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632Il y a déjà eu une intervention d’un commentateur US pour suggérer l’abandon du programme JSF (“Kill It”). De defensa en a parlé le 5 mars 2010 (lien).
Voici la même proposition, cette fois d’un expert en la matière puisqu’il s’agit d’un ancien haut fonctionnaire du temps de Rumsfeld, Thomas Christie, chargé en plus des services de tests et d’évaluation pendant son service au Pentagone. Pour lui, une seule solution à l’actuelle crise, pour des raisons de coût, d’inefficacité de l’avion, de son inutilité opérationnelle: abandonner le programme. Mais il pense que la direction du Pentagone n’aura pas le cran de prendre cette décision.
Il s’agit d’un texte du 22 mars 2010, dans Congress Daily, de George C. Wilson (lien).
«A fully certified expert on warplanes and their weapons who has filled top Pentagon jobs in both Democratic and Republican administrations would order the Air Force and Navy to modernize their shrinking and aging air arms with F-16 fighter bombers and F-18 Es and Fs, respectively, rather than spend additional millions on trying to fix the trouble-plagued F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
»But Thomas Christie, whose last Pentagon job was director of weapons testing and evaluation for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, told me in recommending cancellation of the F-35 that “it's not going to happen” even though it should.
»The kind of politics that wastes taxpayers' dollars will win out, Christie predicted in a voice of resignation, if not disgust. He said government leaders will keep the F-35 JSF alive no matter how sick it gets so they will have something to show for all the money they spent on it. The JSF could end up costing the taxpayers as much as $329 billion for 2,443 planes for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
»Christie's analyzing of warplanes and their weapons dates back to 1955, when he worked as a civilian for the Air Force at Eglin Air Force Base in Texas. He said the Air Force and Navy fleets of airplanes have become dangerously small and old with no quick fixes in sight except buying planes like the F-16 and latest F-18 already in production. They are over the growing pains now plaguing and delaying the F-35.
»Christie contended the ailments afflicting old planes the Air Force and Navy keep flying beyond their normal retirement age pose a bigger threat to the lives of American pilots than the foreign planes in any hostile air force…»
“Chandernagor”
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