The program's current price tag is $400 billion and is expected to cost $1 trillion over its entire life.
LOL. It helps to read.
The F-35: Still a massively expensive non-functional boondoggle. Just thought you'd all like to know that nothing has changed in that department.
Indeed, it does. When some self-anointed genius writes the words "non-functional", for example....
...and then links an article to a page which itself contains a story that the weapon system has been cleared for combat, it's pretty obvious that the person didn't read the website they linked to. "non-functional" systems don't get cleared for combat. Happy to help.
However, the fifth generation stealth fighter jet may still have a number of maintenance and reliability problems that "are likely to present significant near-term challenges for the Marine Corps," according to a complete copy of a recent memo from the Pentagon's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), released in a report by the nonpartisan government watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO).
While military officials promoted the F-35's performance during Marine Corps operational test trials aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp in May as a success and proof that the $400 billion fighter is ready for real-world combat deployment, the POGO report tells a very different story.
eh, what's another trillion added to the debt?
we could spend the entire federal education budget 14 times, but...we need more shooty planes first
You're being intentionally obtuse. You posted an older article than he did, one that is contradicted by his newer article.
While military officials promoted the F-35's performance during Marine Corps operational test trials aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp in May as a success and proof that the $400 billion fighter is ready for real-world combat deployment, the POGO report tells a very different story.
Not only did the six F-35Bs used in the demonstration, referred to by the Marines as Operational Test 1, fail to achieve the number of required flight hours necessary to be declared combat-ready, but, in fact, the DOT&E found the trials, "did not -- and could not —demonstrate that Block 2B F-35B is operationally effective or suitable for use in any type of limited combat operation, or that it was ready for real-world operational deployments, given the way the event was structured," the report says.