I'm going to stop you there because the size and state of the US forces would have made a GREAT difference. Maybe not in the fact that war happened, but in the length and breadth of the resulting conflicts. Had we been ready to prosecute even one front of the war in December 1941 we could have easily saved Europe from being totally taken by Germany and prevented the massive loss of life wrought by the bombing campaigns necessary to stunt industrial output of the German war machine AND the invasion of Normandy needed to take back Europe. But we where not ready and it took time to build up and mobilize, time the enemy used to advance their positions in ways which cost us dearly to take back.

You argue that stealth isn't a big deal (in the parts of your post I just snipped), I'm not so sure. I'm also not sure that the F-35 compares as badly to the other options from our NATO friends. It seems to me that ALL your suggestions might fit the current need in the roles you suggest, with three critical flaws.

First, none of these are American made and that is a political problem first and foremost. No congressman in his right mind would suggest we scrap the F-35 in favor of buying our jets from someplace in Europe. So where they MIGHT be viable alternatives in features and performance you can bet it won't be funded to any large degree by congress and anybody at the pentagon that tries to suggest it will likely find themselves on the fast track to retirement. Nope, none of these will fly politically. Remember that the AV8B was a HUGE struggle because it was based on a UK design, and any program from Europe would suffer politically from the start for the same reasons.

Second, is commonality. The F-35's claim to fame really is Multipurpose, multi-role, multi-service and multi-country. Like it or not, realized or not, this is a huge selling point for the F-35 and one of the primary design goals. Having to maintain only one major design with slight variants will prove to be a HUGE gain in the long run. Now when you add a weapon to one variant of the F-35, the cost delta to get it on another is going to be pretty low. So when the Air Force buys a super duper air-air you cannot dodge it missile, the Marines and Navy get it too or when the Marines go buy some never hits the good and always hits the bad guys super smart bomb the Air Force can drop them too. Then there is the whole spare parts logistics thing... No, the F-35 has some definite advantages over randomly selected stuff.

Finally there is the stealth issue. Why carry some EW package when you can do without it? If they cannot see you some how, they cannot shoot you. Besides, the F-35 can do that role too, when necessary, then just flip the switch and disappear into the night when jamming isn't needed anymore. I personally think stealth is a big issue, even for close air support roles, where the aircraft is low and slow. Being stealthy will be an advantage in most situations and where the F-35 isn't 100% about stealth, the extent that it can just disappear will be an excellent advantage, if not a game changer in close air support.

So, Where I don't argue the capabilities of your suggestions, I just don't think they will fly for the US.

I don't think so. If you think we've spent too much already, doing all this again would be even more expensive than it was the first time. Perhaps replacing Lockheed as prime would help? Perhaps just the threat of doing that would be enough? There are a lot of options short of starting over that we really should try before sending the F35 to the scrap heap. This program has problems, but the whole system isn't total junk or fundamentally flawed. This is like a house where the foundation is sound, the structure is good, but the fixtures have issues and the paint job is botched. It can be fixed, things will get worked out.

The problem here is that we have 30+ year old designs in the field now which are rapidly becoming obsolete and have exactly ONE option for mufti role utility aircraft to replace them. A new program would take a decade and blow billions more dollars before we'd be where we are now. Perhaps they could start with the F35 design and shave a few years and some dollars off, but a new program (or programs) would just burn through more money. In the mean time, we'd be trying to beat the rivets back into the F-15, F-18 etc to keep the wings on and just taking the AV8B's out of service (no rivets in composite wings) and buying spares for another 20 years of service. I don't think it's a good idea to try and fly what we got for another 15 years and hope for the best while we throw good money after bad on some other program.

So... It might be time to start a new project but it's NOT time to ditch F35 production. I just don't see us having any other options.

I totally agree with you. We are committed and have no other options. As you point out we could scrap the F35 and start over, but if one is upset over the program costs so far there will be no way you will be able to do it cheaper by starting over. One might be able to pull the project from Lockheed and give it to somebody else, but even that will likely cost a lot of money we don't have.

