When I encounter a weird story that might be an interesting core for some bloggy ruminations, I usually email it to myself. Email is my “post it note” and it’s been a great technique since I keep a complete archive of my emails going back to the 80s. The problem is that I have an in-box that consists mostly of weird messages from myself (2000+ at present).
I’ve written about this before: the design methodology used to produce the F-35 makes it nearly impossible to maintain any kind of secrecy regarding its technology.
We see the future through a glass, darkly.
When I read Robert Coram’s Boyd [wc] I was fascinated. Here was a fellow who appears to have been two things: 1- a strategic genius and 2- a really fast thinker. Coram (and others, including Chuck Spinney) have long held Boyd forward as a innovator who re-invented the art of war, but I respectfully must disagree.
I think that with a procurement program like the F-35, there’s too much money at stake for anyone to point, and say out loud, “OK, this is not going to work.”
This is not a story about the F-35. It’s a story about the corrupt and broken process that brought the US taxpayers the F-35.
This is another F-35 story. I know you’re probably thinking “when will this end?” and all I can say is: when the money-pump runs dry.
When you start to track problems with the F-35, you may discover that the problems have problems and that there are whole other branches of problems that you haven’t heard of, yet. It certainly makes me wonder if, perhaps, the whole thing is made up of problems; it’s possible. As long as the taxpayers are footing the bill, who cares?
Maybe I should start a trend: when I’m sad or lonely, I can just google “F-35 problem” and I’ll be laughing until it hurts in no time.
This is one that, I admit, never occurred to me, either. The fact that it did not is profoundly embarrassing. Ready for a little F-35 bashing?