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Winslow Wheeler: NYT Lies on F-35 Financial Sinkhole Unable to Perform

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Winslow Wheeler

On March 12 the editorial board of the NY Times published “The Fighter Jet That's Too Pricey to Fail.” (It is at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/opinion/f-35-fighter-jet-cost.html.)

 

It s a pathetic piece of work: riddled with factual errors, foolish – but trendy – judgments, and a conclusion is poorly supported by its own text.

 

On Monday, March 15, I sent the editorial board a letter of response.  I have waited the week they request to have exclusive publication rights.  Having received no substantive response, it is clear they decline to publish my letter.

 

Note below the ready access the NYT editorial board had to more accurate data from the Pentagon and from far more conscientious analysts, journalists and experts than the misdirecting hacks who supplied the editorial board with its un-fact-checked information.

 

It is conventional wisdom to note the depths to which the New York Times has fallen from its past perch of journalistic competence and objective research and informed commentary.  This exchange, I believe, shows an example.

 

Dear Editors:

I read with astonishment your March 12 editorial on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.  It is riddled with factual errors and silly judgments before it comes to your poorly supported conclusions.

Keeping things short, note the following factual errors and links to readily available accurate documentation:

  • The F-35 is not “at least three years behind schedule,” it is at least ten years behind schedule according to its own Selected Acquisition Report, one of many definitive Pentagon documents on this question.
  • The cost per flight hour is not “around $36,000;” it is more like $44,000 per hour as reported frequently.  But more importantly, the last official data released by the Air Force for its version (the other versions are more complex and expensive to fly) was for fiscal year 2016 (hard copy available), but the Air Force has refused to release more recent data.  One can only surmise why.
  • The cost of the program is not “$1 trillion over its 60 year lifespan” but $1.727 trillion: this is according to DOD’s office of Capability Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE), as reported by Bloomberg last September by a journalist well known for his accurate and reliable DOD sources.
  • The “cutting edge helmet” is far from how you characterize it: “took a while to get right”.  It continues to misrepresent or obscure the outside world to the pilot as reported by DOD’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation
  • The cost of an operable F-35A (the cheapest one) is not “below $80 million.”   That’s DOD’s very incomplete “fly away” cost, which – by the way – results in an aircraft you literally cannot fly. If you want one you can actually operate, you need to serve up $110.3 million for a 2020 model.

One can go on; readers will get the point.

One of your more silly judgments is embedded in the assertion that the F-35 now exists in “a world whose geopolitics and military challenges were far different than those for which it was conceived.” It is true that such assertions are common today, but please let us know when we will no longer need an aircraft to shoot down enemy planes and hit targets on the ground.  These characteristics are badly needed; unfortunately, the F-35 does a lousy job at either the few times it is able to get into the sky to do so.  Well researched writing on this is readily available to you; you ignored it.

One can as easily attack your conclusions, but let’s just leave it that your basic assertions about the F-35 are so poorly grounded that your conclusions do not merit serious consideration.

Sincerely,

Winslow T. Wheeler

(I spent 30 years working for Republican and Democratic Senators and the GAO on national security issues and then 13 years at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. See more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winslow_T._Wheeler and https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/winslow-wheeler-114795/.)

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Mongoose: Nordic nations hold off on AstraZeneca jab as scientists probe safety concerns

07 Health, Disease & Health
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Norway has been one of the most successful countries in Europe in the fight against Covid-19, with only Iceland experiencing fewer deaths relative to the size of its population.

So when, after vaccinating 120,000 of its 5.3m people with the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, Norway found six cases of severe blood clots in recipients that led to the death of two young health professionals, the number stood out.

“It is quite remarkable. For the young nurses, young doctors who have been vaccinated, it is not good news for them. The sentiment in Norway because of this is a little special,” Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told the Financial Times.

The three Scandinavian nations stand apart from the rest of Europe in their reluctance to restart use of the AstraZeneca jab after at least 16 countries last week temporarily suspended it over concerns about blood clots in a number of recipients. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency declared the vaccine safe after its own probe found no link, and inoculation resumed in Germany, Italy, Spain and other countries, with France limiting its use to the over-55s.

Norway, Denmark and Sweden say they will decide this week whether to restart their programmes.

Read full article HERE

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Alexandra Bruce: Let’s Talk About Evil (audio)

Knowledge
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This is an excellent podcast by Tyla and Douglas Gabriel about the multidimensional aspects of the epochal change and the mass genocide that we are living through, drawing from Christian and Eastern theology and the work of Rudolf Steiner.

It’s both extremely interesting and important to have a higher perspective of what’s now happening, which is akin to the Great Flood of Noah. Whereas it said that Atlantis was destroyed by Water and the age previous to that, referred to as “Lemuria” was destroyed by Fire, our current world is in the process of being destroyed via the Element of Air; through 5G, chemtrails, psychotronic warfare and the spread of bioweapons.

