The JSF is a POS

Way back in 2003, PBS had a two-hour Nova documentary called "Battle of the X-Planes" about the competition between Lockheed Martin and Boeing in a bid for the next generation of fighter planes: the Joint Strike Fighter.  From an engineering perspective, it's a fascinating look into the progression of a project from concept to execution, and the documentary holds up well as a fight between two businesses for the largest contract in Department of Defense history.  Lockheed Martin won the bid and their X-35 became the F-35.

Well, here we are 18 years later: "Military admits F-35 is impossible to use, expensive, and an utter failure." 

I've mentioned that for a while I worked on a NASA program and got so disillusioned, so fast.  NASA would send out these newsletters that talked about how they had contractors (i.e. supplying jobs) spread out over a bunch of states.  ("It'd be a shame if you voted against those jobs, Congressperson").  Building the final product seemed to be an afterthought and the scheduled slipped and slipped and slipped.  For the record, this was not the Space Launch System but I mention it because NASAWatch had the same thoughts:

This is my favorite, by far: "The editorial board complains that SLS is "years behind schedule." If it had bothered to look, it would have realized that every major launch vehicle developed by NASA and by private industry ends up running years behind schedule." So in other words, its OK for NASA to propose schedules and then let the companies walk all over them and stick out their hands to say 'more money please' since everyone overruns. Who needs schedules or budgets, right? It is just taxpayer money anyway.

The problem here is that these large government programs morph into job programs and then there's no political will to pull the plug.