60 Minutes Looks At The F-35 Program

Is The F-35 Worth It? -- 60 Minutes/CBS

David Martin gets an inside look at what makes the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter the most expensive weapons system in history

The following script is from "The F-35" which aired on Feb. 16, 2014. David Martin is the correspondent. Mary Walsh, producer.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the Pentagon's newest warplane and its most expensive weapons system ever -- nearly $400 billion to buy 2,400 aircraft. To put that in perspective, that’s about twice as much as it cost to put a man on the moon -- this at a time when the White House and Congress are fighting over ways to reduce the federal deficit and cuts in defense spending are forcing the Pentagon to shrink the size of the military.

The Air Force, Navy and Marines are all counting on the F-35 to replace the war planes they’re flying today. If it performs as advertised, the F-35 will enable U.S. pilots to control the skies in any future conflict against the likes of China or Russia. But the F-35 has not performed as advertised. It's seven years behind schedule and $163 billion over budget, or as the man in charge of the F-35 told us, "basically the program ran itself off the rails."

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My Comment: The fact that the supporters of the F-35 program had to invite 60 Minutes for a puff piece tells me that there is a problem.