Stop the F-35

Poor moderation at the F-35 hearing fatally corrupted the process.

 -The moderator failed to enforce the legal focus of the hearing: Commenters were allowed to enter unsupported supposition regarding the economic implications of the F-35, impacts that were not substantively addressed in the EIS. No commenters were re-directed to address the substance of the EIS when comments drifted significantly, if not entirely, from the substance of the report. The moderator's excuse: "I don't know what people are going to say when they come up here" is clearly specious.

 -The most egregious examples of "drift" came from Shumlin, Leahy and Sanders etc. whose lengthy comments were accepted before the public. Politicians are not "the public".

-There were irregularities in the manner in which speakers were called. People should have been called in the order their forms were received yet the order was obviously random if not reversed. I arrived at the meeting at 5pm (an hour early) and was not called to speak until 9:15. Notabley, several women who approached the moderator at the 8pm break were called almost immediately after the break and their forms were pulled from a separate pile.

 -The time limit on speakers was not enforced. The suggestion of a 2 minute time limit was rejected. Many people were deprived of the opportunity to speak or had to leave the hearing before it was arbitrarily called to a close at 9:30.

These failures frustrated the purpose of the hearing to the extent that it no longer satisfies the legal requirement of taking public comment.

Pilots as Lab Rats: The Reprehensible Risk-Taking on the F-22 Raptor

"Captain Wilson told 60 Minutes: "We've got two theories with the jet right now. On the one hand, we're not getting the quality or the quantity of oxygen we need. On the other hand, they're thinking contaminants. Somehow, we're not getting what we need, or we're getting poisoned."

"Who will stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes on the F-22? Two brave pilots have gone first and, despite military whistleblower laws, will probably destroy their careers even with the help of some in Congress. They started the process at great personal risk, and it is now up to the public, the media and hopefully some brave souls in Congress to stop the nonsense of flying this plane while it is still endangering the lives of pilots. It is also up to all of us, despite the censorship of heavy-handed classification, to publicly question the effectiveness of the stealth skin that is poisoning those who make it and use it. Hopefully, we will stop this madness before we kill or condemn to cancer more of our "lab rats" while squandering hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars on ineffective stealth technology like the F-22, F-35, B-2 etc. It won't be easy to stop, but we need to honor these two pilots and protect the other 198 F-22 pilots who are now, once again, risking their lives to save the Air Force and Lockheed any more embarrassment."

Any questions?

By Mark Dickinson, a neighbor from the Chamberlin neighborhood

Unlike noise, federal law provides States with an important additional measure of control over emissions from military aircraft.

The General Conformity Rule (42 usc 7506), of the Clean Air Act, (with amendments 42 usc 7401 to 7601) prohibits the federal funding of military activities that do not conform to a State Implementation Plan or (SIP). The Clean Air Act provides for air quality standards for certain pollutants.

We are in region 1 according to the EPA and are an attainment area. In other words our State air quality control folks have done a great with enforcing existing law regarding pollution.

In mid 2010 at Tuttle Middle School, another "dog and pony show" was presented by the Air Force and the project manager at the time for the F-35. They stated that Burlington has been targeted for its CLEAN AIR! They immediately attempted to clarify this statement by saying:
"The US is broken out into attainment areas, some have really bad air, smog and some have good air, pollutant levels are low or else you have Los Angeles or New York that have high levels of carbon dioxide or ozone. Luke AFB has really dirty air and it is going to cost alot more money to do things there. Burlington does not have dirty air. I do not mean to make you think that air quality is not a concern at Burlington, what I am saying is that non-containment areas are more costly for us"Folks, they need our clean air.

Benzene is a serious issue here. Jet propulsion No. 8 (JP-8) contains many contaminants, and about 9.25 lbs of benzene would be found in every F-35 tank. At 10 sorties per day of only 4 jets that equals 370 pounds/day of benzene raining down on us. Benzene is a human carcinogen and a hematopoietic toxicant. Benzene is absorbed through the skin.

Do the math for 18-24 jets....

