It Won't Be really
Ready for Six More Years, But at Least It's Expensive
F-35 is already the most expensive weapons system in history, and it is still at least six years from being fully deployed. That's the best case as stated by the Pentagon in publicity released May 31. The news coverage was generally more along the lines of "F-35 Combat-Ready in 2015." And all three of these statements are true.
The discrepancy lies in the selection of available facts, facts that may be best understood in the context of another fact: the last time the Pentagon predicted F-35 combat-readiness, the plane was supposed to be able to go on the attack in 2010. So far, the $400 billion F-35 program is 100% over budget and a decade behind schedule, and losing ground by all criteria.
Reporting to Congress one day ahead of the Congressionally-set deadline of June 1, the Pentagon told Congress, according to Bloomberg News, referring to the schedule as "combat-ready dates":
-- the initial short-takeoff and vertical-landing model for the Marine Corps will be ready no later than December 2015. The target for the Air Force's version of the jet is December 2016, and the date for the Navy model, designed to take off and land on aircraft carriers, is February 2019."
Explaining further, Reuters reported that: "Those are the dates that Lockheed Martin's F-35 will achieve initial operational capability - the point when the services have enough planes on hand to go to war if needed."
"Actual deployments usually lag initial operational capability (IOC) dates by about a year," Reuters added. "Friday's [May 31] congressional rollout made the dates official, despite ongoing concerns about the cost and technical maturity of the world's most expensive weapons system."
Officially, no one will say that the F-35 will never be combat-ready, but the possibility remains, and is less than remote.
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