F-35 to cost $1.45 trillion over next 50 years!

[RTHolmes]

iceland as a model of economic responsibility?

you are havin a laugh.

[33Vortex]

iceland as a model of economic responsibility?

you are havin a laugh.

Don't put words in my mouth I never said. This was a decision by the Icelandic govt forced by pressure from the people, it is called democracy. Consider that Iceland has a population of merely 300.000. In Italy on the other hand, people were told that the situation was much too serious to be handled democratically and that it was time for action instead. Their rationale (excuse) being that a democratic process takes too long and the people does not know enough anyway to make a informed decision. This is how democracy is overruled and dismantled.

[RTHolmes]

the people does not know enough anyway to make a informed decision.

this is true, and the debt writeoff is a great example. any domestic debt written off will come out of the pockets of Iceland's foreign creditors. these creditors will never again invest in Iceland. how many of the Icelanders who petitioned their government appreciate this? not many would be my guess.

[mthrockmor]

One note about progressives and the lot, they are decidedly anti-democracy.

Now, to the rank and file, they bleed the passion of democracy. It is all about 'people power' etc. When you delve into the intellectual depths of their movement democracy is simply a tool to the ends. The end is a perfect, utopian society where all the right decisions are made. And these decisions are too difficult for the average person to understand, let alone vote on. Thus it requires the "enlightened" intelligencia to make these difficult decisions for the masses. This is why socialists societies veer away from democratic institutions. You want evidence? Look no further then our current administration with almost 50 "tsars." Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats with a tremendous amount of authority, who only answer to the President and his office. And not to be partisan, the previous administration had them as well, though no where near this scale.

Modern progressives are boldly going home to momma, democracy is for show: Intelligencia will make these decisions.

It is well that Iceland has a rough time with foreign investors. They blew it big time. And considering the US Federal Reserve has purchased over 60% of their own bond auctions lets us know that investors are suspect of us as well. 60%+?! This is the very definition of inflation.

And the game is to float items like $600+ million shiny toys to destroy empires long since gone. America can dominate for the next 50 years with our 4th generation package.

Boo

[33Vortex]

Well, the issue is that the US will destroy itself from within at some point during this decade. I reckon quite a few people on this forum, took an oath to defend their constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic". Well, the domestic enemies are running free in Washout DC while the US finest are off on foreign soil fighting phony wars. It's all smoke and mirrors serving the ultimate goal of total dictatorial control of the US by the feds. The TSA recently ordered 450 million .40 cal pistol rounds and 170 million rounds of .223 (5.56 NATO). On top of that the Department of Homeland Security has ordered 2,717 of these. It might be the proverbial top of the iceberg, who knows what else they are doing? Well by the way, ~30,000 operational UAVs in domestic airspace by 2020.



They have been very busy in the last two decades in developing hi-tech weaponry (beam/energy crowd-control & lethal) which will be used against the public in the coming financial collapse. Hyperinflation, riots, possibly civil war & a perfect excuse by the feds progressives to seize absolute control.

Now, please understand that I'm not saying this stating that it's absolute truth. It may or may not happen, but in light of what has been going on for some time now I think the trend is quite clear.

[RTHolmes]

  much?

[33Vortex]

Don't get soft now but this is a pretty cool vid. Just remember the truth is multi-faceted and you may think you have it, but you don't. You never do, nobody does. When you think you have it all figured out, you're wrong.

I love engineering and the tech going into these planes is some of the best achievements to this day. What these tools are used for, a completely different matter.

[Gman]

If any of you have access to US Netflix, search for the 2002 NOVA program about the "Xplanes".

It's a ten year old program NOVA did on the contest between the F32 and the F35 for the JSF contract.

I remember watching it when it was first on, but I just about fell off my chair watching it again ten years later - so much has changed it's hard to believe.

