F 35 Boondoggle Continues

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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From the very beginning, the F-35 program has been plagued by hundreds of billions of dollars in cost overruns and repeated schedule delays.

Moreover, even as promised capabilities have been delayed by well over a decade, billions poured into fixes haven’t resolved ongoing reliability issues, crippling its operational effectiveness, and rocketing the program cost to over $2 trillion dollars — 400% more in inflation-adjusted dollars than its 2007 Government Accountability Office estimate.

The plane’s extreme unreliability has resulted in full mission capable rates (FMC) of only 36.4% , 14.9%, and 19.2% for the F-35A, F-35B, and F-35C, respectively. For F-35Bs and F-35Cs, only the newest planes have full mission availability rates above 10%.

I thought I would took this this naval tidbid.

The Vacuum, Collection, Holding and Transfer system continues to clog, more than five years after the issue was first identified.

“It uses less water, but the system used by USS Ford is more complex. Breakdowns have been reported since the $13 billion carrier first deployed in 2023,” NPR explained.

What makes the issue with CVN-78 noteworthy is that the U.S. Navy had already encountered VCHT problems with the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), the final Nimitz -class nuclear-powered supercarrier. It was the first U.S. Navy warship equipped with the vacuum-based sewage system.

So if it’s broke; don’t fix it. lol

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Maybe just rename the F-35 as the F-47. Save billions!

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Many of us have been in this position in the home. We do not even need a plumber to tell us what is wrong.

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From original link:
Interestingly, even at 17-years of age, legacy aircraft such as F-16s and F-15s blow away the mission readiness of brand-new F-35s, even though they are flying more hours annually.

Indeed, we know the hours flown each year by the F-35A and F-35B declined markedly over the first seven years of their lifetimes. This means aircraft just a few years old are being flown less than brand new planes and consequently being subject to less daily wear and tear, conveniently pushing the cost of replacing engines and other expensive depot-level work down the road, even as the services continue to buy new F-35s under what some, including myself, would call false cost metrics.

It’s time to stop wallowing in sunk cost emotionalism and put a stop to buying planes whose reliability and costs make them a national security liability.

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You sound like Fred Trump bailing out Donny.