Stop the F-35

"Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier, had some trenchant comments on the $397 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on his Twitter feed last week:

“I was asked my opinion about the F-35. It's a waste of money. Far too expensive. Give me an F-15 E -- less expensive, will do the job,” he Tweeted."
(reposted from From nextgov.com)

(From VTDigger)
by James Marc Leas

Dear Sen. Leahy,

A shocking report about the F-35 basing decision in Burlington and Sen. Leahy appeared in the Boston Globe, “As jets seem bound for Vermont, questions of political influence arise,” by Bryan Bender, April 14, 2013. A Pentagon official told the reporter, “the base-selection process was deliberately ‘fudged’ by military brass so that Leahy’s home state would win.”

The Pentagon official further said, “Unfortunately Burlington was selected even before the scoring process began … I wish it wasn’t true, but unfortunately that is the way it is. The numbers were fudged for Burlington to come out on top.”

Sen. Leahy, the Globe reporter writes that in your emailed statement to him you “did not respond to allegations of political influence.” Not just Vermonters but all Americans deserve an answer now to the question posed in the article: Was political influence involved? Do you agree or not that important decisions, like this one, should be based strictly on the facts, without political influence?

The article explains how you have substantial political influence over Air Force decision-making: “Leahy, elected in 1974, is a powerful figure in the Senate. He is the longest-serving member and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Defense, which exerts great control over how the Pentagon spends its budget.”

“While the Air Force was conducting its F-35 National Guard base evaluations, Leahy was simultaneously sponsoring successful legislation that significantly elevated the National Guard’s status within the military by making its top official a four-star general and giving it a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” Could this little nugget mean something other than payback in place for a deal to push forward the trillion-dollar F-35 program with basing in Vermont?

We learn that, “as cochairman of the National Guard Caucus in the Senate, Leahy also is a prominent booster of the Guard and looks out for the Guard’s interests in Washington.”

Certainly, as a former prosecutor, wouldn’t you agree that the allegation by a Pentagon official of deliberate fudging by military brass is serious? Particularly in view of a trillion dollars of taxpayer money being involved in the F-35 program?

Just one problem: thousands of Vermonters are getting shafted. The Air Force says that nearly 3,000 homes will be in a zone the Air Force considers “unsuitable for residential use” if the F-35 is based in South Burlington. The Air Force says that F-16 noise already put 200 homes in that noise zone in South Burlington. Fifty-five of them have been demolished and the rest are awaiting demolition. We have firsthand experience here in South Burlington with the damage F-16s noise did to a whole neighborhood of affordable homes. Do you think, in the face of that destruction and a Pentagon official charging undue political influence, that the people here will allow thousands more homes to be put in that same noise zone?

The 8,000 Vermonters living in those 3,000 affordable homes in South Burlington, Burlington, Winooski and Williston expect you to look out for their interests in Washington. And not do anything that might sacrifice homeowners and renters living in our towns and our communities. Why would you continue to refuse to meet with any of these 8,000 if you were fighting to protect them?

Sure, I understand that developers — like Ernie Pomerleau, who is quoted in the article — may have much to gain personally as homes are demolished and land near the airport becomes available for commercial development. Can we expect you to protect thousands of Vermont homeowners and renters or not? Or will you put Ernie Pomerleau’s interests first? When thousands of homes and families are at severe risk from the noise zone and the crash zone of the F-35 — and from developers who may be seeking to use the noise zones to their own advantage?

Sen. Bernie Sanders told the Globe in a statement, “’I take seriously allegations that the scoring process may have been flawed’ … adding that the Air Force should release all of its documentation. ‘I do believe the process must be transparent and fair.’”

Certainly, as a former prosecutor, wouldn’t you agree that the allegation by a Pentagon official of deliberate fudging by military brass is serious? Particularly in view of a trillion dollars of taxpayer money being involved in the F-35 program? And the possibility that certain developers here in Vermont can personally gain while thousands of homeowners and renters stand to lose their affordable homes in Burlington, Winooski, South Burlington and Williston? Wouldn’t you agree that an impartial, transparent and independent investigation of these allegations is needed? Wouldn’t you agree that if wrongdoing by military brass is found by that investigation, the officials responsible should be prosecuted?

