Really?

I suppose the F-35 project has a job training upside. Is there a need for sophisticated jet repair persons in the private sector? I am not sure of that. How many former US Air Force mechanics work for Boeing?

I know, I know; it will be a great aircraft once perfected. By the time the F35 is perfected it will be obsolete. Time to start all over again. Who knew the Russians already had already perfected it.

The F-35 looks good in a garage. 

May 9, 2016

By NYT Editorial Board

...While increased funding (click here) for some programs may be needed, total military spending, at nearly $600 billion annually, is not too low. The trouble is, the investment has often yielded poor results, with the Pentagon, Congress and the White House all making bad judgments, playing budget games and falling under the sway of defense industry lobbyists. Current military spending is 50 percent higher in real terms than it was before 9/11, yet the number of active duty and reserve troops is 6 percent smaller.

For nearly a decade after 9/11, the Pentagon had a virtual blank check; the base defense budget rose, in adjusted dollars, from $378 billion in 1998 to $600 billion in 2010. As the military fought Al Qaeda and the Taliban, billions of dollars were squandered on unnecessary items, including new weapons that ran late and over budget like the troubled F-35 jet fighter.

The waste and the budget games continue with the House Armed Services Committee approving a $583 billion total defense authorization bill for 2017 last month that skirts the across-the-board caps imposed by Congress in 2011 on discretionary federal spending....

Congress is irresponsible in handling the taxpayers monies. Having a majority of Republicans in the US House and Senate is not only a mistake, it is consenting to unethical practices in federal spending.

...The move will underwrite the purchase of more ships, jet fighters, helicopters and other big-ticket weapons that the Pentagon didn’t request....

The USA Congress will spend monies on unwanted military munitions and hardware for the military, but, not American infrastructure. THAT IS POLITICAL SPENDING. That is illegal. Spending on politics out of the federal budget is grossly unethical.