The wrong way to build the F-35
I'm quite unused to defending the actions of Congress, but when it comes to contracting the production of the new F-35 fighter, the Defense committees are right and the Pentagon is wrong.
The F-35 will be the only new US fighter plane for decades; with different versions for the Air Force, Navy, Marines and eight different allies, expected production will run more than 3,000 jets. Yet the Pentagon bureaucracy has fallen back on discredited, static "should cost" models to justify awarding a 30-year monopoly on the engines to a sole supplier.
Key members of the Defense committees, with decades of experience in defense issues, want to require competition for the contracts -- annual bidding by at least two suppliers. This would rightly ignore the testimony of appointed Defense Department officials whose tenure in procurement jobs has historically averaged about 18 months, and who certainly won't be around to pick up the pieces from yet another sole-source fiasco.....