Winslow's work is always such a treat and he doesn't disappoint here.
When the USAF asks you to trust them about F-35 noise, safety and the program's viability/usefullness, you owe it to yourself to keep the F-22 in the back of your mind.

F-22 In A Dogfight as Panetta Crimps Its Flight Envelope 

You may have noticed that the Air Force’s prized F-22 fighter — the crown jewel of American air dominance — has had some negative press lately. The bad news peaked Tuesday when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered flight restrictions on the $400 million warplane. Unfortunately for the F-22, the airwaves have been filled with flak capable of hitting and damaging even the nation’s stealthiest aircraft:

 – On May 2, ABC News’ Nightline addressed the mysterious oxygen deprivation and/or toxins that F-22 pilots get from their “on-board oxygen generating systems” (OBOGS) and that cost one pilot his life.
 – Then, on May 6, CBS’ 60 Minutes interviewed two F-22 pilots who refused (temporarily, it turns out) to fly the F-22 because of the serious safety problem. The troubles were widely reported in the press and summed up at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

The F-22 quickly engaged its onboard defenses.

The Air Force complained to ABC, and its non-profit booster group, the Air Force Association (AFA), let rip with both barrels. The Air Force distributed “Talking Points” on Capitol Hill reaffirming that:

– the pilot caused a fatal crash of an F-22 in 2010 in Alaska when he was starved of oxygen.
– the Air Force is refusing to divulge, for “privacy reasons,” what, if anything, it is doing in response to the pair of pilots who went on 60 Minutes.
– adding no new evidence (and ignoring other information) about the F-22′s problem, now increasing according to the Air Force’s own data, that is poisoning its own pilots — and ground crews.

The Air Force also added some silly policy-wonk language asserting that the F-22′s presence in the Persian Gulf is keeping the peace there. It’s almost as if the Air Force thinks it can change data, rearrange minds and cause things to happen–and not happen–simply by issuing press releases.

Panetta apparently wasn’t impressed. On Tuesday, he imposed flight restrictions on the F-22, allowing it to fly only “within proximity of potential landing locations,” and requiring the Air Force to speed up the installation of a backup oxygen system aboard each plane. The order from the Pentagon’s civilian chief — and not the Air Force’s top civilian or officer — suggests Panetta doesn’t think the service has given the F-22′s problems the concentrated attention they warrant. 

The Air Force’s earlier statements leaping to the F-22′s defense included several rhetorical attacks and a few factual declarations to prove how wrong ABC was. Some of the latter were extremely misleading. Because they have been so often repeated over the years, they need to be put to rest at long last.

For starters, AFA President Michael Dunn, a retired Air Force three-star general, said, “The flyaway cost for the last block of F-22s was $142M each.” This sort of whopper—trying to proclaim a lowball F-22 unit cost—has been around for a long time: for years, the Air Force’s official “Fact Sheet” on the F-22 has similarly claimed a “unit cost” of $143 million.

Dunn is citing something called “flyaway” costs, which incorporates only part of the funds appropriated late in the F-22 production run, to portray generic F-22 unit costs. He is excluding prior year production funding, known as “long lead” money to jump-start the subsequent year’s production. He is also dismissing ongoing annual modification costs for the entire F-22 fleet and virtually all research and development (R&D)—that continues today, still increasing the unit cost. When the Air Force pumped out the same horse-feathers about the $143 million unit cost in a press release in 2009 after an F-22 crashed in California, I wrote a piece detailing the cost elements of the F-22 that the $143 million claim disregards, even if you drop the initial R&D.

But don’t take my word for it: take GAO’s. In 2011, the Government Accountability Office identified the F-22′s unit cost: $411.7 million. That estimate was in 2011 dollars; a year later, data from GAO made possible a more up to date calculation: $421.0 million.

Dunn’s assertion of a unit cost of $142 million was not just a bit wrong and slightly misleading; it was off by a factor of almost three.

Dunn also said “The last block of F-22s came off the production line without any defects … and on time and budget.” He hasn’t been reading the same materials I have. The GAO reports cited above, and many others, measure the huge cost growth in the F-22 program in past years and the additional, future expenses to address deficiencies in maintenance and stealth, as well as adding upgrades, including for the “last block of F-22s.” 