In view of the allegation in this Globe article by a Pentagon official that “the base-selection process was deliberately ‘fudged’ by military brass so that Leahy’s home state would win,” that “the numbers were fudged for Burlington to come out on top,” and that certain developers, including Ernie Pomerleau, are positioned to personally gain while thousands of families lose their homes, will you immediately ask the Air Force to stop considering Burlington for the first basing round, as recommended by 15 members of the Burlington area clergy? Such a solution will enable the Air Force to start its process over again, publish all its scoring sheets, and base its selection strictly on the facts. And without regard to any political influence that may have been applied.

Vermont F-35 Base Called Political Pork for Senior Democratic Senator

By William Boardman panthers007@comcast.net

What Happens When You Get Too Invested in a Disaster?

While it’s too soon, perhaps, to say that the over-budget, overdue, and under-performing F-35 joint strike fighter is in a political tailspin, having its biggest Senate booster accused of pushing for political pork at the expense of his poorer constituents hasn’t made the controversial stealth bomber’s flight path less bumpy.

According to the Boston Globe, the Air Force “fudged” its assessment of the Vermont Air National Guard Base in Burlington, Vermont, in order to give Vermont’s senior Senator, Patrick Leahy, D-VT, a political plum that could not be justified on its merits. Despite three years growing local opposition to basing an F-35 squadron of nuclear-capable stealth bombers in Vermont’s most densely populated area, Leahy has spent more years cheerleading the Air Force plan while at the same time refusing to meet with his unhappy constituents.

The Air Force first planned to announce its final Burlington basing decision in the fall of 2012, then pushed it back to the winter of 2013, and then to the spring. On April 18, four days after the Globe story went largely unrebutted, the Air Force announced that the decision would not be made until the fall and that there would be yet another public comment period during the summer.

Sen. Leahy, 73, who is legally blind in one eye, did not serve in the military. He is co-chair of the Senate’s National Guard Caucus, which has 88 members.

F-35 Getting Too, Late, Too Expensive, and Too Dysfunctional? 

Outside of Vermont, the F-35 program continues to struggle in more basic ways. Its cost is already 100% over budget, having cost more than $400 billion since 2001, with the plane still in the testing phase. Technical problems have grounded it for extended periods this year. And foreign buyers, having planned on a $70 million plane, are reducing or cancelling orders as the cost has risen above $200 million each (although DefenseWorld.net reported that the U.S. offered F-35s to South Korea at a discounted price of $180 million).

Whether the Air Force decided to delay its F-35 basing decision due to the Globe’s allegations against Sen. Leahy is presently unknown, but the Senator has supported basing the F-35 at the Burlington Airport since long before the Air Force made Burlington one of its top basing candidates.

And Sen. Leahy has remained adamantly in support of the Air Force plan as it has become increasingly controversial over the past three years. He has consistently defended the F-35 while refusing to respond substantively to its associated problems, including excess noise, loss of property value, human health impairment, and environmental degradation.

No One Has Said Senator Leahy Has Dome Anything Illegal

The charges against Sen. Leahy, made in a front page story in the Boston Globe April 14, are not charges of criminality, but rather of the familiar political corruption that passes for business-as-usual in Washington. In response, Leahy issued a brief non-denial denial, saying dishonestly:

“The Air Force selected the Vermont Guard as its preferred choice for the F-35s on the merits, based on the Vermont Air Guard’s unsurpassed record, its top-flight personnel and facilities, and its strategic location. Vague, anonymous, uninformed and rehashed conspiracy theories cannot change those facts.”

Elements of dishonesty in this statement include:

The first sentence blurs the distinction between selecting the Vermont Air Guard as the first Guard unit to have the F-35, and the basing decision not yet made with regard to the Burlington Airport. That decision will at least purport to be based on other criteria entirely, include those in the environmental impact statement that assesses social, environmental, and health issues, among others.

The case for a “strategic location,” in northern Vermont, next to the Canadian border, has yet to be made. Leahy and others typically praise the Air Guard for “its voluntary and near-constant response to the 9/11 attacks for 122 consecutive days.” While true, this omits the reality that the Air Guard responded only after the attacks. Earlier, when one of the hijacked airliners came up the Hudson Valley near Vermont, the F-16s in Burlington sat on the ground.