Click HERE to listen to audio

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Robert Steele: US Intelligence Still Fucked Up Beyond Belief

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
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I note with amusement the recent “discovery” by Carmen Medina, once  a good person but now swallowed whole by the Deep State, and CSIS, always a tool of the Deep State, both now agreeing that we need an Open Source Agency….without mention of me.  Never mind that the I got this into the Aspin-Brown Commission Report and with help from Kevin Scheid into the 9/11 Commission Report; never mind that I got OMB to approve this twice at $2B a year FOC.  These miserable fucks will never get it right.

Continue reading “Robert Steele: US Intelligence Still Fucked Up Beyond Belief”

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Berto Jongman: 2020 Political Violence Year in Review

07 Health, Disease & Health
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ACLED 2020: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

KEY FINDINGS

Overall conflict levels decreased. Political violence decreased by approximately 22% — or 24,539 events — compared to 2019. ACLED records 113,170 events in 2019, relative to 88,631 in 2020. Political violence decreased in every region of the world covered by ACLED, except for Africa. Fatalities from political violence decreased by 19%, from 145,883 in 2019 to 118,429 in 2020. Fatalities declined in every region save for Africa.

Still, political violence increased in more countries than it decreased. While political violence decreased worldwide on an aggregate level, it increased in nearly half the world’s countries: violence rose in 49% of all countries covered by ACLED in 2020, whereas it declined in 48%. Political violence levels held steady in the remaining 3%.

Conventional conflicts continued to rage. The countries that registered the highest number of political violence events in 2020 are predominantly those experiencing conventional conflicts, like Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and Afghanistan. That Mexico also tops the list reveals how the country’s gang violence has created a conflict environment that rivals an active warzone. All of these countries, with the exception of Ukraine, additionally registered the highest numbers of fatalities in 2020, underscoring the continued lethality of these ongoing conflicts. At the same time, many of these countries also experienced the largest overall declines in conflict activity in 2020. That they continue to top the list of most violent countries speaks to the persistence of these conflicts amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

State forces remained the most active conflict agents. Despite the continued rise of violent non-state actors, state forces participated in over half — 52% — of all political violence last year. Three of the five most active conflict agents in 2020 were state forces operating domestically.

Identity militia activity is on the rise. Nearly all types of conflict actors reduced their activity overall between 2019 and 2020, except for identity militias. Identity militias are the only actor type that increased their engagement in violence. Identity militias — which ACLED defines as armed groups organized around a collective, common feature including community, ethnicity, region, religion, or livelihood — include the Dan Na Ambassagou ethnic Dogon militia in Mali, the Tribal Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Volunteers for Defense of Homeland in Burkina Faso. There was a proliferation of identity militias in Africa especially last year, with a 46% increase in the number of distinct, named identity militias active in 2020 relative to 2019.

While both civilian targeting and civilian fatalities decreased on the aggregate level, civilian targeting events increased in half of all countries. Civilians continued to come under attack in a variety of contexts, from conventional conflicts in Syria and Yemen, to gang wars in Mexico and Brazil. In some spaces, civilians came under multiple concurrent threats, such as in India, where they faced persistent mob and communal violence as well as conflicts in Kashmir and the Red Corridor. The greatest increases in civilian targeting were recorded in Brazil, Nigeria, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cameroon. Overall, civilian targeting rose in 50% of all countries covered by ACLED. Anonymous or unidentified armed groups and gangs were responsible for the largest proportion of civilian targeting around the world last year at 52% of all events, as well as 54% of all reported civilian fatalities. Of identified actors, state forces posed the greatest threat to civilians last year, responsible for 17% of civilian targeting and 15% of civilian fatalities, followed by rioters and violent mobs, which were responsible for 13% of civilian targeting and 3% of civilian fatalities. All forms of civilian targeting decreased from 2019 to 2020, save abductions and forced disappearances, which increased dramatically in Nigeria (by 169%), Yemen (by 114%), Syria (by 36%), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (by 21%).

Despite the pandemic, demonstrations increased worldwide. Following an initial drop at the start of the health crisis, overall demonstration activity rose by 7% in 2020 compared to 2019, with an increase recorded in 58% of all countries covered by ACLED. Approximately 93% of all demonstrations were peaceful, while 7% were met with some form of intervention — an increase in the proportion of demonstrations that were peaceful, and a decline in the proportion of demonstrations met with intervention, relative to the year prior. Demonstrations were also less deadly in 2020: ACLED records a 38% decline in the number of fatalities reported during demonstrations last year, particularly in the Middle East, driven by a decrease in the lethality of violence reported at demonstrations in Iraq and Iran. As ACLED’s coverage of the United States does not yet extend to 2019, data on American demonstration trends are not included in the comparison figures above. However, in 2020, the United States registered the highest number of demonstrations in the world, with nearly as many demonstrations as the next two countries — India and Pakistan — combined.

Read full article HERE