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F-35
The Department of Defense has released its latest estimates of how much major weapons programs will cost to buy, and it says the price-tag for the biggest program of all is shrinking. The official estimate of the cost to buy 2,457 F-35 aircraft over three decades fell $4.94 billion (1.5 %) in the
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Date:
5/24/2013
The discussion surrounding the new defense strategy with its “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region has focused largely on prospective changes to the deployment and posturing of U.S. forces in the region. The U.S. Navy plans to shift ten percent of its fleet, between twenty-five and thirty ships, to
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Date:
5/15/2013
After years of skeptical media coverage, the turbulence surrounding the Pentagon's F-35 fighter program seems to be dissipating. That's happening partly because the Obama Administration restructured an overly-aggressive development plan and partly because prime contractor Lockheed Martin fixed
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Date:
5/7/2013
As issues delaying the Pentagon's F-35 fighter program are gradually resolved, it seems to be securing broad support in the political system. Perennial critic Sen. John McCain of Arizona recently commented that the tri-service tactical aircraft "may be the greatest combat aircraft in the history
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Date:
4/22/2013
Leading defense contractor Lockheed Martin announced on March 18 that Larry Lawson, the head of its aeronautics unit, would be replaced by F-35 general manager Orlando Carvalho. Carvalho in turn will be replaced at the top of the tri-service F-35 program by Lorraine Martin, a 25-year company veteran
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Date:
3/19/2013
For the first time since the Government Accountability Office began conducting annual assessments of the Pentagon's tri-service F-35 fighter program, the agency is offering no new recommendations on how management of the effort can be improved. In the fourth of six annual assessments mandated by
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Date:
3/12/2013
There has been a fair amount of misinformation coming out of the F-35 Joint Program Office lately. This week, program chief Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan told an Aviation Week conference that the estimated $1.1 trillion in life-cycle sustainment costs for the F-35 is expressed in 2056 dollars,
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Date:
3/8/2013
The Pentagon’s program manager for the F-35, Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan (USAF), has a well-deserved reputation for speaking his mind. This is a good thing, assuming you know what you are talking about. However, his latest criticisms of the two companies leading the program, suggest that
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Date:
2/27/2013
Last week, Time magazine published a lengthy diatribe against the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, the F-35 fighter. The plane is being built in three versions to meet the diverse warfighting needs of the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy. If it is successful, America can look forward
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Date:
2/18/2013
For more than 60 years, the success of U.S. forces in conflicts large and small has been tied to the ability to deliver crushing blows on adversaries from the third dimension. Dominant airpower consistently provided the hammer which together with the anvil of powerful land and sea forces has formed
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Date:
12/19/2012
The Reuters news service reported this week that the price the government is paying for the most common version of the F-35 fighter in the latest low-rate production lot is 4% below the price in the previous production lot. The Air Force variant, representing two-thirds of the F-35s destined for
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Date:
12/14/2012
Despite a continuous drumbeat of warnings about defense cuts, the outlook for the Pentagon's biggest weapon program is brightening perceptibly. Defense acquisition czar Frank Kendall told the Reuters news agency yesterday that the government and prime contractor Lockheed Martin are "getting close"
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Date:
11/29/2012
Bill Sweetman, one of the most respected aerospace journalists in the business, has written a biting
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Date:
10/19/2012
Politicians and policymakers seldom understand the technology used in cutting-edge weapons, but they usually think they know what the price-tag will be. On close inspection, though, it turns out they don't understand the price-tag either -- not just what a weapon will cost, but why. So it is with
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Date:
10/15/2012
Jason Sherman of InsideDefense.com reports this week that a Pentagon analysis of trends in the industrial base raises doubts about the military's ability to preserve its five-year lead in fighter technology. He quotes a passage from the analysis with worrisome implications for America's global
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Date:
9/26/2012
I have always believed that no one is born great. They achieve greatness by how they respond to major challenges and life decisions. No one would have called Harry Truman a great man when he was a Senator or even Vice-President. But it was the way he responded to challenges of being President at
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Date:
9/18/2012
The defense industry will need to consolidate if demand for its products continues softening in the years ahead. Because Pentagon policymakers are ill-disposed to managing sector rationalization, it will probably be driven by who wins or loses the handful of big programs that are still up for grabs.
