Overall though, the costs were worth it. We can produce (or used to be able to produce before tariffs) F35s cheaper than rival European fighters that don’t even have stealth capabilities at a lower cost at a faster rate.
Overall though, the costs were worth it.
No, no they weren’t.
This isn’t a cool military video game where you compare stats between units and nerd out about it, that money could have gone to providing people in the U.S. a future and that future is gone forever now.
Those costs became salaries and paid engineers and skilled tradespeople, lawyers and financiers, auditors and test pilots, illustrators and modelors, janitors and security guards, truck drivers and inventory specialists, logisticians and mathmericians, scientists and metallurgists, flight doctors and software developers… and on, and on, and on - it may be one of the single biggest job creating programs in the USA in a Generation. That money also got routed into mutual funds and 401k’s and into the communities where all those people live and work. While there are certainly more noble and more effective uses for money, the F35 program has provided a living for a great many people.
Overall though, the costs were worth it. We can produce (or used to be able to produce before tariffs) F35s cheaper than rival European fighters that don’t even have stealth capabilities at a lower cost at a faster rate.
This isn’t a cool military video game where you compare stats between units and nerd out about it, that money could have gone to providing people in the U.S. a future and that future is gone forever now.
Those costs became salaries and paid engineers and skilled tradespeople, lawyers and financiers, auditors and test pilots, illustrators and modelors, janitors and security guards, truck drivers and inventory specialists, logisticians and mathmericians, scientists and metallurgists, flight doctors and software developers… and on, and on, and on - it may be one of the single biggest job creating programs in the USA in a Generation. That money also got routed into mutual funds and 401k’s and into the communities where all those people live and work. While there are certainly more noble and more effective uses for money, the F35 program has provided a living for a great many people.
That amount of money could have provided those people a future instead of a job that paid well for a bit.