Ooops ooops oooopsie.

US gov’t admits F-35 is a failure
With some wonky, hard to decipher language, a recent GAO report concluded the beleaguered jet will never meet expectations

Nearly a quarter century after the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin the contract to develop the Joint Strike Fighter Program into the F-35, the government finally admitted the jet will never live up to Lockheed’s ambitious promises — used to sell the $2 trillion boondoggle to nearly 20 countries around the world.

By admitting that the program cannot deliver the jets that were promised is really an admission that the entire project is a failure. The implications of that could be profound beyond the money that has been wasted throughout the past quarter century. There are 19 countries that either already are, or will shortly, operate F-35s after buying them from the United States. Several countries like the United Kingdom, Norway, and Italy have been a part of the program well before Lockheed Martin won the contract to develop the F-35. These countries have invested heavily in the program with the expectation that they would receive the most combat capable aircraft in history. All have seen their costs rise throughout the years and now they find out that the jets will never live up to the hype.

So, in addition to being a military disaster, the F-35 many also prove to be a foreign relations disaster as well. F-35 boosters in the United States sold the jet to the leaders of these countries with elaborate pitches of the combat capabilities they planned to deliver. There were also promises made early in the process about the program’s affordability, which seem comical today. The next time an American attempts to sell a “transformative” weapon abroad, they shouldn’t be terribly surprised if a potential customer expresses skepticism. F-35 customers have paid a fortune above the quoted price, receiving only a fraction of what was promised. The United States may find a shrinking market for weapons exports in the years ahead.

This should be a moment of deep reflection for the entire national security establishment. The F-35 was never going to live up to expectations because its very concept was deeply flawed. Trying to build one jet that could serve as a multi-role aircraft to meet the needs of just a single military branch is a highly risky proposition. When you try to build a single jet to meet the multi-role needs of at least 15 separate militaries, while also being a global jobs program and political patronage scheme, you get a $2 trillion albatross.

But…but…but…WAIT!! You mean to tell me that “one aize fits all” never fits anything? That the much-ballyhooed “all-purpose” tools, hunting-fishing-camping gear, and kitchen contraptions rarely function even semi-adequately at ONE purpose? That those mini-trucks (ie, Ford Ranger, Chevy WhateverTheFuck) that were en vogue for a while there weren’t actually very good pick-em-up trucks (what with their short, narrow, shallow cargo area; anemic powerplant; lack of towing/hauling capacity, and other shortcomings) but performed even worse as cars, owing to their uncomfortable seats; Spartan interior appointments; godawful ergonomics, and sundry other “creature comforts” that would make Torquemada himself blush to contemplate, handling even a homebuilt Go-Kart wuuld sneer at; and harsh, bruising ride?

So now we are to accept that those so-called enduro “dual-purpose” bikes—built to impersonate a lean, mean, motocross machine, but also overly gussied-up with the mandatory head, tail, and brake lights, turn signals, and horn that make the “enduro” machines (barely) street-legal, plus generously padded two-up seats, non-cleated footpegs that seem to actively draw mud like a lamp does bugs, and mediocre semi-knobby tires which were useless in the woods and actually hazardous on pavement—pig-in-a-poke motorcycles some people were foolish enough to shell out for in the erroneous belief they were getting the best of both worlds, although the painful truth was that these “dual-purpose” bikes were every bit as shitty in the dirt as they were on the street?

I can’t so much as hear or read “F-35 Thunderbolt II” nowadays without remembering all the aforementioned hunks of junk, I really can’t. The one and only safe assumption to make any time some slicky-boy salesjerk starts in telling you that this car, bike, truck, whatever can really do it all! is that no, it can’t do ANYTHING very well. And with that blinding flash of insight and enlightenment you take to your heels and head for the hills with great alacrity, before your Newest Bestest Buddy here at Auto/Cycle/Truck/Camping/Tool World© can draw breath and flick out his forked tongue to hiss another fucking gigantic lie.

What, the USAF design/procurement doofi didn’t think designing, engineering, and building a new military aircraft was tough enough as it was? They thought it would be just a super-neat idea to work up a 5th generation all-weather day-night intercepter/CAS/attack-bomber/air-supremacy strike-fighter from scratch, a virtuoso airborne Death From Above dealer-outer complete with

• Invisible to radar Stealth construction
• STOL-VSTOL-STOVL capability
• Designed and built robustly enough to survive multitudinous man-and-machine-kiling catapult launches and arrester-wire traps which are the standard fare of life on an aircraft carrier
• Bleeding-edge avionics, comms, and electronic-warfare suites also tough enough to ditto
• Supersonic flight, multi-G rate of climb and turn, extremely high ceiling
• Solid gold, platinum, and authentic diamond EVERYDAMNEDTHING
• So much other cool, ultra-futuristic shite you just can’t even

Although I’ve poked a goodish amount of fun at the poor F35, I did rein it in at least somewhat, figuring that, given five-six years to get all the inevitable bugs worked out, the Turducken might still turn out to be a durn good plane despite…well, pretty much EVERYthing. After all, the old familiar tale of the puny, weak-kneed, sickly kid down the block who eventually grows up to be a sturdy, capable adult is applicable to way more than just airplanes, y’know.

