Originally Posted by
Grumble
Hating the player, and fixing the game is slamming the door on the F-35. For the cost of SCIFing up the CVN's and hangars alone to deal with this piece of sh!t, we could buy another air wing worth of Block II (or fund a block III) super hornets.
I've often thought the same thing. The money behind the infrastructure will never be figured into the unit cost of this program, but it is enormous. For the amphib's they need a new kind of non-skid deck coating and "SCIFing up". For the F-35B land based units to land vertically, they need a new kind of concrete for their pads. Hangars have specific requirements such that there isn't a usable legacy hanger they can utilize so those are being built from the ground up.
And as with any acquisition, the cost explodes and the natural progression is decommissioning squadrons to buy the tails.
As was already posted, a few squadrons of F-35's may have been worth it. As was also mentioned, what we really needed was a mix of high and low end TACAIR.