One Size Fits All

In the 1960s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, formerly CEO at Ford, decided to build military planes the same way Ford built cars - take one model and trim it out differently depending on the target market. The F-111 was the result and it was a disaster. The Navy version never could shed enough weight to land on aircraft carriers. The Air Force version had the bad habit of running into mountains when its low-level terrain-following radar glitched. Eventually they salvaged the latter version by turning it into the long range FB-111 strike fighter and EA-111 anti-radar platform. History seems to repeat itself, however, and we are doing it again but this time with even higher stakes.

I posted in 2010 and 2011 about problems with the F-35 program. It is now 2013 and this article by Michael Auslin says the problems still are not solved. The big problem for the U.S.? The F-35 is supposed to be the replacement aircraft for all   three branches of the armed forces: Navy, Air Force and Marines. F-22 production has been shut down by Obama and current generation fighters are literally wearing out, not to mention easy targets for advanced Russian and Chinese fighters that are getting ready for production. This on top of massive defense budget cuts that will make it very difficult to address the problem. Auslin blames the Pentagon procurement procedures for part of this. I am sure that is true, but whoever is to blame, unless we can get some replacement aircraft that work on line PDQ, the U.S. is going to have its bare back end hanging out for anyone to take a shot at for an extended period of time.

www.nationalreview.com/articles/338032/pentagon-s-frankensteins-michael-auslin