Saturday, August 6, 2011

From Wonkette.com


Fancy Fighter Jets Costing Nation Zillions of Dollars Do Not Work

the most expensive Happy Meal toy in the universe.So what do these double super killer stealth F-35 fighter jets go for these days? A few million dollars? A hundred million? A BILLION DOLLARS? No, none of those things. It is actually more like, “a trillion dollars.” We were going to do a cute listicle of “things that are less expensive and yet crucially able to employ/feed/educate a large quantity of humans more than a fighter jet,” but you cannot do that list because everything is cheaper than a F-35 Lightning II fighter jet program. Everything on Earth. YOU CANBUY AUSTRALIA for less than this fighter jet program. Oh boohoo, more liberal outrage over the insane costs of a good killing machine. OH WAIT: they do not actually work. Haha, do they ever work? No, they are hanging out in Texas like a bunch of sad garden gnomes polluting the landscape with their tacky, trillion-dollar existence.
Is this even news? Fighter jets actually never seem to work.
The Pentagon today suspended ground and flight operations of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter after a power failure on a plane at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The suspension grounds all 20 F-35’s that have flying status, said Pentagon spokesman Joe DellaVedova, in a written statement.
A turbo machine that provides power to start the engine failed during an engine run yesterday, forcing an engine shutdown, he said. No injuries to the pilot or ground crew occurred.
The incident involved the AF-4 variant of the conventional takeoff and landing fighter jet.
We are not military strategists, but if buying one less fancy fighter jet program can put the high school graduating classes of 27 states through college 216 times over and build an emissions-free subway line that goes from Boston to San Diego and back again via Peru, then THAT IS WORTH ONE LESS FIGHTER JET. [Bloomberg News via The Atlantic]