Originally Posted by FL 4Motion

You’re reaching for conspiracies where there most likely isn’t anything. Not everything is a sinister plot.

The F35 fighter is a pos. It’s program ran billlions billions over budget. It failed multiple times to meet its operational metrics. It should have been scrapped about halfway through development. But, that would have meant taxpayers shelled out billions for nothing. So multiple admins and pentagon big wigs kept throwing good $$ after bad to get the manufacturer to help bring the jet up to par.

It was years late and billions over budget and it’s mediocre. No one wanted to be the general and president left holding the bag of sh1t though so it was green lighted all the painful way to the finish line.

The hard truth is sometimes weapons development fails, you’ve got to know when to pull the plug. The problem is the congressman and senators who’s states/districts would loose jobs economic benefits care more about that bc it equals re-election vs national security needs, and presidents and generals are under the same calculus and usually make the same selfish decisions.

Single engine fighters tend to be less reliable as a rule cause if you lose one engine it’s over. F16s are called lawn darts for a reason.

As an aside, the F22 is an amazing airframe and sets the bar for 5th gen fighters. That program worked out well. Development is hit or miss.

Iirc, the Bradley fighting vehicles were also a shitshow and were failing survivability metics and that was swept under the rug at the time. This was decades ago. I’m pretty sure they re-engineered the armor at some point.

Hell, we had defective ceramic plates in our body armor in Iraq bc the vendor/contractor sucked, that’s on top of folks buying their own bc the military didn’t have enough. Even desert combat boots were in short supply. Mine were 1/2 size too small bc my size was out of stock.