M
why are they idiots? cause they called out a little of the trillions stolen and wasted by the pentagram? I guess you have brain damage from drugs so you dont remember trump railed against the F-35 wasting 1000's of billions on it tore into the pentagon and said he would be looking to get military hardware produced for a lot less. so Aikman and Buck are on the same page
Are you gone after the election like the rest of the Russians?
Trump On F-35: ‘We Should Make Everything’ In US – Breaking Defense
5 months ago
“They should have never let this happen. So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn’t feel the same to me. The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesn’t feel the same to me,” Trump said.
Later in the interview, the president offered the F-35 as an example of “the stupidity that I’ve seen” in America’s management of international trade, pointing to what he characterized as bungling by his predecessors.
“As an example, we’re making a fighter jet. It’s a certain fighter jet, I won’t tell you which, but it happens to be the F-35,” Trump said
“It’s a great jet, and we make parts for this jet all over the world. We make them in Turkey, we make them here, we’re going to make them there. All because President [Barack] Obama and others — I’m not just blaming him — thought it was a wonderful thing,” he said. “The problem is, if we have a problem with a country, you can’t make the jet. We get parts from all over the place. It’s so crazy. We should make everything in the United States,” Trump said.
“Could we do it?” Maria Bartiromo, the Fox interviewer, asked.
“Yeah, we’re doing it because I’m changing all those policies,” Trump replied. “Look, we make F-35s — very important, the greatest jet in the world — where the main body of the jet is made in Turkey and then sent here.”
Should that relationship collapse, Trump said Turkey could refuse to give the United States key F-35 parts.
But what the president said is not accurate. The main body of the jet — the central fuselage — is made in the United States by Northrop Grumman. Turkey did make some until the Trump Administration expelled Turkey from the F-35 program when President Tayyip Erdogan thumbed his nose at NATO and bought the S-400, an advanced surface-to-air missile system, from Russia. The United States under Trump has already decided to refuse to buy Turkish-made parts for the F-35.
There is a shadow of truth to the president’s characterization in that the Government Accountability Office just found that the Joint Strike Fighter program is having trouble finding replacements for 15 key parts previously supplied by Turkey to the F-35 program. But Turkey was expelled from the program by the Trump administration so…
The larger truth is that the F-35 program was designed from the beginning to be a vast enterprise with major components and its 300,000 parts made around the world, at dispersed and redundant manufacturing plants. The plane is assembled in three countries, at Fort Worth, Texas, in Cameri, Italy and in Nagoya, Japan. The program’s goal from the start: to closely bind and benefit both the United States and its allies. I’ve covered the F-35 almost since its beginnings. Here’s the language from the Memorandum of Understanding between the US and its allies as they agreed to build and fund the F-35. It’s simple, direct and clear.
“Having a common interest in defense;
“Recognizing the benefits to be obtained from international cooperation regarding standardization, rationalization, and interoperability of military equipments;
“Desiring to improve their mutual conventional defense capabilities through the application of emerging technology.”
Those are among the major reasons why more than a dozen countries (and climbing) have agreed to buy F-35s and nine countries — including Turkey — helped fund its early development.
The Pentagon — surprise, surprise — declined to comment on the president’s remarks, referring reporters to the White House. They did issue a standard statement saying DoD “remains fully committed to the F-35 program.”
NB — There have been reports that a Chinese company makes circuit boards for the F-35. Well, sort of. A trusted British company, Exception PCB, was acquired in 2013 by a Chinese company, Shenzhen Fastprint. The British Ministry of Defense said this when the reports surfaced: “Exception PCB produces bare circuit boards, and as a result, there are no risks associated with their product in the F-35 aircraft supply chain.”