Those who think we can do without the F35 are ignorant (or just plain nuts). The planes the F35 is going to replace have been flying for decades and many of the airframes are at the very end of their design lives. The F35 is designed to replace the AV8B (34 years old out of production), the F-15 (47 years old but in production), the F-16 (39 years old but in production) , F-18 (34 years old in production) etc... Every one of these aircraft are based on airframe designs which are 30 plus years old. We'd be stupid to buy many more of them, but if we don't buy the F35 what other choice is there? The only other possible choice that comes to mind is disarmament, unilateral disarmament by the USA, and that's basically suicide.

The F35 is the only game we can play right now, best we get used to that and get used to having Lockheed take advantage of us. Let's not do this sole source "pick one vendor" thing for such development efforts in the future.. Please....

Haven't done any government work lately eh? All programs like this are politically important and have to be managed as such.

Many aircraft projects are insanely expensive ventures and the F-35 is no exception. Many have serious issues, the F-35 is not the first nor will it be the last. It is the nature of the problem. The F4U (Corsair) had serious handling problems, the F6F Hellcat had serious performance issues, yet both where put into production because they where the best tools we had at the time and they filled the need.

In the case of the F-35, the problems are many and mostly government created, but the aircraft serves the need for replacing the AV8-B, F-15, F-16 and F18 as the front line of all the services that fly fixed wing. But, It's very early to decide that the F35 is a lost cause. Do we need to hold the contractor(s) feet to the fire? You bet. but there IS NO OTHER OPTION. Development of other options will be another insanely expensive exercise, as would going back and building more of the decades old aircraft it is designed to replace. So, we go forward..... Any other option will cost more at this point, so we are going to spend what it takes. Lockheed knows this.

Unless of course you don't mind not having an air force, close air support or the ability to launch fighters/attach aircraft from carriers in the near future..... I'm not willing to go down that route again because the last time we tried the unilateral disarmament approach it resulted in a pretty messy world war or two... It seems cheaper to pay Lockheed for the F35 now...

To late, it's "Lone Pine Mall" now...

Then don't tell the IRS. Accounting errors are NOT an excuse... But neither is "my hard drive crashed" and we all know who uses that...

That's why they need to bring back that Paper clip.... "I see you are trying to find Pu.... "

I'm not saying he cannot program, only that the majority of his success isn't from what he programmed but a lot of luck in the business moves he made. There are and where many programmers/engineers who could have done what he did. We wouldn't know who Bill Gates was, had Microsoft not had the lucky business breaks up front which enabled Bill to take some of the big money risks with his company and shape the PC market as we know it today by snatching the PC out from under IBM's nose. He'd not even be a foot note in the history of computers had DOS not made it, or IBM had realized what they where giving away and made some different choices.

But that's just it... IMHO the *really* good programmers are usually NOT very good at business or managing people/projects. They remain largely unknown because they don't have much mass appeal or name recognition and the job they do is largely hidden from public view. They don't usually make boat loads of cash, they are not national heroes and nobody makes movies about what they do. I've meet a few of them, really good programmers, who labor on in the trenches because they love what they do and sharpen their skills so they can do it better and faster. The exceptional programmers I know, usually do not believe they are special or gifted, usually have little education to prove their skills, but they LOVE their jobs and are internally driven to excellence because of the pride they take in their work. If you work in the industry long, you will meet one or two of these guys/gals and understand what I mean (if you don't already).

Only if success is measured in dollars earned for each line of code produced. Bill is no great programmer, he's just a lucky business man who hit the lottery with DOS and Windows. He wrote very little code...

