Whenever it is suggested that the defense budget be trimmed, those who oppose that immediately go for the heart strings and ask how anyone can turn their backs on the troops.

In light of the troops’ and veterans’ benefits and programs that have been cut or were never allowed to come into being, this is, honestly, merely a distraction.

Cutting the defense budget is very often not about the troops, but more often about cutting the money given so freely to the military-industrial complex, those who make the weapons, some of which are totally unneeded, like tanks and planes that will be obsolete by the time they are finally ready.

Here’s an example.

The F-35 jet fighter that has so many problems it likely will just not be used has, so far, created a bill of $160 billion in spite of technical problems. The total cost of these planes has come in at $1.5 trillion over the four-decade life of the program because of this.

According to Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the officer in control of the F-35 program ,
“Long gone is the time when we’re going to pay for mistake after mistake after mistake.”

Yet he claims that the planes are necessary to keep pace with the technology being developed by U.S. rivals Russia and China.

“I don’t see any scenario where we are walking back away from this program. We’re going to buy a lot of these airplanes,” said Bogdan.

Last year 2,400 planes cost $400 billion, so the  thinking  seems to be that since we spent that much so far, how can we stop the program now?

We have to rectify the mistake by spending more money on it.

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It was  waste of money and student time to keep using it. It would have to be offset later in their education, probably with a more expensive program.

I am not unfamiliar with this mind set.

We are supposedly stuck with continuing to buy more planes at a higher cost because we had already wasted money.

A request by the Department of Defense in 2015 calls for two of the Navy’s version of the plane, six of the Marines’, and 26 of the Air Force’s model.

In 2013 the Inspector General of the Department of Defense found 719 total problems that remained to be resolved, and of these, many were quality control issues by Lockheed Martin like the failure to make sure subcontractor’s work was acceptable; safety requirements not being met; and failure to check subcontractor’s work, and this caused the cost of the program to go from $382 billion to $1.5 trillion.

So the weapons contractor fails in its obligations, but the American taxpayer has to pay for their shortcomings.

Not a bad deal at all.

Instead of being penalized for their mistakes, Lockheed-Martin gets more money.

“Producing quality products is a top priority for the F-35 program, and Lockheed Martin and its suppliers strive every day to deliver the best aircraft possible to our customers,” Lockheed said in a statement at the time. “When discoveries occur, we take decisive and thorough action to correct the situation. Our commitment is to deliver the F-35’s world class Fifth Generation fighter capabilities to the warfighter on time and within budget.”

However, the contract for these planes is signed and sealed, so there is no incentive to deliver a state of the art plane in working order in a decent amount of time.

In the meantime as school lunch programs are cut along with other food assistance programs for children, which include the children of military personnel, the $1.5 trillion dollars being spent on jet fighters could pay for the federal school lunch program for about 125 years.