Originally Posted by
LowObservable
LW50 - Specifically, the F-35B.
Sorry if you don't like the Marine's dogged determination to retain a Harrier follow on in the mix. (My personal opinions on Harrier and jets in that family are decidedly mixed).
Without that focus, the B probably wouldn't exist, which leaves the various allies, like the Italians who also fly such jets off of amphibs ... doing what?
I've no idea.
This thing has necked down to the "only game in town" for a variety of reasons, to include the problem of maintaining the defense industrial base. That is a contributor to what Turbine D mentioned here.
So, now we are 14 years along and key dates continue to be pushed out. The political process that keeps the F-35 airborne has never stalled. The program was designed to spread money so far and so wide—at last count, among some 1,400 separate subcontractors, strategically dispersed among key congressional districts—that no matter how many cost overruns, blown deadlines, or serious design flaws, it would be immune to termination. It was, as bureaucrats say, “politically engineered.” And then there is the L-M spin advertising game and lobbyist campaigns.
Perhaps not the core contributor, but a factor nonetheless.