

No contract after nearly a year of negotiations



Source: Defense News

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Howard Hughes.
By drycrust3 on 9/29/2012 2:39:18 PM , Rating: 2

In the film on Howard Hughes, there was a scene where he was under US Congressional investigation for something, and he essentially said the whole idea of some modern (for that time) fighters was that they fail. As I understood Hughes, the American aircraft industry would go through several cycles of tendering to supply planes, being paid to develop them, then failing to deliver; but that effort wasn't lost because they would then go on to deliver several cycles of outstanding military aircraft.
If Hughes is correct, then the F35 was probably never intended to fly operationally (and one could argue that it was too expensive for that anyway), but that the effort that went into it isn't lost. A new fighter will emerge that will be cheaper than the F35, but will be better than if the F35 had never existed.


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