Cash Crunch Offers New Insights Into the F-35.

The United States Air Force is scrambling to protect the F-35 light attack bomber from the threat of cancellation.   There has been talk over the past week that the F-35, in the era of budget sequestration, could be a goner.

It's funny how a cash crunch can shake out straight talk.   This time it's coming from Major General Steve Kwast who headed the USAF Quadrenniel Defense Review.   General Kwast said the air force has a compelling reason for protecting the F-35 from cost cutters:

"We must be able to project power in contested environments (A2/AD) and the Joint Strike fighter is that machine."

Hmm, "A2/AD" - where did that come up recently?  Oh yeah, here.
A2/AD is an abbreviation for anti-access and aerial denial environments.  It's a term that is used in the context of just one country - China.   See, take it from General Steve, that's what the F-35 is all about, projecting power in the contested environment of Chinese airspace.   And, when it comes to a first strike against Chinese air defences, "the Joint Strike Fighter is that machine."  There, got it?

Now I know some of you are probably wondering why Canada would buy an insanely expensive and marginally performing warplane that's purpose built to attack China when we're obsessed with selling China our Athabasca bitumen?  It sounds contradictory, inconsistent, even incoherent.   The simple answer is that is what happens when you outsource your military policy, including related foreign policy aspects, to a big brother like the Pentagon.  We wind up with an industrial and resource strategy largely divorced from our military (let's not call it "defence") policy.   Fortunately we have a government that's never troubled by either facts or inconsistency.

Aviation Week's F-35 oracle, Bill Sweetman, meanwhile reports that cancelling the Joint Strike Fighter, while unlikely, remains on the table.

"If the Pentagon decided to meet sequester requirements by preserving force structure, without accepting reductions in readiness or its civilian workforce, the Joint Strike Fighter program would have to be canceled, representatives of leading Washington think-tanks said on August 1, and the B-1B bomber force will be retired under any scenario."