The Most Expensive Warplane in American History Is Too Dangerous to Fly and Just Caught Fire (Again)

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2014/07/10-2



The Most Expensive Warplane in American History Is Too Dangerous to Fly and Just Caught Fire (Again) But They Plan to Spend $1 Trillion On It Anyway
by Abby Zimet
07.10.14 - 3:10 PM

Last week, just days before its long-planned, much-hyped international debut at a U.K. airshow, the entire fleet of the endless boondoggle known as the F-35 II Lightning, or Joint Strike Fighter, has been grounded after one caught fire on a runway, the latest in a years-long series of disasters almost every time it's tried to leave the ground. The plane's current pricetag of $398.6 billion equals a cost of about $49 billion a year since work began in 2006 on a project now seven years behind schedule and estimated to cost over $1 trillion when done. No doubt entirely coincidentally and in no way connected to the fact that the project is still alive, its maker Lockheed has spread its jobs, suppliers and contractors across almost every state, thus ensuring broad support in a Congress whose members want to keep their jobs. If that doesn't make you angry enough, here are a lot of cool things we could have done - provide every homeless person with a $600,000 home, feed every hungry child, fund every current humanitarian crisis - with the money.