Interesting Comments on the New Generation F-35 Fighter Plane

The successor to the F-16 fighter plane, the F-35 has attracted some serious controversy, primarily on account of its cost. The following are some very interesting comments that I stumbled upon.

Future Tech or Old Scam?

To quote commenter Eagreen3 on Yahoo News Comments,

if the threat changes from Muslim terrorists to a world war with the Russians or the Chinese you do NOT have enough planes period . You need thousands of fighter planes and the F 35 is a world wide project with parts made in Israel and other EU countries and even Chinese parts .As the world war rolls on there will be NO F 35s even if you made them at home . So who are you going to fight ? You need thousands and thousands of planes etc to fight the war you are talking about , and scrapping the Wart hog won’t even come close to saving the kind of money needed to produce ALL the planes you’ll need . Rethink your argument , the airforce isn’t serious about fighting a world war with anyone, the F 35s won’t even roll out in any numbers required for years to come .So who are you ready to fight ? ISIS terrorists, and the Warthog is supreme there .

With the F-35 costing upwards of US$ 114 million apiece, this is clearly not a mass production plane. So does that mean that The Powers That Be are no longer foreseeing major wars? And was a globalized supply chain a bad idea? Or the shape of things to come? While the F-35 is being marketed as a “jack-of-all-trades,” it is unlikely that having a few F-35s can compensate for having many fighter planes. Maybe switching to the F-35 by many major armies will reduce global warfare, because fighter planes will becoming too pricey and complex to operate, which is a good thing.

to quote the same commenter elsewhere,

Why do U need the F 35 ? Who are U going to fight ? The Russians ? The Chinese ? If U can’t even raise the necessary man power to train mechanics in a REASONABLE amount of time, how in heaven’s name could U even conceive of raising the necessary man power to fight a major war against a major adversary such as Russia or China ? I repeat, U keep whining about the superiority of the F 35 is necessary to fight future wars . REALLY !!! U can’t even train mechanics , so I repeat , who in heaven’s name are U going to fight ? And if U know U aren’t going to war with a major adversary , why do U need the F 35 ?

and elsewhere

I just did a count from a history book, during WW2 the US air force had over 30 THOUSAND fighters to use in the MAJOR war . How many hundred F 35s are you ordering to fight MAJOR adversaries like Russia or China in a major conflict ?

It is unlikely that The Powers That Be didn’t see this coming. Maybe this is all part of a grand design involving the future military abdication of the United States, so that other emerging powers, such as Russia and China, can fill its shoes.