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	<title>U.S. &#187; Winslow Wheeler &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>U.S. &#187; Winslow Wheeler &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com</link>
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		<title>On Final Approach to Fighter Fiscal Sanity</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/07/on-final-approach-to-fighter-fiscal-sanity/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/07/on-final-approach-to-fighter-fiscal-sanity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:58:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=123525</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Part 5 of 5 Each year the Defense Department’s comptroller, the Pentagon’s chief financial officer, publishes a report: Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System. The public and Congress have a right to expect these annual reports to be complete and accurate. These reports have identified spending amounts for research and development and for procurement, plus annual production authorizations, for the F-35, since the public origins of the program in 1994. These reports show a total of $87.5 billion will have been spent on the F-35 program by the end of 2014: $46.2 billion for R&#38;D; $39.5 billion for Procurement, and $1.8 billion for initial spare parts, as detailed in this chart from my third post in this series: The reports also identify a total of 182 F-35 aircraft that will have been authorized for production by the end of fiscal year 2014, from this second chart in my third post: The breakdown of each year’s procurement spending and authorized production yields an annual F-35 unit production cost. For 2014, F-35As will cost $188.5 million each; F-35Bs and Cs will average $277.9 million each, and all F-35s will cost, on average, $219.3 million, as detailed in these two charts from posts three and four: Claims by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Air Force Lieut. General Christopher Bogdan, the F-35 program chief, that the F-35’s per-plane cost is “coming down” and “continues to come down,” respectively, are not accurate. The Air Force’s F-35A will have been increasing in unit cost over the past two years; the Navy’s F-35B and C have been increasing in unit cost for the past three years, according to data from the Defense Department comptroller. (See Figure 4 above.) All F-35 variants, on average, have been increasing in unit cost since 2012 (or since 2011, if the comptroller’s data are right). F-35 unit costs are going up, not down. Having been in production for eight years, it is reasonable to characterize the F-35 production line as reasonably mature for whatever components have not already required modification. We can<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=123525&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>F-35 Price Fixing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/f-35-price-fixing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/120613-o-gr159-001.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Different Planes, Common Problems</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/06/different-planes-common-problems/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/06/different-planes-common-problems/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:58:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=123325</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Part 4 of 5 All good fighter jets are designed to climb into the sky. Unfortunately for the F-35, its price tag &#8212; as we have pointed out this week &#8212; is joining in the ascent as its fiscal wingman. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re kicking the tires of the Air Force or Navy variants, as you can see in this chart. Since 2012, the unit costs of Navy models of the F-35 (the STOVL B variant and the aircraft-carrier capable C version, taken together as presented in the Pentagon comptroller’s annual “Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System” reports) have increased significantly: from $216.6 million per aircraft to $277.9 million, an increase of $61.3 million or 28.3%. The Air Force’s A model did actually decline in cost from 2012 to 2013: from $195.5 million per aircraft in 2012 to $187.7 million in 2013, a decline of $7.6 million or 3.9%. However, the decline reversed in 2013, and the 2014 budget request shows an increase, albeit minor, up $0.8 million or 0.4% to $188.5 million. (These data do not include the potential impact of sequester-mandated cuts in 2013 and/or in 2014; their effect will be to further increase the unit costs cited here.) The statements of Air Force Lieut. General Christopher Bogdan, the F-35 program manager, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that F-35 unit cost “continues to come down” or is “coming down” remain false. There are years in the graph in Figure 4, above, where a specific year is lower than the preceding year, but that is not the current trend—for the F-35 program as a whole, or for either the Air Force or Navy variants separately. Moreover, the Navy variants will cost even more in 2014 than they did earlier (eg., from 2008 to 2010); overall the “learning curve” for the Navy variants of the F-35 has been a bending in the wrong direction. On the other hand, Air Force models of the F-35 have shown an overall unit-cost decline since production in 2008, but the most recent<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=123325&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>F-35 Price Fixing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/f-35-price-fixing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/110516-n-yy999-0021.