I can tell you they are a royal PAIN to get out of once you sign it. However, they do have specific limits and processes that must be followed in order to be valid. What are these limits? You are going to have to check with a local lawyer to find that out, because every state has their own laws. In my case, the law clearly limited non-competes to 24 months and with in a reasonable geographic limit and a few other things, like being unique to the employee's job and have to be accompanied with some kind of compensation to the employee. All but the term of the contract where at issue in my case.

I know that in California non-compete agreements are seen as an unfair constraint of trade and generally are found to be unenforceable, at least for employee agreements. So there is something good about the left coast if you are trying to get out of a non-compete. Move to Cali for 2 years and you will be golden, because they have to sue you where you live.

If that's not an option, then I would highly recommend you get yourself a lawyer if you find that you simply MUST violate a contract like this. But you had better know that in most places, if your previous employer actually did have a lawyer draft their document, you are in for some serious pain and legal fees and your chances for success are pretty slim.

Now In my case, they dropped the suit before trial. I had already demonstrated that they had been acting in bad faith on a number of issues related to my employment (failure to pay overtime, failure to pay due wages and bonuses when due) and saying untrue things to prospective employer who called to verify my employment. I had a defamation case that my lawyer was begging to file for me and a wage claim for the bonus money they failed to pay. I think that they just wanted to punish me for defying them and quitting abruptly, then getting unemployment from the state because I quit with cause. No matter, I let them off the hook for dropping their suit, mainly because I was SO done with them.

SO, My advice is GET A LAWYER! Do it before you sign one of these things so you know what you are signing and what it says. Have your lawyer rewrite it if they think it would be better for you. KEEP A COPY of every thing you sign. Don't count on the HR files to have it, you keep a copy. Finally, DON'T give them an occasion to sue if you can help it. Going though the civil process is frustrating and expensive for all involved. It is best to keep it out of court if at all possible. Do mediation, draw straws, ANYTHING but get drawn into a legal fight you really don't need and cannot afford.

You can interpret the USA's actions as you wish, but what you cannot do is invent things we didn't actually do. Venezuela is a huge mess because we have not interfered with their government's race to socialism. We COULD have stopped it, but that would have involved putting down a democratically elected government (well, it was properly elected the first time anyway.) We don't do that without cause.

Iraq you can possibly argue your point with, but even when Bush was in the White House we where not just out to take oil from Iraq. Even when we where all the government they had left and where 100% dependent on the USA we where not just shipping it by the tanker full to the USA for free, we where paying for it. Eventually we even let them start selling their oil on their own, once there was a government there to actually accept the money. In the mean time we protected their infrastructure and even spent our own money and American lives doing so. So that war just doesn't seem to be about oil, at least not primarily about just oil IMHO. We forced them to sell nothing, we actually just walked away.

Nuclear subsidies? Really? Ok, the promise to store spent fuel actually came AFTER the industry was established and was a result of government's choice to sign a number of treaties back in Carter's day. Again, if you wanted to argue that the industry is subsidized, you can make that claim, but I don't see it being highly subsidized. Most of what the government does for them is related to the fuel cycle. Given you don't really want industry out there doing their own fuel things for nonproliferation reasons, this makes sense. But the operators pay for fuel. If you don't think they pay enough, then you can argue they are subsidized. IMHO that point is debatable, which means my carefully picked words are not patently incorrect, but a matter for debate.

Finally.... NOBODY is going to be reading this but you and me.... You do realize that this story is over 15 days old right?

You failed to mention the other dependencies...

Rotors, Calipers, pads, axle, lugs, peddle, Master Cylinder, fluid reservoir, brake lines (both hard and flexible), brake-lights (that includes the light holders, bulbs, wiring and switch), ABS (which has it's own dependency tree that includes: Basic Brakes, sensors, sensor wiring, sensor interface, pump, pump wiring, pump interface, device drivers for sensor interface and pump interface and ABS software package)

Ok.. I'll stop now.... That I have a modern bake system...

Oh no, they've never done something like that before....

Next you will tell me that they will sue because their reference design car has rounded corners... Never!