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GAO

Reader Request

by | Sep 4, 2024 |

Does anyone have the CRS or GAO report of the completed F35 OT&E [Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E)]? Any documentation will do. They fielded the 1,000th airframe and it has NEVER jumped from initial operational capability (IOC) to...

If Pigs Could Fly: The F35 Continues to Miss the Mark

by | Jul 18, 2024 |

The Pentagon will continue to pay Bugatti prices for Yugos until the morale improves. Software upgrades have haunted this flying circus since its "full operational status" was fabricated years ago. The combination of a severely Sovietized acquisition system married to...

The F35 Continues to Excel at the Pentagon

by | Jul 8, 2024 |

The "mission capable rate" of these F35s is simply appalling. 23 years in and it still doesn't work. 23 years. And Congress won't kill it but continues to feed money into the F35 industrial wood-chipper. The jets have often been stuck on the ground due to engine...

The Continuing US Icebreaker Fiasco

by | Jun 24, 2024 |

There will be no more new US icebreakers. There is no capability in the manufacturing base. There are no industrial design talent stacks or ability to build icebreakers that work under government contracts. The shipyard throughput is a little above zero. The Arctic is...

KC-46A Pegasus Refueler Failure Continues

by | Jun 19, 2024 |

One of the components of American strategic projection has been the world's most prodigious and sophisticated aerial refueling fleet. There are currently approx 400+ KC-135s capable of refueling two receiver aircraft at the same time in the current USAF fleet. The...

Fat Amy Can’t Catch a Break

by | Jun 14, 2024 |

Fat Amy is a nickname for the F35 Lightning II. As long as an F16 and comparable in weight to a heavy class F15, the F35 isn't necessarily a light aircraft. Flying cost per hour may have been reduced to $34,000 per hour. Maybe. The mission capable rate, the percentage...

Pentagon: Send More Money!

by | Jun 12, 2024 |

You can't make this up, the scale of incompetence and brain-dead planning on the part of the most expensive military paper tiger in the Earth's history is breathtaking. Best of both worlds from a government perspective: huge budgets and no accountability. The Pentagon...

The Frigate Follies Get Worse and Worse

by | Jun 4, 2024 |

Déjà vu, it's happening again. The surface navy failures manifested in the Littoral Combat Ship, the Zumwalt and the USS Ford will soon have another ship to add to that gallery of maritime incompetence that showcases the modern US Navy. I say again, construction...

Blog

Trillions and Trillions! Money for Nothing at the Pentagon

On this day in 2001 (the day before the 9/11 attacks), Donald Rumsfeld said this: At the 14:15 mark, Rumsfeld says, “Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions. We cannot share information...

Dead in the Water: The US and Royal Gator Navies in a Death Spiral

Remember when USS Bonhomme Richard caught fire and burned for five days in San Diego? Or when the USS Boxer tried to deploy but broke its rudder. The USS Iwo Jima is now crippled. The Gator Navy is the amphibious warfare department of the USN and USMC. The USS Iwo...

The Carrier Narrative is Dying

Carrier skeptics have been hammering away at the anachronistic cargo cult of the aircraft carrier. The Navy has invested a significant amount of political capital and mountains of budget dollars to maintaining a fleet of these allegedly deadly weapons of war that were...

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