Marine Version of F-35 Deemed 'Combat Ready'
npr.org
npr.org
I'm certainly not an aviation enthusiast (I don't go out of my way to read articles about it) but each time I hear about the F35 it's about its non combat readiness or its costs overruns or just how late it is and it will never amount to anything really usable.
So I'd take this announcement with a (massive) grain of salt. It looks more of a PR move to save face than anything else.
Now the only way to convince me otherwise is to effectively put the planes in real combat.
The whole thing seems like a bunch of guys with a bunch of other people's money got together and thought of all the cool things they wanted to see in a plane and set out to build it without really thinking about why, only to try to justify it after the fact.
In investing, you never double down on a stock that's sinking because "it might come back!" you get out of that stock and look for another one. I wish we'd just let this stupid plane die instead of sinking more tax dollars into a worthless project.
The F-35 is meant to do everything else and can certainly drop bombs on enemies of the United States. What else do you want from it?
Think of the US arsenal from the point of view of opponents. If you were running any other country, would you feel comfortable going to war with the United States? Iran? China? Russia? Israel? France? United Kingdom?
> he said they stayed focused on “delivering a stealth fighter that could fly faster than the speed of sound, carry its weapons internally, conduct short takeoffs and vertical landings, and be deployed from amphibious ships and austere bases.”
The justification was, if you can believe it, that having a single platform would reduce costs.