Wasteful U.S. Defense Spending

[Jazzy]

How Wasteful Is U.S. Defense Spending?

Why are we buying a new fleet of planes for $1.5 trillion that no one really wants, especially if it barely works at all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xYTd2e_Tdo

Thoughts?

 

[beowulf]

its not just the US, the UK has invested at least 2.5 billion dollars so far in this poxy piece of shite of an aircraft......and theres plenty of other countries have invested billions collectivly too like holland and canada and australia etc

and no, im not a fan of it...what ever gave you that idea lol

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Time to stop that wasteful spending! *grabs torches and pitchforks*

 

[Dee]

Comparing the amount of money the US spends on the military and other armed forces is shocking to say the least in comparison to other things.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Comparing the amount of money the US spends on the military and other armed forces is shocking to say the least in comparison to other things.

Yeah we're out pretending to police the world and stick our nose where it doesn't belong.

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

No doubt we waste a lot of money but the F35 is not A dud and completely disagree with him on that statement.

What is the F-35 about?
F-35B Performs a vertical landing

First of all we will explain what the idea of the F-35 really is and why it has gotten so tremendously expensive. The F-35 was an entirely new idea of building an airplane. It features the generation five characteristics such as top modern weapons, stealth and super advanced avionics. But it was also built with a special idea in mind. That idea was to use a single airframe for the F-35A, F-35B and F-35C, which will all be used in different parts of the US military – among others the Marines and the Navy. The idea behind that strategy was economies of scale – if they produce many of the same thing it would be kind of like a mass production, which would massively lower the unit cost. But the problems started to pile up when they started to work on the engine for the F-35B which is supposed to be able to take off and land vertically, to be used on aircraft carriers. To design that new engine and fit it into an already super advanced aircraft was a tricky task. It required thousands of engineers and a huge budget to be built.
The characteristics of a fighter

One of the main features of an airplane is obviously lift. Without enough lift the airplane will simply fall to the ground, or it can use extra engine power to keep it flying however this decreases both the fuel efficiency and the range of the aircraft. What many critics complain about with the F-35 is that it has too small wings (in order to be stored compactly on an aircraft carrier), which gives the aircraft little lift. The critics say that small wings give the F-35 bad lift because the wing area is crucial for an aircraft to achieve a good lift. But what they seem to underestimate is that actually the body of the fighter increases the lift a lot, which was tested with the Martin Marietta (now a part of Lockheed Martin) X-24A. It had its first flight in 1969 and was basically only a fuselage with an engine. The shape of the body, rather than the wings (which it didn’t have) gave it the lift to fly, which makes the small wing area of the F-35 a number that does not really matter (but big wings can still inprove the lift). One of the most aggressive critics is named Pierre Sprey. Sprey is a former aircraft designer and defense analyst, he uses – among other things – the small-wing argument to explain that “the F-35 is a lemon”.

READ THE REST HERE
http://www.migflug.com/jetflights/lockheed-martin-f-35-is-it-as-bad-as-some-say.html

 

[Webster]

For what its' worth, I'm still at a loss as to why, given some of the previous problems w/another 5th-generation aircraft of late (the F-22 Raptor IIRC), we still need the F35 given the paucity of opponents that could threaten the current air dominance the U.S. has at present...I'm even more confused as to why we need to replace one of the best damn planes to ever fly - the A10 Thunderbolt II - with the F35.

If Congress only had the balls to cancel the damn F35 program...one can dream, can't they?