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Date:
8/28/2012
One of the most difficult challenges for U.S. security policy in the 21st century is developing and maintaining its network of alliance relationships. Some traditional structures such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization appear increasingly threadbare as member after member reduces their defense
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Date:
7/30/2012
One of the few ways to get the media’s attention in Washington is to claim that a government program is going to be more expensive than was originally projected. The bigger the number, the bigger the headline and the greater the feigned outrage on Capitol Hill. This is particularly true for major
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Date:
7/27/2012
Lightning may seldom strike twice in the same place, but Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II manages to be struck on a regular basis in the media -- often for fanciful or downright foolish reasons. The latest tempest now blowing out to sea was spawned by a think piece Chief of Naval Operations
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Date:
7/13/2012
Flight testing of the tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter continued to accelerate in June, accomplishing more tasks than in any previous month. June marked the eighteenth consecutive month in which flight testing of the plane was ahead of schedule. A total of 595 flight tests were conducted
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Date:
7/11/2012
A widely-read defense blog recently opined that the Lexington Institute is dreaming of a Romney election victory. Well, guess again: I voted for Obama in 2008 and probably will again if Republicans can't learn to do honest arithmetic about the government's fiscal options. However, I confess that
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Date:
6/20/2012
The F-35 Lightning II fighter is the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, and some media coverage makes it sound like it is also the most troubled. But if you scratch the surface on all that negative coverage, what you discover is a program that is progressing steadily. This is the third year in
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Date:
6/11/2012
As a result of repeated restructurings, the F-35 fighter program is now expected to deliver only about a quarter of the production aircraft originally planned by 2017 -- roughly 400 planes rather than 1,600. This presents a problem for the U.S. Air Force, which is destined to receive most of the
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Date:
5/11/2012
At this month’s NATO Summit in Chicago, the alliance’s leaders will roll out a specific set of proposals under the banner of “Smart Defense” for how to improve their deployable military strength. Smart Defense, simply defined, is a way of doing more without having more. NATO leaders, including the
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Date:
5/10/2012
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England has written an unusually blunt critique of how the Obama Pentagon is managing the military's biggest weapons program. The full-page essay appearing in this week's Defense News essentially accuses the Obama defense team of incompetence, contrasting
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Date:
5/8/2012
The continuous pressure from Pentagon policymakers on F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin to cut pension costs has finally borne fruit: workers at the fighter plant voted by a huge margin Sunday to go out on strike, citing proposed changes to pensions. Although the company offered members of
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Date:
4/24/2012
There's an old saying about Washington that no political issue there is ever fully resolved. You may think it's done, but then it resurfaces in a new form and the fight goes on. So it appears to be with the alternate engine, the extra propulsion system for U.S. fighter jets that teammates General
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Date:
4/12/2012
The Department of Defense has completed its latest wildly inaccurate estimate of how much it will cost to build and operate the F-35 fighter over fifty years. The F-35 is the Pentagon's biggest weapon program and it's the first military aircraft for which 50-year costs have been calculated, so
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Date:
3/29/2012
The F-35 fighter program is making steady progress towards fielding the best tactical aircraft ever built. You'd never know that, though, to listen to the way Pentagon managers describe it. Having aborted the quick production ramp-up required to minimize costs, they insist on citing cost projections
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Date:
3/26/2012
Over the last several years, the Obama Administration has repeatedly delayed and restructured the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, arguing that more time was needed for testing before the program could enter high-rate production. One consequence of the delays has been to raise the cost of each
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Date:
3/9/2012
Maintaining the world’s best all-volunteer military is a very expensive proposition. People costs continue to rise as do the costs for military hardware. Each generation of equipment costs significantly more than the one that preceded it. This is not because of a broken acquisition system, although
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Date:
2/28/2012
