2012-10-27

US Government to Spent $1 Trillion on F-35 Fighters — That's More Than Australia's GDP

Nobel Piece Prize Laureate Obama, who also happens to be the US President who wages the most wars in history and attacked civil liberties the most, is now to spent $1 trillion on F-35 fighters. The Atlantic is reporting:
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is an impressive aircraft: a fifth generation multirole fighter plane with stealth technology. It's also a symbol of everything that's wrong with defense spending in America.
[...]
The F-35 is designed to be the core tactical fighter aircraft for the U.S. military, with three versions for the Air Force, Navy, and the Marine Corps. Each plane clocks in at around $90 million.
In a decade's time, the United States plans to have 15 times as many modern fighters as China, and 20 times as many as Russia.

So, how many F-35s do we need? 100? 500?  Washington intends to buy 2,443, at a price tag of $382 billion.

Add in the $650 billion that the Government Accountability Office estimates is needed to operate and maintain the aircraft, and the total cost reaches a staggering $1 trillion.
In other words, we're spending more on this plane than Australia's entire GDP ($924 billion).

The F-35 is the most expensive defense program in history, and reveals massive cost overruns, a lack of clear strategic thought, and a culture in Washington that encourages incredible waste.

Money is pouring into the F-35 vortex. In 2010, Pentagon officials found that the cost of each plane had soared by over 50 percent above the original projections. The program has fallen years behind schedule, causing billions of dollars of additional expense, and won't be ready until 2016. An internal Pentagon report concluded that: "affordability is no longer embraced as a core pillar."

1 comment:

Dennis The Menace said...

All of this wasteful spending is completely out of control the country has been taken over by special interests.