“Vague” is just false. The critiques of the Air Force plans have been detailed and precise, whether presented by a former Pentagon planner, lawyers, reporters, or others. Leahy’s responses, when he has responded, have mostly been as vague as this one.

“Anonymous_ -- while the Globe story refers to two or more anonymous sources, it also quotes acting assistant secretary of the Air Force Kathy Ferguson and Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh III, both of whom acknowledge fact and processes errors that the Air Force needed to correct.

“Uninformed” is almost laughable, since the most germane critiques of the basing proposal are derived from information provided by the Air Force in its environmental impact statement of March 2012, which is currently in the process of being finalized (a necessary element of the basing decision).

“Rehashed conspiracy theories” is a wing nut straw man argument, since the core arguments against the F-35 require no conspiracies to be correct. All they require is bad judgment of one sort or another.

Taken as a whole, Leahy’s statement actually means nothing. Although it’s constructed to push emotional buttons that could distract the casual reader from its emptiness, the careful reader will notice that it lacks relevant content.

The Record Opposing the F-35 in Vermont is Long and Detailed

Those who oppose basing the F-35 in a densely populated argue that that’s just a bad decision -- as public policy, economic policy, military policy, or environmental policy. Their arguments largely go unanswered by any rational counter-argument.

In responding to the Globe story, the Senator’s office circulated a dozen or so supporting documents of limited relevance as well as one that outlines several basic issues to which Leahy apparently never responded substantively.

In February 2010, the chair of the South Burlington City Council, Mark Boucher, wrote to the Air Force, with copies to Leahy, Senator Bernie Sanders, Congressman Peter Welch, Gov. Jim Douglas, and others involved then in the F-35 planning process. Among other things, Boucher noted that the Burlington International Airport (BIA) was confined entirely within the borders of South Burlington, but that South Burlington had not even been informed of meetings of the interested parties, never mind invited to take part in a process whose impact would be felt most directly by South Burlington.

Boucher noted that: “For the last several years, the BIA has been purchasing and removing homes adjacent to the Airport using federal FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] noise mitigation funding.”

He discussed the impact of the “unfit for residential use” zone on city housing, putting more than 150 homes at risk. He described the area as comprising “the largest inventory of affordable housing in South Burlington.” (The 2012 Air Force environmental impact statement says that a minimum of 1,300 homes will become “unfit for residential use” as a result of the smaller of two F-35 basing plans.)

Do Their Elected Representatives Care Where or How People Live?

Anticipating the impact of an F-35 base in South Burlington, Boucher said in his 2010 letter:

“The City strongly opposes the loss of additional housing, especially without the replacement of similar housing…. The BIA is not only located in a residential neighborhood, but within close proximity to a neighborhood elementary school and a land development designed to be a new downtown for South Burlington.”

No high elected official in Vermont – not Sens. Leahy or Sanders, not Rep. Welch, not Gov. Douglas or his successor, Gov. Peter Shumlin, has even responded to this concern for people to have the peaceable enjoyment of their homes, much less has any of them proposed even the slightest solution.

By contrast, the Air Force at least acknowledges the issue and scores Burlington low for “environmental justice” because of “disproportionate effects on minority and low income individuals.” In other words, the Air Force acknowledges that the disadvantaged would once again be forced to subsidize the advantaged with their property or quality of life, or both. But the Vermont officials who are supposed to represent them do nothing.

There is no indication that anyone, including the Air Force, responded to council chair Boucher’s letter. Over two months later, in May 2010, Leahy followed up with the Air Force, beginning by assuring them that “I have long supported the Vermont Air National Guard and as a Vermonter am proud that the Air Force has selected Burlington….”

Lacking a Good Argument, Try Chasing a Chimera or a Shibboleth 

In the fourth paragraph of his letter, Leahy gets around to expressing “my support for Councilman Boucher’s recommendations for future communications,...” without expressing support for anything specific. Then he adds:

“There has been a lot of information – and unfortunately, some rumors – circulating on websites and in the community about the F-35. Certainly, the more the Air Force can do to reach out to residents, businesses, and local officials to set the record straight and have a reasonable discussion about the facts, the more satisfied everyone will be with the process.”

