The F-35: A Weapon That Costs More Than Australia

[AiA in Atlanta]

The American nutters are fine with cutting education and health & welfare spending but are fine literally spending Australia on a single aircraft.

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is an impressive aircraft: a fifth generation multirole fighter plane with stealth technology. It's also a symbol of everything that's wrong with defense spending in America.

In a rational world, U.S. military expenditure would focus on the likely threats that the United States faces today and in the future. And at a time of mounting national debt, the Tea Party would be knocking down the Pentagon's door to cut waste.

But the only tea party in sight is the one overseen by the Mad Hatter, as we head down the rabbit hole into the military industrial wonderland.

The F-35 is designed to be the core tactical fighter aircraft for the U.S. military, with three versions for the Air Force, Navy, and the Marine Corps. Each plane clocks in at around $90 million.

In a decade's time, the United States plans to have 15 times as many modern fighters as China, and 20 times as many as Russia.
So, how many F-35s do we need?

100?

500?

Washington intends to buy 2,443, at a price tag of $382 billion.

Add in the $650 billion that the Government Accountability Office estimates is needed to operate and maintain the aircraft, and the total cost reaches a staggering $1 trillion.

In other words, we're spending more on this plane than Australia's entire GDP ($924 billion).

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... lia/72454/

[Outlaw Yogi]

So the F-22 Raptor is too good to share, even with most loyal sychophant OZ, and now this F-35 Lightning neds an empire's ransom to obtain. You'd think with the ancient example Rome, and the modern example USSR/CCCP, of empires going bust over military spending, U$A would reconsider its options.

Copletely unrelated, but I noticed an Amerikan doomsday jesus freak's claims of Chinese troops amassing in Mexico aprox 60 ml from US border ... implying China is about to invade U$A

Oh wow, now they've even got some wobbly U-tubed google earth images to supposedly support their story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZhCTDu_NZ0