’60 Minutes’ gets inside look at $400 billion F-35 fighter planes
See Full Article at http://wtvr.com/2014/02/16/60-minutes-f-35-fighter-planes/
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/pentagon-400b-f-35-jet-program-most-expensive-in-history/
“Fuck hearts and minds, do you hear me? If we’ve got em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” (Author unknown but attributed to LBJ in response to a briefing that “hearts and minds” were, if ever, increasingly being lost not gained. This was followed by carpet bombing campaigns Rolling Thunder Ho Chi Minh Trail interdiction bombings, increasing Kill and Capture raids and , free-fire zones;)
With Plans to Buy 2400 F-35s Already Seven Years Behind Schedule and $163 Billion Over Budget, the Head of the Program Vows, “Long Gone is the Time When we will Continue to Pay for Mistake after Mistake after Mistake.” Watch “60 Minutes” Sunday at 7 p.m. on CBS 6.
(CBS News) — In the rush to stay ahead of China and Russia, the Pentagon started buying the F-35 before testing it, breaking the traditional “fly-before-you-buy” rule of weapons acquisition.
Now taxpayers are paying the price for mistakes that weren’t caught before production began. A Pentagon document obtained by “60 Minutes” catalogues the “flawed . . . assumptions” and “unrealistic . . . estimates” that led to a $163 billion cost overrun on what was already the highest priced weapons system in history.
David Martin reports on the problem-plagued program and the battles the Pentagon has fought with the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, to bring the costs under control.
He also gets a firsthand look at some of the plane’s game-changing technology for a story to be broadcast on “60 Minutes.”
“We started buying airplanes a good year before we started test flights,” says Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer. “I referred to that decision as acquisition malpractice.” Kendall says the program is now under control, but “We need to face the truth in this business. We need to understand what works and what doesn’t.”
A lot didn’t work for the state-of-the-art jet, which the Air Force, Navy and Marines are all counting on to replace virtually all of their current jet fighters. Mistakes included simple things like running lights that didn’t conform to FAA standards and tires that wore out much faster than expected.
“Tires aren’t rocket science,” says Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the man in charge of the F-35 program. “We ought to be able to figure out how to do tires on a multibillion dollar, highly-advanced fighter.
“Long gone is the time when we will continue to pay for mistake after mistake after mistake,” Bogdan vows. On a tour of the assembly line in Fort Worth, Texas, Bogdan told ”60 Minutes”, “I know where every single airplane in the production line is on any given day,” and that “Lockheed Martin doesn’t get paid their profit unless each and every airplane meets each station on time with the right quality.” Watch an excerpt.
Another Pentagon document obtained by 60 MINUTES states that “progress is sufficient” toincrease production but warns that the plane’s software “is behind schedule” and “reliability . . . is not growing at an acceptable rate.” If the technological problems of the most complex aircraft ever built can be solved, the F-35 will give American pilots an astounding edge in combat – the ability to see their enemies before those enemies are aware of them. According to Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, “The range at which you can detect the enemy as opposed to when he can detect you can be as much as 10 times further.”
Key to that advantage is a half-million dollar computerized helmet which projects a 360 degree picture of the battle space onto the pilot’s visor. Martin was the first person without a security clearance allowed to try out the helmet and experience firsthand its ability to see through the structure of the airplane so pilots can see what’s directly beneath them.
The Pentagon is counting on the F-35 to control the air against a new generation of warplanes currently being tested by China and Russia. “Air superiority is not a given,” says Air Force Chief Gen. Mark Welsh. “If we can’t provide it, everything we do on the ground and at sea will change.”
Journalism Fail: All the Sources in Stealth Jet Story Are PAID to Praise the Plane
The only people ‘60 Minutes’ bothered to ask about a HUGE government program are—wait for it—government employees
On Sunday, 60 Minutes ran a story about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter entitled, “Is the F-35 Worth It?” But watching the piece, I saw no debate whatsoever of that very important question.
And for good reason. All the interview subjects were government employees or contractors. They’d have been crazy to criticize their own program.
What I did see on Sunday was an ill-informed reporter—David Martin—touring the military side of the $400-billion F-35 program … and throwing in just a few boilerplate questions.
These questions were softballs, considering how big of a blunder this program actually has been. The F-35 is meant to replace 2,400 existing warplanes in the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy. Complex and badly compromised by the need to meet all the military branches’ diverse needs, the JSF is overpriced, unreliable and sluggish.
60 Minutes mentioned that the F-35 is behind schedule and over budget, has some bad lighting and unsatisfactory tires … and that’s about it. Those gripes barely scratch the surface of the JSF boondoggle.
Was the producer of this segment actually a vice president over at Lockheed Martin, which makes the ostensibly radar-evading plane? All kidding aside, it looked like reporter Martin was having a blast playing with million-dollar gadgetry and brushing shoulders with military brass and test pilots.
But where was the long list of design and quality-control issues with the aircraft, 12 years after development began? What about discussing the many alternatives to this under-performing machine, such as F-22s and drones plus rebuilt F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s? Why not point out how many experts in the defense journalism and analysis worlds see the JSF program as detractingfrom America’s security rather than enhancing it?
And how could 60 Minutes have not sought the opinion of someone—anyone—who is not receiving a paycheck from the F-35 program? The widely-seen spot included no third-party aerospace or defense experts and cited not a single independent study.
Martin mainly asked the same questions a child would have asked. Program officials put the F-35’s badly flawed special helmet on Martin’s head in a dark hangar and let him look around at the projected infrared image. He was mesmerized—and quickly moved past the uncomfortable fact that the helmet doesn’t actually work in combat conditions!
Then came the worst part—the finale of the whole piece, the “hard-hitting” statement that none of the JSF’s issues really matter because we are going to buy potentially thousands of the aircraft no matter how good or relevant they may be.
Cool fighter pilot guys with beaming grins and dressed like Maverick fromTop Gun, a no-nonsense Marine and a bureaucrat characterized as a staunch defender of your tax dollars—all of 60 Minutes’ on-camera sources said the F-35 is just great and everything will work out fine!
No kidding. They’re all military officers, contractors or government workers. Again, 60 Minutes did not include any outside sources—only people with a vested interest in praising the world’s worst new jet fighter.
60 Minutes told the entire country that no matter what happens with ongoing testing, timelines, technological developments or costs, we will buy the F-35 in large numbers. So who really cares about this topic anymore anyway, right?
Ty Rogoway in War is Boring
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