The Senator does not give any further indication of what he thinks was not factual, and his own website does not offer any clarification of what he’s now apparently calling “vague, anonymous, uninformed and rehashed conspiracy theories.” In this respect, he’s no different from Sanders, Welch, Douglas, or Shumlim, although Shumlin made a show in the fall of 2010 of junketing to Florida to listen with ear muffs on to the F-35 taking off – he said it wasn’t as loud as he’d expected.

None of these elected leaders have requested an obvious, straight-forward, transparent idea – or even supported it three years ago when Council chair Boucher proposed it: “We request that the Air Force bring an operational F-35A to BIA so residents can judge the noise at landing and take-off for themselves…. I also believe such a visit would be quite popular.”

There is no indication the Air Force ever responded to this request.

Maybe the Question Should Be: Who Gets Hurt if There’s No F-35 Base?

More characteristic of the Air Force practice in this process is that it continues to withhold scoring sheets on which it based its original evaluation of Burlington Airport. While the Air Force has admitted some errors in the scoring, it has stonewalled any opportunity for an outside review.

Among the most active supporters of basing the F-35 in Vermont is a Burlington real estate mogul Ernie Pomerleau, whose firm is one of several that promoted a specious study by the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp., that argued that that the F-35 base would have no significant financial impact on homeowners near the airport in South Burlington.

Speculation in Vermont is that the Pomerleaus and other real estate interests stand to gain directly from depopulating the area around the airport and turning it into a commercial zone for an expanded airport. Pomerleaus are among Leahy’s in-laws.

Senator Sanders, whose support for the F-35 has often been more gingerly than Leahy’s, had this quote in a news item on his website on April 20:

"I’m not sure how accurate the Boston Globe's article really was raising questions about Sen. Leahy’s role. I think he has denied that and I think he’s right. So I don’t agree with the basic tenet of the article. On the other hand I do believe that what we have always wanted is as much input as possible. We are a state where we think people have a right to be heard.”

That doesn’t sound like wagons that are circling.

Update: On April 24, opponents of the F-35 called a press conference in front of Leahy’s office in Burlington. The speakers included a grandmother who has lived next to the airport for 40 years and Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben&Jerry’s Ice Cream. Leahy staffers responded with insults conveyed to reporters.

 Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News 

The rational provided by Senator Leahy to support the F-35 has been exposed by Brian Bender's article in yesterday's Boston Globe. It is an egregious example of the military/industrial/government complex to satisfy the greed and power of the 1%. The article is providing us with an amazing opportunity to complete our work to insure that the F-35 will not be based here in Burlington.

To follow-up on the Globe article, we will meet tomorrow night, Tues Apr 16 in the Winooski School rm 127. Please enter the building using the double doors on the north side of the building. This will be our only agenda item.

This is an exciting time. Please come. We need everyone's input and support.

4/16 @ 7:00 PM Winooski High School room #127 (Enter at double doors at the north of the school complex)

By William Boardman 
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!
-Pete Seeger

According to one of its supporters, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is not “what our troops need,” is “too costly “ and “poorly managed,” and its “present difficulties are too numerous to detail….”

The F-35 is a case study of government failure at all levels – civilian and military, federal, state, local, even airport authority. Not one critical government agency is meeting its obligation to protect the people it presumably represents. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-VT, who wrote the F-35 critique above, is hardly unique as an illustration of how government fails, but he sees no alternative to failure.

Up for re-election in 2014 and long a supporter of basing the F-35 in Vermont, Leahy put those thoughts in a [1]letter[1] to a constituent made public March 13. This is Leahy’s most recent public communication since December 2012, when he refused to meet with opponents of the F-35 and his [2]website[2] listed a page of “public discussion” events mostly from the spring, including private briefings with public officials, without responding to any substantive issues.

The F-35 is a nuclear-capable weapon of mass destruction that was supposed to be the “fighter of the future” when it was undertaken in 2001. Now, more than a decade overdue and more than 100% over budget, the plane is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over its useful life, of which about $400 billion has already been spent.

100TH F-35 BEING BUILT, NONE YET OPERATIONAL

In January, the Lockheed Martin production facility in Fort Worth, Texas, reported it was well along “in the final phase of building the wings” of the 100th F-35 constructed by the Bethesda, Maryland, [3]company[3]. Of the first 99 F-35s, none is yet operational.

