This jet fighter is a disaster … So why does US Congress keep paying for it? Military expenditure linked to lobbying politicians and creating jobs

Sam Ellis, “This jet fighter is a disaster, but Congress keeps buying it” (Vox channel, 26 January 2017)

Google the term “F-35” and among the suggestions the search engine offers you are terms like “problems” and “flying turkeys” which indicate the breadth and depth of the issue of technical and other defects surrounding the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II multi-role stealth fighter jet. The most expensive military weapons system in history and surely one of the longest, having started development in 1992, the F-35 fighter jet has been plagued with numerous problems, not only technical problems, but problems with its design, production, testing and pilot training among others. Yet the US government continues to throw money at it, even though hundreds of billions have already been sunk into the project, with no clear deadline or goal to reach.

This video goes some way to explaining how the F-35 fighter jet’s development is as much an ongoing political and economic project as it is a military project. Private defence companies depend on the US government as virtually their sole client and hence compete hard for military defence contracts. To ensure support for their projects, they lobby and buy the support of Congress representatives at both House of Representatives and Senate levels. Companies establish plants in as many states as they can so they can lobby as many politicians as they can to push their case for winning contracts. Bought politicians will support those defence companies that will bring jobs to their states. The example of Lockheed Martin in buying Sikorski Technologies in Connecticut, so as to curry favour with politicians representing that state in Congress and beat Boeing in gaining the contract to build what became the F-35 fighter jet, is cited.

Several of the technical problems that the F-35 fighter jet is notorious for stem from the design and production process itself. Normally new products are researched, designed and tested for defects before mass production begins; with the F-35, production begins about the same time that testing is done. The problem with this approach is that jets already manufactured must be returned to the production to be retrofitted with amended parts if flaws are discovered during testing.

The election of Donald Trump as President in 2016 threw a spanner – pun intended – into the works of the F-35 fighter jet production when he threatened to cancel the US government order and ask Boeing to price a jet comparable to and competitive with the F-35. Trump’s decision highlighted the issues with the F-35 and also threatened the delicate network of connections among the US government, defence companies and jobs in nearly all 50 states. Since defence companies not only provide direct employment to people in those states but also work to other businesses through contracts for raw materials, parts and administration, and thus indirect work to those companies’ employees, Trump’s decision has the potential to derail individual state economies, especially those state economies highly dependent on government military contracts.

While very dense with information, at just over seven minutes the video is necessarily an introduction into some of the economics and politics behind the F-35 stealth fighter jet program. Good use of animation, charts and lively graphics explains the close connections between US politicians and defense corporations. The video does not go into any detail as to why a multi-role stealth fighter jet is needed to replace other jets used by the US Army, Navy and Air Force when perhaps a range of more specialised and less expensive fighter jets might be more appropriate to American defence needs. Nothing is said either about a culture in the Pentagon and US armed forces that favours F-35 fighter jets and using huge aircraft carriers to project US power around the world at a time when military technology and tactics have changed or advanced to a point where air forces may no longer be needed for land wars (because the majority of land wars being fought these days are being fought guerrlla-style) and where aircraft carriers and their flotillas become sitting ducks for electronic shutdown and thus targets for missile attacks.

Viewers may need to see the video a few times to absorb the information which comes at quite a fast pace. The presentation may be a bit too sharp and snappy for some but on the whole the video is a good and often shocking exposure of how much US politics and economy depend on pursuing a project vacuuming up billions of dollars with not much to show, at the cost of burdening American taxpayers with tremendous debt obligations that they eventually must pay.