In its letter to ABC News, the Air Force itself asserted “…the 80% Mission Capable rate of the F-22s at Langley [Air Force Base] was comparable to similar fighter aircraft, specifically Block 50 F-16s.” The statement was clearly intended to impress that the F-22 is combat-ready. Contrast that to GAO’s statement: “Last year, the F-22A fleet achieved a 55.5 percent materiel availability rate. Stealth-related maintenance, system component reliability problems, and lack of spare engines were factors contributing to the fleet not achieving the goal.” (GAO explained that “Material availability is defined as the percentage of the fleet available to perform assigned missions at any given time.”)

It is unclear precisely how the Air Force is gaming its definition of “Mission Capable,” but it would seem that it is doing so. Moreover, one would hope that F-16C readiness is not as disastrously low as that of the F-22.

Both the Air Force and AFA President Dunn also tried a little intimidation, mixed with complaints that they weren’t allowed to dominate the discussion. They did so notwithstanding that the official Air Force position got a lot more play in the televised reports than the Air Force or the Air Force Association gives to objective and authoritative analysts, such as GAO’s. The Air Force and AFA statements were heavily populated with declarations like the following:

“Instead, your network chose to air a sensationalized, biased report that demeans the service, sacrifice, and dedication to duty of the Airmen who fly, maintain, and support the F-22 in defense of the United States.”

“You did not interview a single individual capable of presenting an objective assessment regarding the role of the F-22, the problems associated with the onboard oxygen generation system, and airpower’s overarching contribution to national security.”

“We also think the serious nature of this issue requires responsible reporting that is informed by a balanced presentation of facts, not biased opinions that devolve into an attack on America’s Airmen.”

I have been on more than my share of military service and contractor-guided tours of military units, assembly lines and contractor facilities (including those for the F-22, F-18, F-117 and many other aircraft). Unless you come loaded for bear with information, accompanying experts and/or precisely-informed questions, you will be laden with more half-facts and vapid assurances than you will get in a used car lot. Participants in those minder-minded exercises do not get information; they get disinformation.

On the other hand, I was delighted to see both the AFA and the Air Force take a firm stand against unbalanced dog-and-pony shows. Their initiation of that commendable policy for themselves will be a refreshing change.

The moderator at Monday's F-35 hearing failed to follow the stated rules of the hearing in several ways.

First, the moderator failed to enforce the very purpose of the hearing:

"The presiding officer should direct the speakers' attention to the purpose of the hearing, which is to consider the environmental impacts of the proposed project". Instead, the moderator allowed business interests and people directly involved with the guard to drown the hearing in unsupported supposition regarding the economic implications of the F-35, impacts that were not the focus of the EIS. Not a single speaker was directed to address the substance of the EIS although it is demonstrably evident that comments from most of the speakers expressing support drifted significantly, if not entirely, from the substance of the report. One speaker tellingly referred to the report as the Economic Impact statement!

Ironically, the most egregious examples of this "drift" came from the statements of Governor Shumlin, Senators Leahy and Sanders etc. and the heads of the various derivations of the Chamber of Commerce who were allowed to enter their comments before the public was allowed to be heard. The moderator's stated excuse of "I don't know what people are going to say when they come up here" is clearly specious.

It is also worth noting that the decidedly non-public comments from politicians and interest groups took up at least an hour of the hearing. Since when have Governors and Senators been considered "the public"? They should not have been allowed to speak at all never mind first.

Additionally, there were obvious irregularities in the process by which speakers were called. The rules stated that people would be called in the order their forms were received yet the order was obviously random if not reversed. I arrived at the meeting at 5 o'clock and was not called to speak until 9:15. Many people noted that several women who approached the moderator at the 8pm break were called almost immediately after the break and that forms were pulled from a separate pile.