The F-35 isn’t even close to fully operational – it can fly only on sunny days. It can’t fly at night. And it can’t fly in clouds or near lightning. We know this because the Pentagon tells us so, in a report written for the Secretary of Defense by the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, J. Michael Gilmore, dated February 15, 2013.

Although some media hyped the [4]report[4] as a “leaked document,” Gilmore clearly expected the report would become public, since he included a description of its wide distribution within the government, concluding with the reminder: “By law, I must provide Congress with any test-related material it requests.”

By March 5, Gilmore’s report was on the internet and giving the Canadian government second thoughts about buying the plane at all. Some 35 other countries are expected to by the F-35, and most of them are also having second thoughts – as is even the U.S. Leahy indicates in his letter that “the jet is too costly to proceed with purchases at today’s planned levels,” which are about 2,400 planes at a currently projected cost of $120 billion each, give or take $30 billion.

Gilmore’s report covers the F-35 training program at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida for two months in the fall of 2012, a program originally scheduled to begin in August 2011, but the F-35 wasn’t ready then. Even a year later, the training program “was limited by the current restrictions of the aircraft.” The program partially trained 4 pilots in 46 days.

IF THE PILOT CAN EJECT, HE’LL BE LUCKY NOT TO DROWN

The report’s executive summary gives a sense of what some of the “current restrictions” of the F-35 are:

* Aircraft operating limitations prohibit flying the aircraft at night or in instrument meteorological conditions, hence pilots must avoid clouds and other weather…. These restrictions are in place because testing has not been completed to certify the aircraft for night and instrument flight.

* The aircraft also is currently prohibited from flying close formation, aerobatics, and stalls, all of which would normally be in the familiarization phase of transition training….

* The F-35A does not yet have the capability to train in these phases, nor any actual combat capability, because it is still early in system development.

* Also, little can be learned from evaluating training in a system this immature….

The radar, the pilot’s helmet-mounted display (HMD), and the cockpit interfaces for controlling the radios and navigational functions should be improved.

The report also notes that the pilot escape system is not yet reliable, especially if a pilot were to eject over water.

On the blog of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Winslow Wheeler takes a closer [5]look[5] at the full report under the headline: “The Air Force’s F-35A: Not Ready for Combat, Not Even Ready for Combat Training.”

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FOR $400 BILLION? SOMETHING THAT WORKS?

So for $400 billion (and counting), the U.S. has bought an “immature system,” a combat fighter still unfit for combat, a plane that has spent much of 2013 grounded for various malfunctions. The General Accounting Office (GOA) report issued this month offers good news of the it’s-not-as-bad-as-it-used-to-be kind, as in the finding that production costs are “trending” downwards toward targets.

The program continues to make design changes in the F-35 at the rate of about 200 per month, even as the plane continues in production, creating what amounts to a permanent process of retrofitting. The GAO projects that F-35 flight testing may be complete some time in 2017 and the plane might not be ready for combat before 2019.

No wonder the F-35 Program Executive Officer, Lt.-General Christopher Bogdan, has expressed dissatisfaction with the companies making the plane. The general, who has been with the program since July 2012 and became director in December, didn’t use the word “profiteering” to call out two major defense contractors for their shoddy-but-profitable performance on the F-35, but he [6]came[6] close:

"What I see Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney [subsidiary of United Technologies Corp.] doing today is behaving as if they are getting ready to sell me the very last F-35 and the very last engine and are trying to squeeze every nickel out of that last F-35 and that last engine…. I want them both to start behaving like they want to be around for 40 years, I want them to take on some of the risk of this program, I want them to invest in cost reductions, I want them to do the things that will build a better relationship. I'm not getting all that love yet."

CONGRESS ISN’T DOING ITS JOB IN THIS AREA, EITHER

Congressional oversight, which is intended to keep debacles like the F-35 from happening, has failed utterly. Instead, according to Leahy who, as the senior Democratic Senator, is the president pro tem of the Senate and third in the line of succession to the Presidency, leadership is no longer possible.

Like the rest of the Vermont Congressional delegation, which includes Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and Rep. Peter Welch, D-VT, Leahy has struck a pose of self-imposed helplessness when is comes to basing the world’s most expensive and not-yet-operational weapons system in the middle of Vermont’s only significant population center, suggesting that the decision is entirely up to the Air Force and civilian control of the military is an outmoded concept of some other America.