Recent U.S. commentaries on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program have focused on its costs to the U.S. defense budget and its importance to our military services. What is missing from most of the current discussion is that the JSF is an international program. The United States is only one
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Date:
2/13/2012
Big weapons systems attract controversy, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is no exception. Critics complain about many aspects of the program, but in the political arena all these particulars boil down to one question: Is the plane worth what the Pentagon proposes to pay for it? The case for
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Date:
1/19/2012
Pentagon policymakers were smart to wait two weeks before disclosing the program changes that will accompany the administration's new national security strategy. The political system needs some time to assimilate the emerging strategic framework before it hears what revised military priorities
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Date:
1/6/2012
Tomorrow, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta will unveil the Pentagon’s new defense strategy. Whatever its merits, it is clear that the new strategy is driven not by substantive changes in the international security environment but by the shrinking U.S. defense budget. Whatever Panetta puts forward
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Date:
1/4/2012
Japan's government announced today that it has decided to buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as its next top-of-the-line tactical aircraft, handing the stealthy plane a key endorsement in its first head-to-head competition with other fighters. The Clinton Administration conceived the F-35 as an
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Date:
12/20/2011
Last week was a tough one for the tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, with program manager Vice Admiral David Venlet expressing concern to AOL Defense about problems being found in developmental testing. They're the kinds of problems that crop up in every new military aircraft program
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Date:
12/5/2011
Aviation Week & Space Technology reports today that the nation's biggest weapons development program has surpassed its testing goals for calendar year 2011, and is on track to do the same in 2012. The goal for 2011 was 872 flight tests, and as of last Thursday, 875 had been completed. This
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Date:
11/21/2011
Today, if you were given the choice between operating a company specializing in subprime mortgages or running a private defense company you might want to seriously consider the former. In the subprime mortgage business all you have to contend with is customers who often haven't the money for a reasonable
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Date:
11/15/2011
Even if politicians don't notice how many of the Air Force's major commands are located in "swing" states like Colorado, Illinois and Virginia, there's good reason to believe the service will experience a renaissance in the years ahead. First, the locus of global security concerns is shifting to
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Date:
11/14/2011
Oh no. This is terrible. The program that critics of defense spending love to hate is becoming a normal acquisition program. What are the F-35 deniers to do? Well, they could go after the V-22 Osprey. Whoops, that’s not a good answer. The Osprey is performing amazingly well in combat and has the
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Date:
11/2/2011
There was a time when the Pentagon's idea of smart acquisition practices meant things like multiyear contracts and avoiding excessive testing. Not now. The current approach to promoting efficiency in weapons purchases is mainly about shifting risk to industry and cutting the performance of next-generation
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Date:
11/2/2011
The Department of Defense in conducting a strategic review in order to determine where funding can be cut without impairing the nation's global military posture. The review could result in reducing the number of Navy aircraft carriers, terminating several Army vehicle programs, and trimming the
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Date:
10/21/2011
The Air Force senior leadership is adamant that their service must have the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). With its advanced stealth features and 21st century sensor capabilities, the JSF will be a game changer in air warfare not only for the Air Force but for the Navy and Marine Corps as well.
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Date:
9/26/2011
Yesterday the Air Force fired the first volley in what is likely to be an extended and intense “food fight” between the military services over their respective shares of future defense budgets. Everyone understands that even under the most optimistic scenario, defense spending will decline significantly
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Date:
9/20/2011
For years now we at the Lexington Institute have been warning anyone who would listen that the array of military equipment that allowed the U.S. for thirty years to win the Cold War and operate as the sole superpower is wearing out. Now this story is front page in today’s Wall Street Journal.
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Date:
9/15/2011
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 13, deputy defense secretary-designate Ashton Carter assured legislators that the Pentagon is working real hard to reduce a trillion-dollar bill for sustaining the F-35 fighter over its 50-year operational lifetime.