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>The Deadly Empirical Data</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/05/the-deadly-empirical-data/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/05/the-deadly-empirical-data/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:59:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=123214</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Part 3 of 5 Because of the “learning curve” and other problems in the Pentagon’s Selected Acquisition Reports (discussed in my prior post), objective observers need to find better data for measuring the cost of an F-35.More reliable and valid data are the empirical count of the dollars Congress and Defense Department have jointly directed at the F-35 program each year, divided that by the number of aircraft actually bought that year. The math is simple, and calculation is straightforward, devoid of gimmicks. It brings a level of empirical reality to the cost calculation that the swamis of Pentagon cost gimmickry both hate and avoid. Fortunately, the numbers for making these real-world calculations are readily available in a convenient format, going all the way back to the beginning of the F-35 program in 1994 when it started to appear in unclassified budget presentations as the “JAST” (Joint Advanced Strike Technology) program. The amounts are presented to Congress and the public as a part of the Defense Department comptroller’s annual budget materials in a document titled “Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System.” (Reports for 1998-2014 are at the Comptroller’s website; editions before 1998 are available at the Pentagon&#8217;s Defense Technical Information Center&#8217;s website.) These comptroller presentations separate out spending for R&#38;D and for Procurement, and both Air Force and Navy costs are shown. (However, the materials do not separate out the Marines’ Short Take Off/Vertical Landing [STOVL] B model from the Navy’s aircraft carrier landing version, the F-35C. The two are combined into one Navy category.) The annual reports also include the quantity of both Air Force and Navy aircraft procured, and each year’s presentation goes back two years to show any adjustments that may have occurred.The budget numbers shown include extra money Congress has sometimes added in its separate accounting for war funding, known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget, and they also include funds buried in obscure parts of appropriations bills, such as for “Modification of Inservice (Sic.) Aircraft,” “long lead” funding from previous years, and other less obvious<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=123214&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>F-35 Price Fixing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/f-35-price-fixing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/130514-f-bu402-904.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Cruisin’</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">winslowwheeler</media:title>
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		<title>Alphabet Soup: PAUCs, APUCs, URFs, Cost Variances and Other Pricing Dodges</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/04/alphabet-soup-paucs-apucs-urfs-cost-variances-and-other-pricing-dodges/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/04/alphabet-soup-paucs-apucs-urfs-cost-variances-and-other-pricing-dodges/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 12:56:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=122972</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Part 2 of 5 The cost of an F-35 is currently increasing, more than likely to remain high, and very unlikely to even approach the low levels being articulated by Pentagon managers and documents. But F-35 costs are clouded by the calculating ways that the Pentagon reports them. The applicable empirical data – the most informative &#8212; have been obscured. They also call into question the long-range projection just made by the Defense Department in its new Selected Acquisition Report that total program costs for the F-35 will come down by $4.5 billion. The detailed F-35 SAR, made available by the Project on Government Oversight last week, is widely viewed as the gold standard of a weapon program’s cost. It measures the F-35’s cost in three different ways: &#8211; The Program Acquisition Unit Cost (PAUC) divides the total acquisition expense, including research and development (R&#38;D), procurement and military construction funds, by the total number of planned test and operational aircraft (2,457). The result is stated in either “base-year” ($319 billion) or “then-year” ($391 billion) dollars. Base-year dollars means every dollar in a multi-year program is adjusted to match the inflation value for the year when the program was last “restructured” to address cost and performance problems. In the case of the F-35, the base year is currently 2012. Then-year dollars (also called current-year dollars) are the amounts actually appropriated or expected to be appropriated in the future; they are adjusted to whatever inflation value that pertains to the year they are appropriated. Air Force photo The Air Force F-35A Base year dollars are often preferred by advocates because they usually allow reporting a lower number (and, by implication, cost) than if mostly future, inflated (“then year”) dollars are used. The base-year PAUC for the F-35 is $108.2 million; the then-year PAUC is $133.0 million. Except for one small thing: those sums do not include the engine. The Pentagon, in an unusual move, broke the program into two pieces – airframe and engine – beginning in 2011. If you want a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=122972&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>F-35 Price Fixing</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/f-35-price-fixing/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/110521-n-yy999-003.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Air Force Week kicks off in New York City</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????</media:title>
