The U.S. Congress Is Trying to Give the F-35 a Pass for All Its Problems

Unfortunately the answer is concurrent spending. The F-35 is not supposed to "work." If it does - yay! If not, oh well. Confused? Picture Electric Boat. USA says "we need to lay you all off because we're not building submarines anymore." EB says "OK - and when you *NEED* subs, do you expect us to leave our new jobs or unemployment and just come running back to you like long lost lovers?" The USA - as American politicians normally do - got blank looks on their faces. "So the answer would be 'no'"? EB straightened their collars. "No - the answer would be FU** YOU." So understanding that you can't get a kid out of college and imbue him with 50 years of submarine technology, the USA has "kept" submarine projects flowing at EB. You have to. Really. Now its also true that Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex, yada yada yada, but like all things Merica - once you open Pandora, its impossible to shut it again.

High tech companies are not going to pit their own money on R&D. Well, they would if America didn't have so many stupid voters. After all, thats what happened with the B-36 and the B-52. The vendors THEMSELVES came to the USAF and said "look at these planes we built" and the USAF chose accordingly. But that was "back in the day." That day is long gone now. And along with other stupid crap that we vote in/for, we have allowed a shareholder mentality to be industry's driving force. So sadly, the very instability, fraud, waste and abuse that we rail against is the very system we have voted in with nary a personnel change. We are the only nation that buys weapons the way we do. But then again, we're the only nation that votes the way we do as well (electoral college) so I guess all things considered, we're exactly where we want to be.

Of course they do.

I’m just flummoxed as to why we just don’t improve what we already have. The A10 for instance was amazing at its job. The complaint was the aging airframe and maintenance costs. Well hell, how about they build NEW A10s with all the new bells and whistles?
F/A 18s are a good aircraft too...improve them a bit..I guess all I’m saying is that we need to stop reinventing the wheel.