Originally Posted by
louisiana_dog
Are they talking about cutting the JSF all together? Right now our navy is running exclusively off the F-18 body, through refueling, fighter, and attack roles. Sure, yes the new F-18 is 30% larger but the main design for the body is around 30 years old. The US is a major player in the JSF program and the downsizing they want to do will cut hundreds of well paying jobs.
I believe the Osprey design will make huge waves in the civilian market in the next 10-30 years. Especially in Louisiana's offshore oil rigs, this aircraft can evacuate a wounded worker faster to a hospital to be treated. There is a market out there that can create so many jobs for future Americans involving just this one aircraft. Project designing, manufacturing, piloting, maintaining, and marketing are some I can name off the top of my head. This tilt-rotor aircraft design moves our troops faster across the battlefield and can do the same for, shipping companies, oil workers, medvac, firefighting, and corporate transport.
With a quick read on the DDG 1000 Zumwalt Class Destroyer, the reason it is going to cost so much money is because of the new technology involved in developing something better than we already have. All new ships designed by the navy have either been a huge success or cost so much that the discontinued project put the technology on the shelf and waited one or two decades to build a cheaper ship. If anything, this new ship design will help pave the way for a new ship design later down the road that will protect our navy and project America’s engineering and military might across the world.
So canceling the JSF will free up 1 trillion dollars to be used on universal healthcare (126 billion a year) and universal preschool (35 billion), so my math says 161 billion a year. So that funds these programs for all of 6.2 years, after that, where is this money going to come from? What if, for some reason, America got involved in a WWIII? Wouldn’t you want our troops to be the best equipped, trained, and prepared force out there?
Sure, the chance of WWIII is small, but can anyone predict the future.