Lastly, the time limit on speakers was not enforced. When it was suggested that a 2 minute time limit be imposed when it was clear that not everyone would get to speak given the status quo 3 minute limit, this suggestion was rejected. Given that people were deprived of the opportunity to speak when the meeting was rather arbitrarily called to a close at 9:30, this is unacceptable.

In combination, these failures defeated/frustrated the purpose of the hearing to the extent that, in my understanding, it no longer satisfies the legal requirement of taking public comment.

Boon or boom? South Burlington debates F-35s

WCAX rightly contextualized Ms. Caputo's comments by pointing out these "affiliations" (major kudos to Kyle Midura on that). Although it is understandable (patently dishonest but understandable) that Ms. Caputo would not volunteer this information, the Burlington Free Press simply didn't exercise due diligence by failing to make note of them. Boo.

Click here to read the letter.

I especially like the part where they suggest the noise impacts of the F-35 should be compared to a baseline WITHOUT the F-16 since they are going to be phased out. Now that's a comparison I'd like to see!

By Paul Fleckenstein

When several hundred people turned out to Air Force's draft environmental impact statement (EIS) hearing on basing the new F-35 bomber at Burlington's airport, things didn't begin well. For the first 20 minutes the hearing officer gave the podium to political endorsements. Senators Sanders and Leahy, Rep. Welch, Gov. Shumlin, and others issued statements declaring their unconditional support for the basing. What about the nice flow chart layed out by the Air Force showing the environmental review process? Clearly, it didn't matter. Showing contempt for the basic democratic process of a legally required review, Vermont's political establishment confirmed that, “Whatever the cost, environmental or social, it's worth it.”

They were joined by an entourage of the local 1% who agreed that costs don't matter. Another 20 minutes were taken up by the CFO of Fletcher Allen Health Care, the owner of Engelberth Construction, IBM spokespersons, college presidents, and assorted other Chamber of Commerce and business leaders invoking purported possibilities of economic calamity, protecting freedom, patriotism, the “war on terror,” 9/11, and the Vermont Guard's role in Tropical Store Irene response last year (although I missed the part where the F-16s aided flood victims) to push all recognition of F-35 environmental and social justice impacts off the table.

After this scripted attempt to intimidate anyone who dared to address the EIS, there were many great statements from people who actually read the document and care about what it says. Even with the poor F-35 data (the bomber's development is not completed yet) used in the EIS, many things are clear. The F-35 will be significantly louder (maybe up to 4 or 5 times louder) than the current F-16s that bring classrooms to a halt, leave children cowering in their yards, potentially damage hearing, and impact the lives of 1000's. The effect on affordable housing, and moderate-income and minority neighborhoods will be significant. The officials supporting the basing need to pay attention to how people living and working around the airport will be impacted, and what they think. That the bomber's mission is actually not wonderful, but as a plane designed to bomb Asia and potentially carry nuclear weapons, its function is widely unpopular.

This hearing was the “dog and pony” show that some F-35 opponents warned about. The next time the Air Force and the Congressional delegation hold a “public” meeting on the F-35, a protest is in order.

This is a letter written to CC Paul Engles by former CC Meaghan Emery. When taken along with Pam Mackenzie's recent comments, I think we need potential city councilors to pass a test of some sort  that proves their familiarity with the terms "Representative democracy" and "by the people for the people" or somesuch.

Dear Paul,

I watched the Council meeting of last Monday, May 7, last night and was disheartened to hear you, a democratically elected official, say the following at the close of the meeting when the Council was deciding whether or not to put a map prepared by Joshua and Juliet Buck (Mayfair Park residents and your constituents) on the website; and I quote:

"I find it distressing that these people from time to time come to us with special interests and want to take over South Burlington City government on behalf of their cause."

May I please ask you to clarify? Or how do you define democracy? Aren't citizens allowed to ask you and our other elected officials questions or make requests? We accept your decisions, but how can you show such contempt for our inquiries? Weren't you elected to represent the interests of South Burlington residents? Doesn't the EIS concern South Burlington residents? How does Juliet's and my "cause" not represent a broader concern, that potentially will impact City tax revenues, in addition to diminishing the quality of life of six thousand of people? What did you mean when making this very disturbing comment?

