the cost will go trough the roof.

It can’t, they’ve got a fixed-price contract. EADS has to deliver the jets at the specified cost to the customer, and any cost overruns are to be eaten by EADS. And they are having some, they’re trying to renegotiate a payment plan.

Rather than cut and paste a long reply to various things over the past three pages or so, here’s this:

1. The USA is free to do whatever it wants in its own interest. So is anybody else. And everyone is free to complain about all of those matters. If complaining was outlawed, the internet would die out in 4.5 seconds anyway 😀

2. The F-35 is a major waste of time and money for the USA in my opinion. It’s not what it could be, and what it is doesn’t fit with what we need. But if someone wants to shell out the money for it, that’s their decision.

3. I was standing at Camp Victory in Baghdad in 2004 when a roadside bomb comprised of a chemical-filled artillery shell was partially detonated. This whole incident must have been a figment of everyone’s imagination, including the media that reported it worldwide, because there is no way there were any WMDs anywhere in Iraq.

4. Iran should be able to pursue whatever weapons programs it desires. The US supports other nations behind Islamic extremism like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia with weapons deals, why should Iran be any different? Iran even has oil!

5. Support for Israel has to end. And if they’ve promised to never use WMDs, then why keep them?

6. The American populace is mostly ignorant of world affairs, yes. But why should they care, when the rest of the world doesn’t want the US to interfere anywhere anyway? It’s not like the politicians are representative of the typical middle-class American anyway.

7. Most politicians are in fact assclowns.

8. People like to bash FoxNews, yet most of the US news media is in fact biased towards the liberal side of the fence (the rest of the news channels and nearly all of the print media). Fact of the matter is, they’re all biased and none of them offer a clear view of real events. Which is why I rarely watch the news. And it isn’t the FoxNews typical viewer who’s in charge now, anyway.

LM is the one in charge for that. It has the profit and the reponsebility.
Please do no longer that outdated claim. Profits are private and the risk for that has to be taken by the taxpayer. 😉

I had no idea LockMart was in control of the inflation rate.

You mean current VLO technology perhaps?

No, I mean VLO technology, period. Afterburner plumes at that speed are nice fat radar targets. Lockheed realized very early on in the A-12 development process that they’d face the same issue. Then you have the aerodynamic heating at such speeds. Talk about a massive IR target. And airframe shaping? Not so good either. Airframes will flex and contort at very high speed, potentially irritating any shaping you’ve worked out to decrease RCS.

VLO and Mach 5 cruise are not compatible.

Npbody is saying LM has no blame in this, but we are saying that they are not necessarily the sole source of problems leading to cost increases. Blaming LockMart exclusively demonstrates a lack of understanding of the total picture.

What would you have them do, burn up airframe hours by poking holes in the air over Afghanistan? Those things are going to have to last 40 years and there won’t be new ones so the hours need to be conserved.

I’d have them take a few AEF rotations in the Persian Gulf to familiarize pilots and support crews with operating the jet in that theater.

I’m also not convinced that some terror group might not be supplied with nukes, so they could detonate it without a POO to retaliate against.

Easy solution: aid Iran in building nuclear arms. Then you have access to their Uranium or Plutonium stocks and can use that data to match the signature of any detonated weapon to the source. That solves the Iran nuke issue and guarantees no Iranian weapon would ever be used against the US as retaliation would be forthcoming.

What transparent decision? The one prior to 9/11/01 which then was rushed & screwed up during implementation? As for the later decision in 2008, yeah the GAO saw right through that BS & issued one of the strongest worded decisions in its history.

That’s what I’m saying, due to the past issues the next decision has to be completely transparent to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

NATO still has a meaning

The only meaning I can find is having the ability to call the US in to solve problems in your backyard. NATO is basically a big mutual defense agreement. Let the EU handle its own affairs, what’s wrong with that?

It was a huge mistake. Europeans were feeding US industry and at the same time let their own industry fall. All F-16s in Europe could have been replaced by Mirage F1C/CR/CT and Mirage 2000 series and Viggens, what do you think would have happened?

You mean they let the British aerospace industry contract. France and Sweden had no issues developing their own designs, that continues even today. You could have gotten the F1 instead of the F-16, but the NATO members wanted to build the jet under license. Would Dassault have allowed that? There was a competition involved in that decision, and the F-16 was chosen. Almost 3,000 Mirages of various types have been built as well, so I don’t see how European industry as a whole was failing as a result of some members deciding that the F-16 was better for them than the Mirage F1M-53. And what about the F-4? Or the F-104? Or the C-130? Where were the equal or better alternatives to those aircraft?

Same goes with US and European fighters.

Iraq had the F1/Exocet.

So it has nothing to do with Israel and its new systems, has it?

Were all other factors equal, then yes, that’d still matter. My point is that even though this will result in a different price for Israel, it’s not like you can set a firm price for the aircraft anyway.

PATRIOT – I am not quite into AD systems, if there is no reasonable domestic equivalent, then keep the PATRIOT
AMRAAM – pretty much yes. Freeze current AMRAAM stock, integrate MICA where possible and financially bearable and wait for METEOR.
F-35 – get the VTOL version where applicable
F-16 – boycott completely, who needs that?
F-18 – boycott completely, EU has got enough fighters of that class
F404 engines – some for existing F-18/Gripen stock might still be required, other than that we got M88 and EJ200, that is sufficient.
Any radar or ECM/ESM systems – yes, no US radars where Euro designs are available. ECM/ESM largely unknown to me, cannot decide
C-17 – that is one design I would pretty much disregard even in favor of Ruslans, if you ask me. The performance/price ratio is just ridiculous with C-17.
Brimstone – Brimstone is MBDA design, that is EADS, BAe Systems and Finmeccanica
RAM (the missile, not the other junk) – you mean the RIM-116?
anything produced by Russia or the Ukraine – yes, already being done with few small exceptions
JDAM – definitely pursue own designs. AASM is a good start, make few more types with time

Go read about just who is involved in Brimstone. You’ll have to can that one too. As for the rest, I don’t mean you should stop buying them, I mean you should never have bought them in the first place. That is what you are getting at, right? No American products contaminating European militaries at all, right? Most of it could have been replaced had Europe developed a similar system (like PATRIOT). Oh, and Sky Flash as an AAM would have been out as well. This is completely ludicrous, there is no reason why sovereign nations shouldn’t be allowed to make their own decisions. Look at the F-16 deal, Belgium and the Netherlands license built most of the NATO jets. There’s your cash influx into the local economies. Why buy a French jet when you can buy the F-16 and build it yourself?

I’m not disagreeing with you at all. But, the political situation is unfortunately not that black and white. What I’m saying is that it should be.