Monday, February 06, 2017

President Trump & The F-35: He's Done the Impossible!

F-35 Costs coming down as expected. Deal with it.
President Trump set wheels in motion that have turned the long-standing 'F-35 is unaffordable' deception inside out. The whole world now knows the F-35 unit costs are coming down exactly as planned and for -- as any honest person who's been paying attention already knows -- the same reasons the program has been citing all along.

How did Pres. Trump spread the word/change the narrative so quickly?
He leveraged the mainstream media's 'narrative priorities' and the lockstep and unthinking pursuit of narrative to suit their priorities.

Kneejerk Media PWNED

Thanks to the media's rabid dislike/disapproval of President Trump and ANY of his actions,

1. We now have outlets like the Washington Post shifting their 'all negative' cost narrative found in past F-35 reporting to finding themselves having to not only acknowledge, but ASSERT the costs were coming down anyway, and AS PLANNED in an attempt to deny President Trump any credit for same.

2. And when the media latched, again in lockstep, onto the "costs were already coming down" story, LM's CEO casually mentions 'but' the President DID help, if only by sharpening the negotiations' focus on 'Costs'.

Heck, since this started we even got James Fallow's/Atlantic Media's quasi-serious DefenseOne quoting ex-CAPE officials the week after they retired saying:
Over the past five to six years, the F-35 program “has performed pretty close to the [budget] estimates,”

My take

President Trump's involvement/interest has helped topple an information blackout and for now a Faux Military Reform Industry meme. I'm reminded of the old quote:

A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it. 
I don't care what people think about 'why' the unit costs are coming down as planned. I'm happy just knowing that people know they ARE coming down. Driving the media crazy over it is just a Trump side-benefit.

1 comment:

Horatiu Popovici said...

Well .. What I am curious what part of the manufacturing process got streamlined so the cost went down (as expected once the number produced increase).

Also would be nice to see a projection what the cost pe plane will be for latter lots.

I am not surprised by regular media confusion on ANY military matter, but more to the so called Military media who rather jumped into "trillion dollar program" meme ..

LM is likely willing to lower the cost more now with Trump as President than with Obama or Bush. Trump is choleric enough to pick up a fight with LM fact that will hit their stock - which is a No/No for any public company. I'd say he should smack them more a bit so the lower the cost even more :D