Money problems for the high-risk F-35 program in 2014 budget

The F-35 program could lose up to 5 aircraft in the 2014 budget due to mandated DOD cuts and different colors of money (deferred and/or unspent from previous years) that are used up. The program could also lose some research and development money for the same reasons, as reported by The Hill blog.

Not mentioned by The Hill is that 12 years after Lockheed Martin being awarded the job of building the F-35, there are no finished, go-to-war combat aircraft.  Far from it. What the taxpayer has been buying for years are mistake-jets.

Even if the F-35 was made to work to its' performance requirements--which includes high-90-percentile mission availability rates--it would be too weak to take on emerging threats and to expensive to own and operate against lesser threats handled by other aircraft on the market.

Also, the Pentagon just signed for 38 new F-35 jet-engines with the average cost of $28.9M each.

To date, the F-35 program has consumed around $60B.
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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)

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