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		<title>The New Era of Good F-35 Feelings</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/03/the-new-era-of-good-f-35-feelings/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/06/03/the-new-era-of-good-f-35-feelings/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Jun 2013 12:55:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=122810</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Part 1 of 5 There has been a lot of good news for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter recently. No longer are top Department of Defense officials covering their bets by casting aspersions at it; they are rallying to its defense, especially on the galvanizing matter of cost, previously described—by them—as unaffordable. &#8211; On April 11, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told Congress the F-35 program is now “on track” and its costs “are coming down.” &#8211; On April 17, Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Congress the aircraft is “good.” &#8211; On April 24 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, F-35 Program Manager Air Force Lieut. General Christopher Bogdan added details, saying “cost continues to come down” as the “Lot 5” buy costs less than the previous one. &#8211; The Navy, previously reputed to be on the verge of backing out of the program, offered an important, if tepid, endorsement: the commander of Naval Air Systems Command, Vice Admiral David Dunaway, characterized the F-35 as basically a done deal, declaring it to be a “fairly mature air vehicle.” &#8211; In some controversial assertions, even the Government Accountability Office described the program in a March report as making “considerable progress” and “now moving in the right direction,” a characterization that Lockheed consultant Loren Thompson celebrated, saying GAO now has “no new advice…on how to manage [the F-35 program] better.” &#8211; The ultimate gesture came on May 23, when the Pentagon released its most recent Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) announcing a $4.5 billion reduction in the total program cost of the F-35: while only a 1.1% reduction from the previous estimate, it clearly sent the message that the F-35 is turning the corner on the central issue of its expense. Gone are the days when then-secretary of defense Robert Gates put the Marine Corps version of the F-35 “on probation,” or when the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, Frank Kendall, called the F-35 program “acquisition malpractice.” Joining the new vogue, Kendall has subsequently backed off, saying “I feel much<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=122810&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<title>Obama’s Useless Budget Data&#8230;and Improbable Budget Strategy</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/12/obamas-useless-budget-data-and-improbable-budget-strategy/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/12/obamas-useless-budget-data-and-improbable-budget-strategy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:26:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=115754</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Budgets are important documents: they are the ultimate expression of policy by a President or Congress. Budgets are also a useful revelation of the character and competence of those who put them together. President Obama’s budget presentation for the Department of Defense and national security-related activities outside of the Defense Department is useless for understanding what he and Congress have enacted for the current 2013 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The budget material for 2014 also shows there is no new thinking in the Obama Administration for putting U.S. national security spending on a constructive path. Given the dysfunctional Congress that’s getting the new budget, we should expect the worst: delay, chaos and decisions to increase, not control, costs. Thanks to lawmakers’ six-month delay in enacting the 2013 defense budget, the Obama Administration took an extra two months—beyond the usual early February deadline—to put together the new Pentagon budget. And yet, the budget displays the Office of Management and Budget released April 10 did not accurately show what Congress passed and President Obama signed into law on March 26. The 2013 numbers OMB released for the Defense Department, for example, were off by $42.8 billion, and the numbers for other national security-related agencies, such as the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, were off by billions of dollars as well. As OMB and Pentagon officials privately explained, it wasn’t that there was too little time to publish the accurate numbers. It was that no one in the Obama Administration wanted to acknowledge what the numbers really were, because that might mean that they might not be changed to something higher. Ignoring the sequestration of $42.8 billion specifically enacted by Public Law 113-006 in March, OMB’s budget display did not show what the numbers actually are. It showed instead what OMB and DOD wish them to be. That’s an interesting approach for a budget that has already been set in concrete by law for a fiscal year that is more than half over. The strategy seems to be:<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=115754&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Military Spending</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/military-spending-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/8638389454_c59ec07c8f_b.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">winslowwheeler</media:title>
