via DOD Buzz...
Incoming House Armed Services Committee Chair, Howard “Buck” McKeon, today laid out his stance on defense spending as the top man on the committee, backing the embattled F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, its alternate engine program and the Pentagon’s efforts to reduce costs.
While the U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35B short take-off and vertical landing version of the jet has experienced numerous testing delays over the past year and is unlikely to meet its scheduled operational date of 2012, McKeon said he doesn’t want to see it cut.
“If you take that away then what plane are the Marines going to have,” asked the congressman. “I would not be supportive of cutting that.”
This guy so gets it.
I wondered why we have been fairly drowned in F-35 news lately and now I think I'm putting it together. It seems like the critics of the program once again were organizing a drum beat of negative news in an effort to influence policy makers...and as usual they've lost again.
AWESOME!
but what do you think of his support for the alternate engine? seems like a waste of money and resources that can go to the other aspects of the program.
ReplyDeleteGates is on the way out with likely a more defferent Secetary of Defense(to the Presdient at least)coming in after. If Lockheed can't get its act together in the two years given, the B version is in real danger, now that A and C are not so tied to it.
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