USMC's untruths over the F-35

History and great expectations for the USMC's F-35B program took a shock as far back as 2010.

And they have not recovered.

Consider this December 2010 article in Bloomberg.

Look at the quotes:

The U.S. Marine Corps will scrap a December 2012 target to have its version of the Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ready for combat and isn’t setting a new date, the service’s commandant said.

“I’m really not wringing my hands over that,” General James Amos told reporters today at the Pentagon. “It will be when it will be.”

Amos being the leader of the United States Marketing Corps cabal inside the United States Marine Corps.

“I had hoped that it would be farther along” in the flight-test program, Amos said. “This is a complicated airplane. We are going to work ourselves through the issues.”

Faith-based project management.

Amos said engineers are working through “mechanical issues” with the propulsion system.

‘Engineering Solutions’

“I’m told we have engineering solutions to these fixes,” Amos said. “We have to prove to folks that those are fixable -- that it can be done.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a Dec. 3 meeting he would recommend giving the Marines as much as two more years to develop the short-takeoff/vertical-landing model and overcome technical and manufacturing snags, according to two defense officials asked not to be identified.

“I had an opportunity to sit down and tell him about the importance” of the Marines Corps’ version of the plane, Amos said. “To the best of my knowledge, it was received very positively.”

Until the F-35B was put on probation by Gates. Later, after a new sec-Def arrived, Amos conned him into lifting the probation, based on no real technical progress with the system. Upon being the last to find out the probation had been lifted, elected officials that pay for this kind of baffoonary, issued this nasty letter.

Too date, the value of tac-air STOVL hasn't been proven in U.S. wars.

The technical issues are still massive for the program.

USMC spending for the F-35 is on record for a projected $51B.


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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)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie
-F-35's air-to-air ability limited
-F-35 Blocks--2006 and today



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