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		<title>Smoke &amp; Mirrors Alert: Pentagon&#8217;s 2014 Budget Proposal Drops Wednesday</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/08/smoke-mirrors-alert-pentagons-2014-budget-proposal-drops-wednesday/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/08/smoke-mirrors-alert-pentagons-2014-budget-proposal-drops-wednesday/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:15:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=114734</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[[WARNING: For serious national-security budget experts only. May cause headaches, blurry vision and heart palpitations among normal taxpayers. The editors.] Pentagon budget rollouts are always part fact, part fiction, with dollops of gimmickry to illuminate &#8212; as well as obfuscate. Here’s your guide to what you need to know come April 10, when the Defense Department is slated to release its 2014 budget proposal. Addressing the tricks of the trade can give the public a more-informed view of the new budget and how it compares to the past and the future. For starters, the 2014 defense-spending plan is even more problematic than usual. Getty Images The new budget is usually released in early February; this year’s April 10 disclosure comes after more than the usual confusion thanks to Congress. That is because the members palavered until late March 2013 to pass the indispensable appropriations bill, relying on a so-called “Continuing Resolution” to control—in an extremely clumsy and obtuse manner—Pentagon and other spending for the first five and a half months of fiscal year 2013. However, even the overdue March spending bill did not clarify precisely what DOD spending was to be for 2013. Congress failed to set spending accounts at the specific levels required by the “sequester” provisions of its own Budget Control Act of 2011. Congress left that calculation to the President’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It is both confusing &#8212; and a stunning misuse by Congress of its constitutional power of the purse. Bottom line: the suspense of this year’s budget rollout won’t be limited to what the 2014 numbers are. A matter of great interest will be: what are the 2013 numbers? The 2013 appropriations legislation did not make them particularly clear: press releases from the appropriations committees in the House and Senate were even more deceptive than usual, and the text of the official documents accompanying the enacted bills were a rabbit’s warren of disconnected parts. Some unfortunate souls in the Congressional Budget Office and OMB make a living sorting out what Congress does<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=114734&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Military Spending</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/military-spending-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bes_057.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Marine F-35 Jump-Jet PR: Caveataxpayer Emptor</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/03/27/marine-f-35-jump-jet-pr-caveataxpayer-emptor/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/03/27/marine-f-35-jump-jet-pr-caveataxpayer-emptor/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:10:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=113182</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Marines issued a flashy press release last week: “first operational F-35B conducts initial Vertical Landing.” It was an amateurish, somewhat slimy piece of hype. In one important way, the press release contradicted itself, and in another it inadvertently revealed one of the many reasons why the Marines’ Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) version of the F-35 – that’s the F-35B &#8212; will never be the battlefield-based close-combat support bomber the Marines like to advertise it as. The corps’ headquarters’ release repeatedly described the “operational” nature of “the first STOVL flight for an F-35B outside of the test environment.” It also characterized the event as “another milestone” toward “revolutionizing expeditionary Marines air-ground combat power,” that perhaps—the press released tried hard to imply—would be available for combat use as soon as “late 2013.” The press release, which was formatted as if it were some sort of news article, inadvertently cued alert readers to the fact that this “first” “operational” “STOVL flight for an F-35B outside of the test environment” was flown by a test pilot. His name is Maj. Richard Rusnok, as the press release says, and as a different Marine Corps press exercise reveals, he has been flying for 13 years. In the world of F-35-double-talk, it is apparently reasonable to announce flights as operational when they are flown by test pilots. The term “operational” was stretched even further in a second respect in the press release, which featured the photograph above showing the F-35B landing vertically with its lift fan doors open and its flaps deflected. Note the area below the aircraft; note that same area in the later stages of a video at YouTube also released by the Marines’ PR team. That light-colored portion of the airfield at Yuma looks different from the rest of the surrounding airfield area. That’s surely the special preparation the airfield surface needs to withstand the extremely hot, very high-velocity engine exhaust of the F-35B that impacts the landing area in a vertical landing. Close observers of the F-35B have been paying attention<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=113182&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Procurement</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/procurement/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/130321-m-yb904-354.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">F-35B Vertical Landing</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">winslowwheeler</media:title>