For instinks: I remember when the H-D Evolution engine came out, back in—what, 84, 85, thereabouts? Hawked for several years pre-release by Harley bigwigs as the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, the Evo-powered bikes turned out to be…mehhh. not too good. After years of looking forward to H-D’s first redesign/upgrade since a consortium of H-D execs headed by Vaughn Beals had bought Harley-D back from the despised AMF wreckers who had been running the last American motorcycle manufacturer into the ground since 1970*, this spanking new Evolution motor turned out to be a SERIOUS disappointment to pretty much everybody but the dastardly fiends at Yamazukisaki Corp Co, Inc.

Leaky, underpowered, unreliable, chattering and clanking from the valve train louder than even the AMF Shovelheads, the vaunted Evo powerplant nearly sank beneath the crushing weight of its own inadequacy before the Milwaukee brain-trust could so much as furrow their brows, scratch their heads, and mutter bilious imprecations. But after a few seriously rocky years years, the kinks had all been ironed out, the bugs squashed, and HEY PRESTO! Finally, the Evo had lived up fully to the typhoon of hype to become what, in my opinion, was and stil is the absolute best engine Harley has ever made, or ever will make.

And then there’s a story pretty much every worth-his-salt military history buff knows: the true-life saga of North American Aviation’s iconic P51 Mustang. Initially burdened with an Allison not-turbocharger-equipped engine, a long-since proven dog of an engine, the Mustang was an allegedly aerodynamic flying turd which was slow, not especially maneuverable, saddled with a piss-poor rate of climb, a relatively low ceiling, and truly abysmal performance at what meager altitude it could achieve. Unsurprisingly, next to the rough-and-tough Republic P47 Thunderbolt the Mustang was a pitiful excuse for a fighter/pursuit/escort plane; it had pretty much zero (0) admirers through its unimpressive A thru C versions.

Until the frabjous day, that is, when some clever Brit with sufficient rank, juice, and pull whispered into the right RAF ear his own crackpot idea for redeeming the unloved P51: let’s try swapping out the woefully inadequate Allison with Rolls Royce’s red-hot Merlin engine! The results of which ingenious mod stunned the whole world by transmogrifying an underfed, scraggly, mange-rife cur into a fast, powerful, deadly Hun’s Bane.

Thanks to the Merlin mill which might have been built with North American’s ugly duckling specifically in mind, the Mustang instantly became the verymost superb plane to emerge from the fiery WW2 air-war forge, acknowledged by everyone except diehard devotees of the Supermarine Spitfire as The Plane That Won The War.

Hell, the born-again-hard P51D was so amazingly bad-ass that no lesser a light than the incomparable Chuck Yeager became one of the small handful of Allied Mustang-jocks to shoot down the first jet fighter ever, the Luftwaffe’s fearsome Me262 Schwalbe, which could handily fly rings around everything else in the sky at that time and, but for some serious fuck-uppery on the stupid, maniacal dictator s’cuse me, military GENIUS Hitler’s part, might well have reversed the course of the entire war on its own hook had it burst onto the Western Front scene sooner, in larger numbers.

So yes, despite my making sport of the ill-starred apteryx jet, I nonetheless held out some small hope that the F35 might come into its own eventually, thereby confirming yet again that I am in fact a dad-gum idiot. However, the above-mentioned announcement sounds as if the USG and/or the Navy, Chair Farce, USMC, and everyone else that matters has decided to throw in the towel on this inadvisable attempt at force-fitting a single aircraft into every conceivable role somehow.

Oh well—designed by committee, approved by bureaucrat, and built by hapless incompetents, the Turducken was so jaw-droppingly expensive I imagine there wasn’t a great deal of enthusiasm to be found for flushing several billion more trying to make the PoS right at long last. At some point, it’s time to stop throwing good money after bad, and just move on to the next project.

What I think will be the really interesting aspect of this dumpster-inferno will be learning whether Amerika v2.0 remains functional enough to produce a world-dominating warplane anymore; the spectacular crash ’n’ burn of the F35 constitutes powerful evidence against, seems to me.

* A LITTLE HISTORY: AMF purchased Harley-Davidson in late 1969; the first model year featuring all-original AMF designs was 1971 (the ugly-as-a-mud-fence boattail 71 Stupid Glide; the big brother to 1970’s boattail Sportster; the wildly and eternally popular Low Rider; and the slow, heavy, poor-handling, unpopular then but a sought-after collector’s item today, the 1978 XLCR Sportster pseudo-cafe racer, all these conceptualized and designed by affable and beloved legatee chump Wille G Davidson