Thank you for sending me responses to these questions.

Sincerely yours,
Meaghan Emery
A South Burlington resident and constituent

Linus Leavens, a resident of the Chamberlin neighborhood who, among others, was not allowed to speak last night at the very biased and wildly mismanaged "hearing". Here are his comments:

The EIS hearing tonight was like going to a school board meeting where there were 25 citizens & 200 teachers showed up sent there by the union! I never got a chance to speak, even after 3 and a half hours, because the USAF front-loaded the list of speakers with commentors making comments not pertaining to the actual facts in the preliminary EIS. One commentor even called it the Economic Impact Statement.

The real concerns of the Chamberlin neighborhood have been marginalized or ignored by our elected representatives Leahy, Shumlin, Sanders, and Welsh, who all prematurely proclaimed F-35's to be a great thing for Vermont before this preliminary EIS even came out, let alone be subjected to objective review.

Chart 6.7 in the executive summary clearly shows the F-35 to be 3x to 4x louder than the current F-16's (SEL 17 greater dBl and Lmax 26 dBl greater on takeoffs, landings, & touch & goes). dBA is a log scale, so an increase of 5 dBA is percieved by the human ear to be twice as loud. It's actually a lot more than twice the sound pressure, which doubles about every three dBA.

The 65 dBA dnl noise contours in the Executive Summary compares fewer f-35 flights with the greater number of current F-16 flights. It would be useful to compare the contours using equal numbers of flights. That would show how great the impact is of the f-35 compared to the F-16. There is NO guarantee that the number of flights 5 to 10 years down the line will not increase.

The effects of low frequency noise produced by the F-35's is not adequately addressed. By using dBA as a measurement, you minimise the impact of farther traveling low frequency noise produced by the F-35.

The issues of real estate devaluation, loss of affordable housing (250 single family homes so far), and the commercial re-development of buy-out generated "green space" are not addressed.

The draft EIS for So. Burlington clearly states on page BR4-88 "In coordination with the City of So. Burlington, the airport is continuing its land acquisition program for homes located within the 65 dBL dnmr noise contour. 20 homes are included in this year's program; homes purchased by the airport are demolished and returned to green space." Right. Tell that to the City of Burlington.

The issues of noise mitigation applications instead of buy-outs- efforts like improved windows, soundproof insulation, & physical noise barriers are not addressed.

This potential hardware change is like taking the mufflers off all the cars and trucks on the Interstate!

This EIS makes official a truth that has long been suspected: Many of our homes have been rendered uninhabitable (by FAA standards) due to the noise produced by the commercial and military activity at the airport. This is no longer debatable and no amount crying NIMBY and casting aspersions upon people's patriotism can change what we all now know: the only entity who might possibly be willing to buy many of our homes is the FAA.

Ironically, this has only come to light because the airforce wants to bring even louder planes here; planes 3 times louder. You might think the official response to this news would be swift and vigorous! "hell no you can't bring a louder plane here, you are making way too much noise already!" But this hasn't happened.

To my knowledge just 3 of the 5 councilors have even looked at the report and one councilor is, by her own admission, so completely credulous of the VTANG that she voted against allowing the EIS to be discussed at all. Worse can be said for the South Burlington State Reps because, as of the last legislative forum, NONE of them had read the report and yet ALL of them continue to support bringing the F-35 here.

The response of our so called leaders begs the question: What allows a person entrusted with the protection and improvement of their community to be gleeful in the contemplation of the LITERAL destruction of an entire neighborhood and its school along with reducing home values and quality of life for thousands of its citizens? Who decided it was worth this stress and upheaval to improve the business prospects of a few contractors and make a few pilots happy?

How much is noise remediation going to cost for the homes that aren't bulldozed assuming there might actually be some remediation? How long will condemned homes remain vacant? Will there be beefed up policing of these areas to prevent theft and squatting and drug dealing? Who is going to keep vermin taking a foothold in the abandoned homes? What about the loss of value for the homes that remain? Has the city thought about the implications of home destruction/devaluation on property tax revenues? These are questions that require intense vetting before anyone other than an open industry shill supports this.