The original budget for the ENTIRE JSF program, including the USAF, USN, and Marine fighters was to be 200 Billion, and at the time was and still is the largest procurement in defense history. The only little difference today is that the projected budget released this week by the US Defense Dept. is that the cost will likely exceed 1.5 TRILLION dollars. Only a small difference of about 700 percent.

The program talked about how this new JSF would "solve" the problem of the "100 million" F22 fighters. What a laugh that is, they thought that they could build the JSF back then for 33 million a piece. What in the hell went wrong I wonder.....the world sure is a strange place, back then we thought we were all going to be rich, could build the most advanced fighters in history for a pittance, and China was a broke bellybutton country begging for most favored nation trading status, and now it owns over ten percent of the US debt and is on track to overtake the US defense budget in another decade or less.

[Delirium]

Please take whatever Vortex says with a grain of salt, he still believes 9-11 was an inside job.

[Bodhi]

If any of you have access to US Netflix, search for the 2002 NOVA program about the "Xplanes".

It's a ten year old program NOVA did on the contest between the F32 and the F35 for the JSF contract.

I remember watching it when it was first on, but I just about fell off my chair watching it again ten years later - so much has changed it's hard to believe.

The original budget for the ENTIRE JSF program, including the USAF, USN, and Marine fighters was to be 200 Billion, and at the time was and still is the largest procurement in defense history. The only little difference today is that the projected budget released this week by the US Defense Dept. is that the cost will likely exceed 1.5 TRILLION dollars. Only a small difference of about 700 percent.

The program talked about how this new JSF would "solve" the problem of the "100 million" F22 fighters. What a laugh that is, they thought that they could build the JSF back then for 33 million a piece. What in the hell went wrong I wonder.....the world sure is a strange place, back then we thought we were all going to be rich, could build the most advanced fighters in history for a pittance, and China was a broke bellybutton country begging for most favored nation trading status, and now it owns over ten percent of the US debt and is on track to overtake the US defense budget in another decade or less.

You are being optimistic of the $1.5 trillion lie they are trying to sell now.  This is nothing more than absolute lunacy spending this much money on a single engine fighter.

[-tronski-]

Dunno Tronski. The F-111 was a great bird, but they required way too much maintenance per flight hour. I was an F-111 maintainer way back in the early 80s and the cost effectiveness of flight hours vs maintenance requirement was pretty dire way back then.. If you mean replacing the Aussie F-111s with the F-15E yeah I'm all with you. Actually operating them right now would be a burden on any Air Force's budget.

That was the argument for retiring them "early" was maintenance cost in favor of the F-35 - but the airforce did have the spares and expertise to keep the pig flying for at least another 10 years, and now we have no capacity to project the kind of bombing power the F-111's gave us without heavy tanker support which we are now solely reliant on with the mix of upgraded FA-18A HUG's and the small number of F-18F's we have. Cost is indeed a major issue, but we could have obtained a significant number of highly capable upgraded F-15's to replace our F-111's for less than the F-18F's & F-35. Our more important "neighbours" now have a mix of older & new Su-27/30 Flankers and SAM systems and although I am more than confident of the skill of our pilots, we no longer have the capacity to truck bombs to those targets and it will get worse if the latest Flanker mounted chinese/russian made AWAC killers make their way south and this will not change even with the F-35 which are no where in sight.
I personally believe this is based on the long held belief that we realistically only have a small number of possible opponents and in a big fight the USAF will park sqd's in northern Australia, or a USN carrier group in the Timor sea which is a huge mistake on our part.

 Tronsky

[33Vortex]

Please take whatever Vortex says with a grain of salt, he still believes 9-11 was an inside job.

 

Class act Delirium.

I'd be happy to destroy whatever reasoning you entertain to reach the conclusion, but this is not the place. There is no reasoning with ignorant people and in the end, it all comes down to believing, for few people are actually up to seeing truth for what it is & whatever it is, no more no less. Besides, you are totally wrong in the above statement. Go figure.

[bj229r]

I'm still remembering the conniptions over the B-2----(THOSE were $500 million per copy, which would have lessened had we built more)