The $1 Trillion Failed War Machine Bernie Loves
BY SAM FIELDS
This past weekend saw the return of the Fort Lauderdale Air Show. And if the Miami Herald’s Saturday edition is right, the star of the show was the F-35– America’s latest and greatest boondoggle making its first civilian air show appearance and a weapon that is supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The current estimated cost for the F-35 project is $1.2 trillion.
Yes, I mean TRILLION! With a “T.”
Other than all that money, there is another serious problem: The plane is a massive failure. It doesn’t work.
That hadn’t deterred Sanders.
Bernie Sanders
The F-35 is exactly the kind of wasteful government spending that is taking food out of the mouths of the poor and condemning inner city and rural kids to inferior educations. The F-35 is the kind of government spending Senator Bernie Sanders has been loudly railing against all these years.
Well, not exactly.
Far from denouncing the F-35, Bernie’s voting record and public statements have made it clear that he is a major cheerleader for the program.
The fact that Bernie is for the largest single purchase by any government in the history of the world and that includes the Pyramids and The Great Wall of China shouldn’t shock you. After all, his presidential platform will filled with new expensive spending proposals.
Currently, each new F-35 costs $200 million. That includes the one that spontaneously combusted on a Florida runway in 2014.
Besides the insane co$t, there are a few other “minor” problems with the plane:
- IT DOES NOT WORK. Some genius in the Pentagon concluded that the way to go was a single fighter jet for the Navy, Marines and Air Force. This one size fits all mentality is an important reason F-35 stealth fails if it’s raining or even cloudy! The system is so convoluted and self-defeating it can be detected using WWII radar. Its weapons systems repeatedly fail. As many as a third of them are grounded at any time. Hitting it in the right spot, it’s possible to bring it down with a single bullet fragment, etc., etc., etc.
- THE MILITARY DOES NOT WANT IT. Appearing on 60 Minutes, Air Force Chief, General Mark Welsh, stated that in a dogfight the F-35 “will die before it even knows it’s in a fight”.
- IT’S IRRELEVANT TO THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM. For the foreseeable future we will be fighting an asymmetrical war with terrorists who can’t bring down a Piper Cub much less a drone or any of our 2500 F16s.
Why?
Could it have to do with the Pentagon agreeing to replace the Vermont Air National Guard’s F-16’s with F-35’s in 2020– just in case Canada, seeking revenge for our 1812 invasion, attacks thru Burlington!
It took 30 pieces of silver to buy off Judas. It took 18 F-35’s to purchase Bernie. Chalk it up to inflation.
Now I am not picking solely on Bernie for his support of the F-35. One way or the other, everybody in Congress is a Pentagon jobs whore. That’s the reason prime contractor Lockheed-Martin spread F-35 work around 45 states.
What I resent is Bernie’s “holier than thou” finger pointing at everybody who isn’t Bernie. It reminds me of what my sixth grade teacher Howard MacMillan—he has a Dade middle school named after him—used to say:
“When you point a finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you.”
In the case of the F-35, that works out to $400 billion per finger.
XXXXX
Want to learn more about Bernie Sanders and the F-35? Click on the links here and here and here.
May 8th, 2016 at 6:28 pm
Will someone tell me how it benefits the voters who elect them to vote against funding THAT BENEFITS THE VOTERS.
BASICALLY SAM FIELDS WANTS ELECTED OFFICIALS TO VOTE COUNSELLOR FIELDS VIEWS NOT THE INTERESTS OF THE VOTERS WHO ELECT OFFICIALS.
This would NOT be democracy a fact that seems to escape Counsellor Fields.
May 8th, 2016 at 7:33 pm
I see that Sam is in a foul mood and spewing personal attacks accordingly. Who exactly is Bernie Sanders supposedly pointing fingers at in a “holier than thou” manner? Elizabeth Warren perhaps?