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Date:
9/14/2011
You know the budget wars are heating up when a senior Republican senator starts attacking weapons programs important to other legislators in his own party. That's what happened yesterday, when Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss assailed Pentagon purchases of Boeing's carrier-based F/A-18 Super Hornet,
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Date:
9/1/2011
In normal times, the defense secretary's support for his department's biggest weapons program would be taken as a given. But these are not normal times. The federal government is borrowing billions of dollars each day, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was put in charge of the Pentagon with
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Date:
8/26/2011
I must confess that one of my not-so guilty pleasures is to read The Economist from cover to cover as soon as it comes in the mail. I learn a great deal from its articles on foreign policy, economics, technology and even British politics. I even have an app for The Economist on my
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Date:
8/5/2011
Just when you thought General Electric's unneeded extra engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was about to bite the dust, here comes Bloomberg L.P.'s government research arm to confuse the issue. Last week BGov, as it is called, put out a short study stating the Pentagon might save billions
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Date:
7/26/2011
Over the last decade, Bloomberg News has emerged as the dominant news-gathering enterprise in the United States. It has gradually surpassed the Associated Press in influence while eclipsing perennial also-ran Reuters. Many reporters have left well-known outlets such as Forbes and Time
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Date:
7/21/2011
The U.S. defense budget is in danger of being swamped in a tsunami of debt and deficit reduction plans. Proposals for massive defense cuts are proliferating. There is the Simpson-Bowles Commission, the Paul-Frank proposal and, most recently, the plan put forward by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn that
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Date:
7/19/2011
Last week was in many ways a typical week for the U.S. Air Force. Aging F-15 and F-16 fighters developed during the Nixon Administration conducted combat and training missions, supported by KC-135 tankers built in the 1950s. Airborne surveillance was provided by E-3 AWACS radar planes that debuted
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Date:
7/18/2011
The Pentagon's recent estimate that it will cost a trillion dollars to operate and sustain the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter through 2065 is very misleading. First, the estimate exaggerates an already big bill by using imaginary inflation rates that are unknowable. Second, the estimate fails to note that
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Date:
6/27/2011
The ongoing NATO air campaign in Libya is providing two interrelated lessons for the future of the Alliance as a military instrument. The first is you play with what you pay for. Or in the case of NATO it might be stated if you don’t pay you cannot play. The lack of investment by this country’s
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Date:
6/23/2011
The Pakistani military has been detaining locals who may have helped the CIA monitor activities around Osama bin Laden's compound. The move isn't likely to improve relations with Washington, but it's understandable in light of how the raid that killed bin Laden unfolded. Pakistan's military leaders
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Date:
6/16/2011
Actually, this posting is about the F-35 fighter. But the headline is correct -- the nation's military services really are going to spend over $25 billion on music bands in the coming years. In fact, if you add inflation and indirect costs like retirement benefits, the "then-year" cost of military
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Date:
5/17/2011
As the Pentagon moves towards negotiating for the next lot of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, it is doing so with a sense that things are moving in the right direction. Pentagon acquisition chief, Under Secretary Ashton Carter, publicly stated that he was more confident in the program. There is also
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Date:
4/15/2011
The current Libyan air operation may be the last of its kind. What I mean by this is an operation involving fourth-generation aircraft against Soviet-era defenses or single-digit surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). To date, the campaign has been as much an air show as combat operation with an array
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Date:
3/31/2011
Flight tests of the tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are running well ahead of the plan for 2011, with 181 flights completed as of March 25 against a plan of 133. In addition, the productivity of each flight test is increasing, with an average of 7.7 unique test points achieved per flight. The
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Date:
3/28/2011
The coalition air operation against Muammar Ghadaffi has demonstrated the enormous capacity of the U.S. military. Precision weapons took out Ghadaffi's surface-to-air missile sites and aircraft shelters. E/A-18G Growlers jammed Libyan electronics. F-15s and F-16s conducted both counter-air and surface-attack
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Date:
3/22/2011
A deficit-conscious House of Representatives has refused to fund the "alternate engine" General Electric wants to build for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and the Senate is likely to follow suit. GE's campaign to secure federal subsidies for its unneeded engine is in jeopardy -- which isn't surprising,
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Date:
3/21/2011