Only the best for our boys goes the adage! This is totally nonsensical when applied to the F-35 because its deep technical flaws, corruption and enormous cost actually deprive our soldiers of what they need to do their jobs and go on to live happy lives after their service. These programs are designed to enrich weapons contractors, not to build useful weapons so patting ourselves on the back for our patriotism by spending $1.4 trillion on the F-35 then crying poverty when it comes to adequate the healthcare for veterans is, in short, sick.

Lastly, far from being a badge of honor, welcoming the F-35 to South Burlington will mark the beginning of a long slump into infamy having hitched our wagon to one of the greatest boondoggles in American military history. Given a full appreciation of the facts, we cannot allow our community to be razed to make way for such a program.

Note: the DNL lines are about 1/10th the thickness of those presented in the DNS (these lines are about a whole street wide at this scale) so there is about a 20 ft margin of error possible here. Click on the image for the full size version.

"For sheer sophistry, deception and delusion, it is hard to top the status report "100 Years of Marine Corps Aviation" that appeared as an advertising supplement arriving in this former Marine's Washington Post newspaper on 2 May 2012.

My view is that Marine aviation is now broken, riven by exploding costs, starkly troubled development programs and, above all, the triumph of technical wants over tactical needs.

The Marine Corps could have had superior flying machines at dramatically less cost to acquire and maintain. There is an old aphorism about "pride goeth before the fall" that certainly applies. The country cannot afford these habits and the junior Marines at the "pointy end" deserve better for tactical support.

 The eight-page supplement was dominated by breathless paeans to the Marines' two dominant aircraft modernization programs, the V-22 tilt-rotor, a troop hauler which takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like a turboprop airliner, and the F-35B, a jet that will similarly be capable of short take-offs and vertical landings but fly to the battlefield at supersonic speed.

 Neither machine will deliver on its heady promises...

The Air Force, unwilling to support troops in contact, promptly retired more than half its A-10 force after the Gulf War. Hundreds of these tough, effective airplanes are mothballed in the American desert. Instead of investing billions of dollars in the delicate F-35B, the Marines could seek to operate about 300 A-10s at the cost of painting "U.S. Marines" on the sides of these superb "mudfighters".

The Marines have pursued technological wants in lieu of tactical needs. They have got, and will have, flying machines of marginal tactical utility at huge expense in dollars, time to acquire, and credibility.

As a former Marine, I find current trends in Marine aviation dismaying, for they reflect a myopic technical enthusiasm without regard to relevant performance in the unforgiving arena of the battlefield."

 -David Evans Marine Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. (all emphasis mine)

I am fresh from a South Burlington City Council meeting where former City Councilor Meagan Emery and I requested adding the F-35 EIS to the formal docket (for discussion, public questions and comments) of the next Council meeting on May 21st. Sandra Dooley, Helen Riehle and Rosanne Greco supported the request. Pam Mackenzie and Paul Engels did not.

Now, I was understandably curious as to why a public official would be against providing the public they serve with a forum on such an important issue so I asked Pam and Paul why they said no. Pam said that she supports the guard in anything they want to do because her dad was in the air force. That's it. She voted against providing the public with a forum to question and discuss the impacts of the F-35 because of personal bias. One could accept a "no" vote if it came from a deliberative, fact based assessment of the costs and benefits of basing the F-35 in So. Burl. i.e. the issue before the Council. But this was pure, unquestioning  authoritarianism on display.

I'm told there is no way to remove a city councilor and that is a pity because this woman is clearly not smart enough to differentiate between her role as a private citizen (who is fully entitled to hold irrational personal opinions and vote accordingly) and her role as a city councilor whose job it is to listen to constituents and facilitate open government.

The Chair shushed me at this point so I didn't get to ask Paul.

See you on May 21st Paul and Pam! I'm going to enjoy listening to you explain why you voted 'no' in front of a standing room only crowd of your neighbors.

