at one hour mark, it answers your FUD
Ah, yes, that answers everything. Good snapshot of how things work. The Senator is more worried about keeping his local AFB going into the future by campaigning for some number of F-35s being based there. And the Secretary of the Air Force is accommodating his concern by smoothing over the latest bump in the road, e.g., deferring 45 F-35s that will not have any impact on costs,
or maybe not. What you are seeing is the Washington politics at work that contributed immensely to the ever increasing costly F-35 program. Keep in mind, if the grass was a foot tall emerging from the cracks in the main runway at the Senator's local AFB due to nonuse, he would still be campaigning to keep it alive. The whole deal is to get reelected...