As for the F-35, it’s trying to do a lot of really hard things that have never been done before, which are nevertheless very important. Cognitive Electronic Warfare and Sensor Fusion with Aegis & other platforms (think airborne “missile trucks”) are revolutionary capabilities that we absolutely need to create, even knowing that it will be very expensive to do so. The F-35 is a move away from the outdated concept of a heroic standalone “Rocky Balboa” type fighter and toward a new concept of ultra-intelligent, ultra-networked swarms.
Russia and China are both investing heavily in modernizing their military capabilities, and both are belligerent powers today (Russia in Georgia and Ukraine, China in the South China Sea etc.). The F-35’s advanced capabilities are needed in order to help deal with both of these looming threats to our national security.
That said, obviously there have been problems with the F-35 production process. The attempt to create one aircraft to meet the disparate needs of the Navy and Air Force and the Marine Corps was an ill-advised attempt to save money which wound up being counterproductive. The choice of C++ for software development instead of Ada was a major mistake for which the program is paying very dearly. Hopefully the DoD will learn from these mistakes.
But let’s keep in mind that this is to a certain extent “par for the course”. The F-15, F-16, and many other aircraft which are now revered were once reviled as boondoggles during this early phase of their lifecycle too. Their kinks were worked out and they ultimately did deliver on their promises.
May 9th, 2016 at 1:26 pm
Dear Critics,
I did not want to get into the full story of the significance of Pentagon jobs but you have forced that issue.
The fact of that matter is that the F-35, like all DOD spending, are a net/net loss of American jobs.
Below is one of a dozen studies that measure the jobs per billion of government spending. The worst is DOD spending with 11,200 jobs per billion. Education spending produces 26,700 per billion.
Although the few crumbs that Sanders and the rest fight over might seem good, the bottom line is that DOD spending means fewer jobs for the rest of us with our own money!
That same $1.2 trillion put into education, alternative energy, repairing infrastructure, etc., would produce millions of more jobs. So the bottom line is that the F-35 has cost us millions of productive jobs!!!!
One study is linked here.
JOBS PER BILLION DOLLARS OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Military –11,200 – jobs
Tax cuts for personal consumers –15,100 +34.8%
Clean energy –16,800 +50.0%
Health care –17,200 +53.6%
Education– 26,700 +138.4
Then there is the whole moral notion of what we are spending this on. If not, one could see XYKLON-B as a German jobs program.
May 9th, 2016 at 2:45 pm
@2 ha ha ha has his facts RIGHT. As someone who worked for the Defense Industry that PROTECTS US in non military marine research projects I saw how skyrocketing costs were caused by POLITICAL DIKATs and yes political realities time n time again. But I also see IN MILITARY N NON MILITARY AND VERY MUCH IN ANY SCIENTIC HISTORICAL OR LEGAL RESEARCG EXPENSES THAT LOOK WASTEFUL N UNNECCESSARY ARE IN FACT MANDATORY TO RESEARCH A GOAL.
Hasnt Counsellor Fields ever had a client who complained “why did you do so much legal resesrch” and quietly pull his hair at the clients uninformed complsints. I certainly have.
May 9th, 2016 at 2:53 pm
Are Fields’s legal arguments clearer than his comment?
“The fact of that matter is that the F-35, like all DOD spending, are a net/net loss of American jobs.”
If the is true, how come Fields’s chart indicates it adds 11,200.
Defense spending adds jobs in addition to PROTECTING THE NATION. This plane was not designed to fail. It was designed to work. The fact that it hasn’t worked out as expected has nothing to do with the motives of building it or the jobs that are created.
May 9th, 2016 at 4:27 pm
@3 – Sam, you should take a good look at how much Bernie Sanders advocates investing in infrastructure, education and alternative energy, and then compare that to the lesser investments proposed by his opponents.
The real killer of American jobs is the diligent efforts of the 1% to minimize what economists call the “multiplier effect”. Giving a poor person money creates a strong multiplier effect because virtually all of that money gets spent quickly, thus providing employment for other people. But rich people often send money out of the country – or fill their swimming pools with it – and generally try to use as little of it as possible to provide employment for other people, so the multiplier effect is very low when the 1% receive money.
