The F-35 is as useless as tits on a bull and the Russians aren’t comin’ any time soon.
Last spring my wife and I had a stopover in Heathrow Airport. We were victims of an attempted consumer seduction as there was shop after shop in what seemed an endless mall of high priced luxury items begging to be purchased. We ogled and browsed but made it to our flight credit cards in tact, proud that we could resist such resplendent decadence. I did though get to admire an Aston Martin first hand. I was easily seduced by its shimmering presence, rakish styling and exquisite craftsmanship. The salesman assured me I could order it with either left or right hand steering and they delivered anywhere in the world.
I remembered the quip of legendary American industrialist J P Morgan, “If you have to ask the price you can’t afford it.” When it comes to an Aston Martin I would have to ask the price. I speculated: If I could cut a check for one without a second thought would I really want one? The answer had to be no. Unless you are an Arab sheik or James Bond this car was a useless as tits on a bull. This brief flirtation with an Aston Martin made me realize just how much I really loved my Honda (second only to my wife.) After all, an Aston Martin is a garage car meant to be coveted, stroked, endlessly polished and driven only on sunny weekends in perilous mountain passes. My Honda, on the other hand, goes anywhere in rain, sleet, and snow, it is big, roomy, carries full sheets of plywood and has a great set of Yakima racks.
Last week I happened to see on TV the spanking new F-35. Like the Aston Martin, it too epitomizes resplendent decadence, with its rakish lines, exquisite craftsmanship and a price… well let’s say a price that is astronomical and it just keeps changing- shifty numbers for shifty times- and it has seven years to keep bouncing around as that is when the first of these relics will come into service.
Why do I say “relics?” I say relics because even though this aircraft has been years in the making and swallowed up billions in development costs it is a relic of the Cold War. During the Cold War our venerable arms dealers (the Military Industrial Complex-MIC) got in the habit of making generation after generation of high performance fighter jets to face off in a prospective war against the long defunct USSR in a battle to end all battles on the plains of Western Europe. The Cold War came to an end, the battle never happened. There was a peace dividend to be rendered but this was not to be as the MIC was in the habit of making high priced war toys and this is a hard habit to break. Fortunately, for them, the War on Terror just happened along- a phony war in too many aspects- but most people haven’t caught onto that yet.
“Most people” includes a lot of people in Ottawa who seem unaware that the Cold War has been over for some 20 odd years. Like an awful lot more people in Washington they suffer from PCWPD(Post-Cold-War-Political-Dementia), a chronic malady which requires putting a lock on the toy box. They insist we need these aircraft as the Ruskies are going to come roaring over the Arctic tundra and bomb the hell out of us. Not so, Russia is a pale imitation of its former self. Its satellite countries have abandoned it. The US and NATO have encircled it and it would have to have a death wish to even think of attacking present day Fortress North America.
While we are on the subject, I would really like the PCWPD folks in Ottawa to explain why do we need all these expensive war toys? Each year, the global expenditure on armaments is1.4 trillion dollars. Over a trillion of these dollars are spent by the US and its NATO allies. Russia and China account for most of the rest- which means the US and NATO are spending roughly five times what Russia and China combined are spending. This is a lot of money to knock a few terrorists into line and the Russians aren’t coming anytime soon. Just maybe all this “defense” spending is really offensive spending, epic fraudulence, along with being addictive habitual behavior usually associated with society’s underclass.
The folks in Ottawa want to cut corporate taxes when we already live in a corporate welfare state where the MIC has been on the dole for too long time picking the public purse with no strings attached. The MIC should be nationalized, converted from war production to peace production and make things people really need for the 21st century. The Age of Militarism is no longer affordable, now we must find the political courage to push it over the nearest cliff. Instead of buying F35s and Aston Martins we have to be more pragmatic and invest in practical things like electric Hondas, wind mills and solar panels, that have real value, do real work and are not quite as useless as tits on a bull. We have to start thinking green instead of red-blood red.
Just days after I watched the TV spin on the F-35 I was paging through the Vancouver Province and came across an article titled: F-35 jet price tag could skyrocket… like I said, “shifty numbers in shifty times.” It now seems these planes are going to require aerial refueling , which means the purchase of tanker aircraft at the cost of a few hundred million more, and, low and behold, Canada’s northern air strips are not long enough for these winged Aston Martins and will have to be extended-a few hundred million more.
Seems to me all this is a tacit admission the F-35 is really not suited to our purposes. Its range is too short and that it must be able to land on northern airstrips has more to do with its single engine. Two engines are a basic requirement for flying in the high arctic and the F-35 is one short of two- which is maybe a reflection of the mathematical abilities of the F-35 designers. So these landings on upgraded strips have to do with a flawed appropriation and design deficiencies.
To land on these upgraded air strips the defense department is planning on asking the manufacturer to install drag chutes. Pilots though have pointed out that using drag chutes in high Arctic winds is problematic.
The F-35 is designed for air to ground attacks (remember the Cold War battle on the plains of Western Europe that never happened) not counter terrorism or knocking phantom and obsolete Russian bombers out of the sky. In the present wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan NATO pilots have proven their prowess at shooting up wedding parties, assorted family gatherings and our own troops, invariably due to faulty intelligence- in every sense of the word. They have become very adept at making apologies dripping with sincerity and promising not to do it again- until such time as they do it again, and again. It is an embarrassing and little known fact of these wars that civilian casualties far out number military casualties, in large part because so much high tech weaponry is used so indiscriminately and inappropriately with little or no regard for civilian casualties.
It also begs to be pointed out that the F-35 is a JTF- a Joint Task Force fighter. In other words, one aircraft for all. This has much to do with the manufacturer’s desire to market the F-35 globally, thus maximizing its profits at the expense of addressing the real needs of different countries. Some European NATO members have concerns over the suitability of the F-35. Canada it seems is less forth right and is now back- tracking at Mach II speed, not having done its home work; nor having the political rectitude to say no thanks to an aircraft unsuited to our future needs.
Now the F-35 is a stealth fighter. It doesn’t seem to matter that the vile enemies we are fighting now are equipped with antique AK-47s and rocket launchers, and with uncountable lives lost, billions of dollars later, and tons of bombs dropped they remain undefeated. But the real stealth is how our politicos slide these massive expenditures past an unwary public. As they meander down the Military Mall of Horrors-with our credit card not theirs- they are totally promiscuous spenders of our tax dollars-impulse buyers on multi-billion dollar purchases of dubious value. They should be shackled and their mouths duct taped so they are incapable of making purchases without checking with head office-us!
If you’re an arms dealer lookin’ to sell a pig-in-a-poke Ottawa is a good place to start as these folks just bought one and they don’t get to look in the poke for another seven years ‘ cause that’s when these oversold little war toys come into service. Assuming there is some real pork in the poke this is a very greedy little bugger who will beggar the nation.
If the folks in Ottawa have the odd dust covered dictionary lying around they might want to check out the word; b-o-o-n-d-o-g-g-l-e, ‘cause that’s the business they’re in.
When they have their chronic weak moments in the Militarist Mall of Horrors we pay the price. Conned into buying a winged Aston Martin they should have bought a good old Honda with a set of Yakima racks. …. Seems they’re spendin’ a little too much time hangin’ tits on bulls, buyin’ pigs in a poke and pimpin’ for the MIC.
And these folks want a majority government!
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