Why The Announcement That The F-35 Will Be Tested Against The A-10 Will Not Make A Difference In The End

The Pentagon plans to test the A-10, left, against the F-35 in 2018. USAF

Mark Thompson, Time: The Pentagon’s Dubious Dogfight

Test pitting new F-35 against venerable A-10 comes too late to matter.

The good news is the Pentagon is finally pitting its tried-and-true A-10 Warthog against its brand-new F-35 Lightning II to see which one is better when it comes to helping out troops on the ground. The bad news is such testing won’t start for another three years, when the military will be too invested in the F-35 to do much about it.

In other words, the test will come too late to make much difference—for either the grunts on the ground, or the taxpayers footing the $400 billion bill for 2,457 of the planes Lockheed Martin is building for the Air Force, Marines and Navy.

WNU Editor: A depressing read .... but so true on how the Pentagon buys weapons nowadays.