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is the keystone to the future U.S. tactical aircraft fleet. For this reason and because the program has had some challenges, any time an institution as influential as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns of problems with the program people -- particularly
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Date:
3/18/2011
The much maligned F-35 program recently received a vote of confidence from two of its three major constituencies, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. A revised interservice agreement between the two envisions the procurement of 680 F-35s. The Navy will buy 260 F-35Cs, specifically designed for carrier
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Date:
3/15/2011
The debate over the imposition of a no-fly zone is paralyzed by the specter of the U.S. having to attack Libyan surface to air missile (SAM) sites as a precursor to such an operation. Secretary of Defense Gates effectively shut down discussion of the no-fly option when he asserted in testimony that
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Date:
3/7/2011
If you work in Washington and rely on the major news outlets for your information you might be forgiven for having formed the opinion that the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program was fouled up. From the perspective of Fort Worth, where I recently went with a group of defense analysts to tour the
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Date:
3/4/2011
Aerospace experts scrutinizing images of the Chinese J-20 fighter that first began appearing on the internet in late December have developed a more nuanced view of the plane's features than what was available in early reports. Although the J-20 resembles the outline of the stealthy F-22 Raptor
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Date:
3/2/2011
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has begun to exhibit rapid progress in flight tests as pilots gradually expand the operational "envelope" for all three service variants. Development of the stealthy, single-engine fighter has been dogged by delays and rising costs, but the plane now seems to be moving
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Date:
3/1/2011
The jet engine General Electric and Rolls-Royce are developing for the F-35 fighter suffered a major setback last week when the House of Representatives voted to deny funding for fiscal 2011. In doing so, the House followed the advice of defense secretary Robert Gates, who has argued since 2007
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Date:
2/22/2011
The biggest weapons program in the Pentagon budget is a single-engine plane called the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It's a crucial program, because it will replace aging Cold War jets operated by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps with a stealthy combat plane that can preserve America's global
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Date:
2/15/2011
An aerospace executive made an interesting point to me a while back about how building planes was similar to the way some nations make strategy. He said when you're in the capital equipment business, you have to think in multi-decade cycles, because that's how long it takes to design, develop and
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Date:
2/1/2011
Last week, the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, announced that he had placed the short take-off/vertical landing (STOVL) version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on “double secret probation.” The prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, has two years to fix problems with the air frame and engine. It
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Date:
1/13/2011
Last week witnessed an interesting bit of political theater concerning the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, courtesy of Credit Suisse and Aviation Week. The two organizations hosted their annual aerospace conference in New York, and the audience was treated to surprisingly complementary
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Date:
12/8/2010
The Navy has made its latest run against the Marine Corps version of the F-35 joint strike fighter, and for something like the twentieth time, it has been rebuffed. The latest failed assault came after the United Kingdom decided to switch its buy of joint strike fighters from the Marine vertical-takeoff
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Date:
11/15/2010
When the Pentagon released its latest cost estimates for the tri-service F-35 joint strike fighter program, many outsiders were aghast at the projected price-tag for the planes. Everyone knew it was the defense department's biggest development program, but the per-plane costs were a good deal higher
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Date:
11/5/2010
Five years ago the Pentagon had a plan for how it was going to keep the cost of each F-35 Joint Strike Fighter low. The plan was all about economies of scale. Basically, the more planes you produce each year, the less each plane costs. Sort of like building cars. So back then, the plan was to
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Date:
10/21/2010
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program could be the single largest and most complex aircraft acquisition program of the 21st Century. The current plan is to produce some 2,440 planes to equip the US military and around 1,700 for as many as two dozen foreign customers. An international consortium
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Date:
10/13/2010
The Department of Defense announced yesterday that the government and prime contractor Lockheed Martin have signed a long-awaited contract for the fourth production lot of F-35 joint strike fighters. According to Andrea Shalal-Esa of Reuters, the fixed-price contract for multiple variants of the
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Date:
9/23/2010
There is so much misleading information about the F-35 joint strike fighter in the public record that I feel a need to return to the subject periodically in an attempt to provide some balance. I'm happy to say this time around, though, that for the first time this year the political prospects of
