“Lockheed has seemed to be focused on short-term business goals,” Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, said this month. “And we’d like to see them focus more on execution of the program and successful delivery of the product.”
In other words, we’d like Lockheed to actually produce the fighter jet we are paying them hundreds of billions of dollars to make. That fighter jet is the F-35, which is not only years behind schedule, but is also the most expensive weapons program in ALL OF TIME. Read more about the failing F-35 program at The New York Times.
“…the military is the true “third rail” of American politics. In this strange universe where those without military credentials can’t endorse defense cuts, it took a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, to make the obvious point that the nation’s ballooning debt was the biggest threat to national security.”
From a NYT Op-Ed by Aaron B. O’Connell called The Permanent Militarization of America.
Should Foreigners Be Able to Donate to U.S. Elections? →
POGO’s Ben Freeman weighs in on whether non-U.S. citizens living in the U.S. should be able to donate to political campaigns. Read what he thinks and the opinion of other experts over at The New York Times.
What do you think?
NYT Misses Elephant in the Room: Defense Service Contractors
This week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is poised to deliver his recommendations on at least $450 billion in defense cuts over the next ten years, according to The New York Times. Although the paper outlines several important potential cuts (in a nifty multimedia chart!)-it fails to include on its list of targets something that should have a huge bull’s eye: Department of Defense (DoD) service contractors.
