Originally Posted by FL 4Motion

Here’s how govt bidding/contracting works in a nutshell:

The pentagon decides it needs a new multipurpose 5th gen fighter/bomber/CAS airframe that can be utilized by both navy and af as well as be sold/integrated into our NATO Allies militaries (they get dumbed down electronics bc national security secrets).

The thinking behind the F35 was let’s get one airframe that is a jack of all trades that will replace both the F16 (af) and F18 (navy). In theory, this is cheaper than developing 2 new platforms.

Military (and this is true of all agency contracting) then publishes a list of performance metrics that need to be met and they open up the bidding process. Govt always goes with the lowest bidder in theory bc it’s a responsible use of taxpayer funds. The reality of this is that all the bidding contractors come in with artificially low bids bc if they don’t, they won’t be competitive. Once a contractor wins the contract, in this case to build the f35, they move forward to the point where it’s too expensive/painful for the govt to cancel and rebid it out and then say we need more $$ in order to keep going/finish. This is on top of all the extra expenses that will inevitably happen that honestly can’t be foreseen on a massive project like this.

The govt has no choice but to fork over more $$ to get the project across the finish line bc they’ve already invested too much time and money. Congress holds hearings, the “so called fiscal responsible” members get to look good to the public by berating the pentagon brass and corporate CEO’s and then the project keeps moving forward. The representatives from the state and districts where the company hired 1000s of workers and has influxes massive spending come to the defense of the company bc they need to say they got jobs and $$ for their district with this contract so they can get re-elected.

In the case of the f35, it gets finally green lighted for full combat missions even though it’s still flawed, basically a glorified beta release in software terms and it keeps getting tweaks as we go along to update the flaws.

It’s a shitty system but there’s no guarantee that if the govt went with a more expensive bid the outcome would be any different. Kinda like democracy and capitalism, they’re highly flawed and imperfect but they’re the least bad option we could have (fascism and socialism are much worse).

Msdaisy complained about the cost of the missiles used to shoot down the balloon. I just lumped my response in one post but didn’t differentiate the addressee oops.

As far as transparency goes, in almost everything except national security, I agree 100%. The more open and transparent, the better the accountability to the people as it should be.

But we can’t publicly divulge all our national security programs and operations otherwise we will lose our advantage to our enemies.

Unfortunately, too many times the govt will hid behind “national security” as an excuse to duck accountability and that’s bad obviously. But in 5he case of the Chinese spy balloon, that actually is a clandestine national security issue. I guarantee we learned a lot about Chinese spying tech and tactics etc from counter surveillance and subsequent recovery of the balloon. And none of us should know anything about that bc it’s rightfully classified.