Does the Pentagon Still Know How to Build Airplanes?

In this article by Kevin Drum for MotherJones, Drum asks this quite shockingly naive question:

"does make you wonder why we seem to have lost the ability to build a next generation fighter that works well at a reasonable cost. Have we reached some inherent plateau of complexity that we're not currently able to surpass? Have all the smartest engineers all decamped to Silicon Valley? Or what? These are hardly the first Pentagon programs to sink under their own weight, but they're certainly among the longest-lasting and highest-profile failures ever. I wonder what's really going on here."

Here is my response, but all the comments are good and many spot on:

"Mr. Drum, you are looking at this from entirely the wrong perspective. In a consequence free (and in-auditable) environment flush with money, procurement becomes more about funneling public money into the gaping insatiable maw of the MIC than about producing a well performing plane that is appropriate to the tasks at hand. Pentagon procurement is working perfectly well when you look at it from the perspective of its real intention rather than listening to the propaganda it uses to sell the idea to the plebes."

The Jet That Ate the Pentagon
By Winslow Wheeler

The United States is making a gigantic investment in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, billed by its advocates as the next -- by their count the fifth -- generation of air-to-air and air-to-ground combat aircraft. Claimed to be near invisible to radar and able to dominate any future battlefield, the F-35 will replace most of the air-combat aircraft in the inventories of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and at least nine foreign allies, and it will be in those inventories for the next 55 years. It's no secret, however, that the program -- the most expensive in American history -- is a calamity.

This month, we learned that the Pentagon has increased the price tag for the F-35 by another $289 million -- just the latest in a long string of cost increases -- and that the program is expected to account for a whopping 38 percent of Pentagon procurement for defense programs, assuming its cost will grow no more. Its many problems are acknowledged by its listing in proposals for Pentagon spending reductions by leaders from across the political spectrum, including Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and budget gurus such as former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget.

How bad is it? A review of the F-35's cost, schedule, and performance -- three essential measures of any Pentagon program -- shows the problems are fundamental and still growing.

First, with regard to cost -- a particularly important factor in what politicians keep saying is an austere defense budget environment -- the F-35 is simply unaffordable. Although the plane was originally billed as a low-cost solution, major cost increases have plagued the program throughout the last decade. Last year, Pentagon leadership told Congress the acquisition price had increased another 16 percent, from $328.3 billion to $379.4 billion for the 2,457 aircraft to be bought. Not to worry, however -- they pledged to finally reverse the growth.

The result? This February, the price increased another 4 percent to $395.7 billion and then even further in April. Don't expect the cost overruns to end there: The test program is only 20 percent complete, the Government Accountability Office has reported, and the toughest tests are yet to come. Overall, the program's cost has grown 75 percent from its original 2001 estimate of $226.5 billion -- and that was for a larger buy of 2,866 aircraft.

Hundreds of F-35s will be built before 2019, when initial testing is complete. The additional cost to engineer modifications to fix the inevitable deficiencies that will be uncovered is unknown, but it is sure to exceed the $534 million already known from tests so far. The total program unit cost for each individual F-35, now at $161 million, is only a temporary plateau. Expect yet another increase in early 2013, when a new round of budget restrictions is sure to hit the Pentagon, and the F-35 will take more hits in the form of reducing the numbers to be bought, thereby increasing the unit cost of each plane.

A final note on expense: The F-35 will actually cost multiples of the $395.7 billion cited above. That is the current estimate only to acquire it, not the full life-cycle cost to operate it. The current appraisal for operations and support is $1.1 trillion -- making for a grand total of $1.5 trillion, or more than the annual GDP of Spain. And that estimate is wildly optimistic: It assumes the F-35 will only be 42 percent more expensive to operate than an F-16, but the F-35 is much more complex. The only other "fifth generation" aircraft, the F-22 from the same manufacturer, is in some respects less complex than the F-35, but in 2010, it cost 300 percent more to operate per hour than the F-16. To be very conservative, expect the F-35 to be twice the operating and support cost of the F-16.

Already unaffordable, the F-35's price is headed in one direction -- due north.

