than-australia/72454/

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-29/lockheed-f-35-aircraft-costs-rise-about-4-dot-3-percent-pentagon-says

http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=4713

How the power politics practiced by the Pentagon and Congress continue
to drag our nation deeper into a quagmire of spiraling weapon’s costs
and higher defense budgets and lower readiness for war.
http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/01/09.pdf

Dick McManus for Congress, 2nd CD-WA, 2012
Democrat, Everett/Mill Creek, WA
Chief Warrant Officer/counterintelligence special agent, US Army,
retired.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DickMcManusforCongress/

Now retired, CIA officer Jose Rodriguez oversaw the CIA's once-secret
interrogation and detention program, and ordered the destruction of
videos showing waterboarding filmed in a secret CIA prison in
Thailand. Rodriguez’s supporters hailed him as a hero who acted in
the best interest of the country in the face of years of bureaucratic
hand-wringing. Senior CIA officers are advising presumptive Republican
nominee Mitt Romney.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jVmWWCw6H2ZMBtJhUznSH-G-7cYw