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Originally Posted by Caltex
Didn't know that, thanks for the info. Quadrupling the cost per plane out of incompetence... heh.
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I wouldn't call it incompetence. Members of Congress were fully briefed on the program and knew what they were doing. It was a deliberate action based upon political agendas of the politicians and they intentionally distorted the numbers for their own purposes. Certainly the interests of America were not a consideration at the time. Only their political rhetoric mattered to them. It was about incumbants seeking re-election at the expense of the nation. This is a common occurance because virtually all career politicians would gladly sell the country down the drain to be re-elected.
What I find sad is that the media goes along with the political sound-bites without doing the investigating reporting they should be engaged in.
By the way, I'm working on the Joint Strike Fighter program and the politicians are fucking with this program driving up the costs as well. The truth is that Congress should allocate the money to the US military and then let the military determine how best to use it. Instead we have politicians dictating the purchase of hardware that the military neither wants or needs. Patty Murray managed to get two or three ships built for the Navy that the Navy doesn't want and won't use because she "earmarked" the production for a WA state ship building company. I know that because I live in WA but this happens all the time. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle was another white elephant shoved off on the military and it cost billions to make it usable. The Humvee was another POS program dictated by Congress.
Yes, all of these programs do have one or two military supporters but given their choice and limited funding the military makes better decisions about military hardware than Congress.
By the way, did you read that the Air Force is now looking at building a new strategic bomber to replace the aging B-52's. The B2 was the replacement but because Congress basically killed it now we have to start over again with a new expensive program. Will the proposed airplane be better than the B2? Undoubtably yes but if we had 250 B2's we wouldn't need the many tens of billions required to start from scratch agian on a new bomber for at least 50 years.