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Date:
6/24/2010
Initial reaction to the selection of aviator James Amos as the next Commandant of the Marine Corps has been almost entirely positive. There is also much support for the apparent decision to make the charismatic Joe Dunford Assistant Commandant. Some insiders suspect that Amos will serve for two
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Date:
6/16/2010
The F-35 joint strike fighter has survived a Nunn-McCurdy review required of all weapons systems that exceed so-called "critical" thresholds for cost increases. Defense acquisition czar Ashton Carter will tell Congress this week that the program is essential to national security, is grounded in
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Date:
6/1/2010
Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos told defense trade publication Inside the Navy last month that his service has no plans to delay fielding of the F-35 fighter despite the fact that the development plan is 13 months behind schedule. In fact, the Marine Corps is so
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Date:
5/4/2010
General Electric's aviation unit yesterday offered taxpayers the kind of bargain they aren't likely to get at WalMart. The company proposed to charge its government customer a mere $2 billion for the first lot of an item that the customer insists it doesn't want at all. The item in question is GE's
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Date:
4/28/2010
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is continuing his crusade to transform the way in which the United States conducts national security affairs. The most revolutionary Secretary of Defense since Robert McNamara (and a much better one), Gates’ vision encompasses changing the way the Department of
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Date:
4/22/2010
Government representatives negotiating terms for a fourth production lot of F-35 joint strike fighters are pressing prime contractor Lockheed Martin to deliver the most common variant of the plane at a price far below the level predicted in official cost estimates recently provided to Congress.
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Date:
4/16/2010
InsideDefense.com has issued an update of the F-35 story referenced in my blog posting earlier today, dismissing my criticism as "flat wrong." In an April 9 posting on its web-site, it tells readers "Defense consultant and Lexington Institute head Loren Thompson has attacked a story we wrote this
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Date:
4/9/2010
On April 7, InsideDefense.com reporter Jason Sherman produced a sensational story on cost growth in the Pentagon's biggest weapons program titled, "Exclusive: DoD Warns Congress JSF Costs Could Skyrocket To $388 Billion By Summer." It was the latest in a series of reports Sherman has generated
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Date:
4/9/2010
Today's Boston Globe contains a well-crafted story by defense correspondent Brian Bender about the decision of newly-elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown to abandon the principles on which he campaigned to buy a prime cut of Pentagon
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Date:
4/8/2010
Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley summarized the outlook for the F-35 joint strike fighter program succinctly on March 2, when he told a group of reporters, "Really, there are no good alternatives to F-35 at this point...This is a program to which we are deeply committed." Donley's service
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Date:
3/12/2010
A journalist friend of mine left a message on my voicemail this week requesting comments on the "continuing implosion" of the F-35 joint strike fighter program. The drumbeat of negative stories about the program has become so persistent that many people who aren't paying close attention think the
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Date:
3/4/2010
What's wrong with this picture? Last year Congress approved tough acquisition reform legislation with the support of top defense authorizers in both chambers. To enforce greater realism in projecting weapons costs, the legislation directed policymakers to rely on estimates provided by the Pentagon's
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Date:
3/2/2010
A draft overview of the defense department's fiscal 2011 budget request highlights a handful of weapons programs as key to current and future military operations. The document was leaked last week, but media reports have only mentioned a small portion of its content. The chapter of the overview
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Date:
1/27/2010
Yesterday I had the honor of testifying before the Seapower & Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee concerning Navy shipbuilding plans. My prepared remarks are below. In general, I agreed with Navy plans for submarines, carriers and surface combatants while
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Date:
1/21/2010
Yesterday, Iran’s minister of defense fired a verbal shot across the bow of the United States, warning that his country could attack our warships in the Persian Gulf in the event of any attack upon Teheran’s nuclear facilities. The chance of such a confrontation rose rather sharply recently with
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Date:
1/20/2010
The U.S. Navy is not waiting for the Obama Administration or the international community to solve the problem of climate change. It is moving ahead to identify the potential impacts of climate change on its operations and to develop the means by which to monitor, assess and respond to those changes.
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Date:
1/11/2010
Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg Business News scooped the competition yesterday by revealing Pentagon plans to make major budget adjustments to its biggest weapons program, the F-35 fighter. Capaccio reported
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Date:
1/7/2010