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		<title>More F-35 Turbulence</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/03/06/more-f-35-turbulence/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/03/06/more-f-35-turbulence/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Mar 2013 15:42:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=110041</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There’s a new and disquieting Pentagon report on the troubled $400 billion tri-service F-35 fighter. It includes stunning pilot comments about the aircraft&#8217;s survivability (&#8220;Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned [down] every time&#8221;) while detailing the limited performance of the Air Force’s F-35A and its support systems during initial training at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base. The chief Pentagon weapons-tester&#8217;s 68-page report, posted at the Project on Government Oversight’s website here, describes the challenges Air Force pilots must accept to train in the aircraft. CliffsNotes&#8216; summary, here. Some of the shortcomings are simply a result of the immature state of the F-35, even though the program is more than 10 years old. However, there are also issues that will never be solved, and there are unknowns about whether the F-35 will ever perform up to its modest specifications. Those answers won’t be known until 2019, when operational testing is currently scheduled to be wrapped up &#8212; assuming everything goes perfectly from here on out. As of now, the F-35As at Eglin Air Force can do little more than burn non-supersonic holes in the sky, using only gentle stick maneuvers and hardly any of the F-35&#8242;s highly-complex electronics. Perhaps the biggest horror story is the poor showing of the Lockheed plane’s complicated, expensive helmet-mounted display system that distorts and obscures – rather than enhancing &#8212; the pilot&#8217;s vision and awareness of the outside world. That, along with the poor design of the ejection-seat headrest and limited visibility outside the cockpit, gave rise to that pilot&#8217;s warning that the F-35A can easily be &#8220;gunned&#8221; from the rear in visual range air-to-air combat &#8212; the type that historically has dominated fighter encounters.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=110041&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Weapons</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/weapons-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/120918-f-jq435-043.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">F-35A Lightning II joint strike fighter from the 33rd Fighter Wing atEglin Air Force Base, Fla.</media:title>
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		<title>Hagel&#8217;s Hearing: Profoundly Depressing</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/02/01/hagels-hearing-profoundly-depressing/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/02/01/hagels-hearing-profoundly-depressing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:49:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Winslow Wheeler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=104620</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Watching the Senate Armed Services Committee interact Thursday with former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel—President Obama’s candidate to be secretary of defense—was a profoundly depressing experience. Hagel’s performance in his “confirmation” hearing was remarkable; he spent the day eating his own words under pressure mostly from Republicans—so much so that it is hard to understand what views he might actually hold. Unlike most effective politicians who are always clever at saying nothing or changing positions, he was so inarticulate at doing so that it is also hard to understand how he ever could have been elected twice to the Senate from Nebraska. As fumbling and apologetic as Hagel&#8217;s answers were to the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, even my low expectations for the performance of the senators on that committee went unmet. Several Democrats seem mostly interested in protecting themselves from being seen as too cozy with Hagel because of his previous statements about Israel, its issues and its lobby (eg. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.), and others seemed mostly concerned about pork (eg. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.). Only moderate Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) seemed to be more worried about Hagel’s declining fate on the committee than feathering his own political nest. However, even the worst of the Democrats strode as giants compared to the Republicans, who were all relentless in their cheap shots to justify their predetermined hostility to Hagel. Particularly offensive was Senator John McCain&#8216;s (R-Ariz.) insistence that the witness pay homage to McCain&#8217;s dogma on the sanctity of the &#8220;surge&#8221; as rescuing America from ignominy in Iraq (which it did not). Senator Jim Inhofe&#8217;s (R-Okla.) bumbling small-mindedness was a gruesome introduction of himself to the nation as the leading (most senior) Republican on the armed services committee. If this is the best the Republicans can do to explain themselves to the country on national-security issues, their domicile in America&#8217;s political wilderness has a long way to go before it is over. How ironic that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) should use intimidation to corner the cowering Hagel into professing<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=104620&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Pentagon</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/pentagon-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/160430519.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Senate Holds Confirmation Hearing For Chuck Hagel For Secretary Of Defense</media:title>
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