Now who exactly is receiving money? Quite simply, the 1% have gotten ALL of the gains from the economic recovery from the recent “Great Recession”…
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/01/28/3616308/income-inequality-2013/
Bernie Sanders believes the 1% should start paying their fair share (which would be way more than what they pay now) so that we can afford to invest in infrastructure, education, alternative energy, etc. #FeelTheBern
May 9th, 2016 at 5:00 pm
Dear There,
Do the math. Give it to DOD and generate 11,200 jobs. Let consumers keep their money or return it as a tax break and generate 15,100 jobs.
That means giving it to DOD was a net loss of 3,900 jobs compared to letting consumers/taxpayers keep their money AND GOVERNMENT DOING NOTHING
Clean energy, healthcare and education do even better.
That’s why DOD spending is a net job loss.
May 9th, 2016 at 9:04 pm
We always buy a lot more planes than we need and they’re always becoming obsolete so soon. Then, we dont even sell them to anyone else for fear of them having our recently obsolete technology. We just destroy them. Building and selling fighter planes to our rich uncle sounds like a profitable venture.
May 10th, 2016 at 9:26 am
@8 Stormwstch is talking nonsense. WHAT PLANES ARE DESTROYED? Most military aircraft is flown until it has been used for military use for decades which id usually past the point it is upto date n therefore continues in non fighter use or sold off.
We are NOT alwsys buying planes we buy NEWER PLANES WHEN TECHNOLOGY CHANGES.
IN FACT OUR MILITARY IS THE SMALLEST SINCE THE PEACETIME MILITARY BEFORE WORLD WAR II – AND YOU KNOW HOW THAT HELPED US AFTER PEARL HARBOUR.
STORMWATCH DOESNT KNOW WHAT HES TALKING ABOUT.
May 10th, 2016 at 10:42 am
Try googling “Pentagon destroying F-14s.”
May 10th, 2016 at 11:01 am
It is 11 AM on Tuesday Morning May 10, 2016. The highest officials at the Florida Democratic Party in Tallahassee still refuse to release the results of last Saturday’s delegate election results. I guess it takes time to play around with the “count” of about 10,000 votes!
May 10th, 2016 at 6:46 pm
@8+10 – The F-14 started flying in 1970, and it was retired in 2006. So your position is that “becoming obsolete so soon” is the same as “providing over 35 years of service”?
May I ask what you would consider to be a sufficiently long lifetime, since 35+ years apparently just isn’t quite long enough for you?
May 11th, 2016 at 9:52 am
The original design of the F-14 was completed in the 60s. That is also when production began. The first actual flying of an F-14 was in 1970. The first military usage was 1974.
From the time production began, several upgrades were made throughout the years. The F-14 morphed into the F-14A, the F-14B and the F-14D. Production ended in 1991 and the last ones ordered were delivered in 1994.
So we were delivered F-14s in 1994 that we were destroying in 2007.
But it doesn’t end there. A quick Google search will also reveal how many military transport jets are also being destroyed.
How long will it be before F-35s are declared obsolete? I’d guess about 10 years.
May 11th, 2016 at 4:18 pm
Anyone familiar with the Alenia C-27J cargo plane? The one currently under construction but still headed straight for the boneyard. It’s not the only one. We’re also destroying recently purchased 550 million dollars worth of G-22 cargo planes that we converted into $32,000 worth of scrap metal. Google “New Air Force planes go directly to boneyard.
But it’s not the Pentagon’s fault. The Senate Armed Services Committee forces the military to buy stuff they don’t need or want.
May 13th, 2016 at 3:29 pm
http://www.hoover.org/research/understanding-chinas-strategic-culture-through-its-south-china-sea-gambit
Understanding China’s Strategic Culture Through Its South China Sea Gambit
by Miles Maochun Yu
Monday, May 9, 2016