The F-35 isn't only expensive -- it's way behind schedule. The first plan was to have an initial batch of F-35s available for combat in 2010. Then first deployment was to be 2012. More recently, the military services have said the deployment date is "to be determined." A new target date of 2019 has been informally suggested in testimony -- almost 10 years late.

If the F-35's performance were spectacular, it might be worth the cost and wait. But it is not. Even if the aircraft lived up to its original specifications -- and it will not -- it would be a huge disappointment. The reason it is such a mediocrity also explains why it is unaffordable and, for years to come, unobtainable.

In discussing the F-35 with aviation and acquisition experts -- some responsible for highly successful aircraft such as the F-16 and the A-10, and others with decades of experience inside the Pentagon and years of direct observation of the F-35's early history -- I learned that the F-35's problems are built into its very DNA.

The design was born in the late 1980s in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon agency that has earned an undeserved reputation for astute innovation. It emerged as a proposal for a very short takeoff and vertical-landing aircraft (known as "STOVL") that would also be supersonic. This required an airframe design that -- simultaneously -- wanted to be short, even stumpy, and single-engine (STOVL), and also sleek, long, and with lots of excess power, usually with twin engines.

President Bill Clinton's Pentagon bogged down the already compromised design concept further by adding the requirement that it should be a multirole aircraft -- both an air-to-air fighter and a bomber. This required more difficult tradeoffs between agility and low weight, and the characteristics of an airframe optimized to carry heavy loads. Clinton-era officials also layered on "stealth," imposing additional aerodynamic shape requirements and maintenance-intensive skin coatings to reduce radar reflections. They also added two separate weapons bays, which increase permanent weight and drag, to hide onboard missiles and bombs from radars. On top of all that, they made it multiservice, requiring still more tradeoffs to accommodate more differing, but exacting, needs of the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy.

Finally, again during the Clinton administration, the advocates composed a highly "concurrent" acquisition strategy. That meant hundreds of copies of the F-35 would be produced, and the financial and political commitments would be made, before the test results showed just what was being bought.

This grotesquely unpromising plan has already resulted in multitudes of problems -- and 80 percent of the flight testing remains. A virtual flying piano, the F-35 lacks the F-16's agility in the air-to-air mode and the F-15E's range and payload in the bombing mode, and it can't even begin to compare to the A-10 at low-altitude close air support for troops engaged in combat. Worse yet, it won't be able to get into the air as often to perform any mission -- or just as importantly, to train pilots -- because its complexity prolongs maintenance and limits availability. The aircraft most like the F-35, the F-22, was able to get into the air on average for only 15 hours per month in 2010 when it was fully operational. (In 2011, the F-22 was grounded for almost five months and flew even less.)

This mediocrity is not overcome by the F-35's "fifth-generation" characteristics, the most prominent of which is its "stealth." Despite what many believe, "stealth" is not invisibility to radar; it is limited-detection ranges against some radar types at some angles. Put another way, certain radars, some of them quite antiquated, can see "stealthy" aircraft at quite long ranges, and even the susceptible radars can see the F-35 at certain angles. The ultimate demonstration of this shortcoming occurred in the 1999 Kosovo war, when 1960s vintage Soviet radar and missile equipment shot down a "stealthy" F-117 bomber and severely damaged a second.

The bottom line: The F-35 is not the wonder its advocates claim. It is a gigantic performance disappointment, and in some respects a step backward. The problems, integral to the design, cannot be fixed without starting from a clean sheet of paper.

It's time for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the U.S. military services, and Congress to face the facts: The F-35 is an unaffordable mediocrity, and the program will not be fixed by any combination of hardware tweaks or cost-control projects. There is only one thing to do with the F-35: Junk it. America's air forces deserve a much better aircraft, and the taxpayers deserve a much cheaper one. The dustbin awaits.

Winslow Wheeler is director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. Previously, he worked for 31 years on national security issues for Republican and Democratic senators on Capitol Hill and for the Government Accountability Office. He is editor of the anthology The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Through It."

*(all emphasis mine)