At present, the Air Force has twice postponed making a final decision as to whether the F-35 should be based at the Burlington (VT) International Airport, even though the Air Force’s own environmental report warns that the F-35 is four times as loud as current fighters in Burlington, and that this increase in noise is likely to render at lease 1,300 homes – and perhaps more than 3,000 homes -- “unsuitable for residential use.”

None of Vermont’s congressional delegation has addressed these or other serious issues with any intellectual integrity. Welch has no reference to the F-35 on his website and Sanders has nothing more substantive than links to a few brief news stories.

FORMER PROSECUTOR TRUSTS BELIEF OVER EVIDENCE

“I am concerned that some fears have become exaggerated throughout this debate,” Leahy wrote in December, relying on the unscientific, unsupported opinion of an Air Force officer. In the same letter, without providing a factual basis, the former county prosecutor added, “I would strongly oppose basing the F-35 in Vermont if I believed its noise would make Winooski or South Burlington unlivable.”

One commenter on the POGO Blog story wondered: “When will we bring to justice the flag officers and SESs [senior executive service], past and present, who presided over this abortion? Courts martial, criminal indictments, please? And what about the contractor's violations?"

So while some observers are calling for criminal investigations of a boondoggle, Vermont’s congressional delegation is still calling for basing the plane in Burlington.

[1] http://saveourskiesvt.org/a-letter-from-senator-leahy/

[2] http://www.leahy.senate.gov/search/?q=f-35&x=-944&y=-17&access=p&as_dt=i&as_epq=&as_eq=&as_lq=&as_occt=any&as_oq=&as_q=&as_sitesearch=&client=leahy&sntsp=0&filter=0&getfields=title&lr=&num=15&numgm=3&oe=UTF8&output=xml&partialfields=&proxycustom=&proxyreload=0&proxystylesheet=default_frontend&requiredfields=&site=leahy&sitesearch=&sort=date%3AD%3AS%3Ad1&start=0&ud=1

[3] http://wmswwp10.external.lmco.com/us/news/press-releases/2013/january/130130ae_100th-f-35-in-production.html

[4] http://pogoarchives.org/straus/ote-info-memo-20130215.pdf

[5] http://www.pogo.org/blog/2013/03/20130306-air-forces-f-35a-not-ready-for-combat.html

[6] http://www.businessinsider.com/chief-of-dysfunctional-f-35-program-calls-out-the-pentagons-defense-contractors-2013-2

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

"So let me get this straight:- The jet has no lightning protection, the ejection seat may drown the pilot, it's thrust-to-weight ratio has plummeted, its sustained turn performance has been reduced from 5G to 4.5G, 2 of the 3 variants have no gun, none can carry heat-seeking missiles internally, it has poor visibility from the cockpit and pilots struggle to see other aircraft, it has cracks in the engine, it has cracks in its aluminum bulkhead superstructure, its radar doesn't work properly, its helmet mounted sight has a jittery / stuttering display making eye controlled targeting unreliable, its touch-screen sporadically responds, its electro-hydrostatic actuators overheat, its STOVL post-roll actuators overheat, the computer that feeds panoramic display into HMS overheats, its radar causes its nose to glow hot making it very non-stealthy vs enemy jets equipped with FLIR (even the F-22 has been passively detected by Eurofighter's from 50km away with the newest generation FLIR cameras and the F35 is less stealthy than that), its Navy tail-hook doesn't work and still can't land on a carrier as safely as Super Hornets, its stealth skin around the exhaust "peels and bubbles" (reducing rear aspect stealth), its Integrated Power Package fails (one blew up puncturing a nearby fuel tank), its lift-fan (Marine variant) wears out much faster than expected, its fuel dump doesn't work (sprays fuel over the wing reducing stealth & creating a fire hazard upon landing), its EO-DAS has a higher than expected latency, its Night Vision Goggles are worse than some 4.5 Gen jets (20/80 vision vs 20/25 = 3x worse), much higher than expected buffet loads causes huge stress / fatigue to the tail of the jet, automated logistics give false information, it can't use IFF, it can't use aerial refuelling, it can't use the radar to track ground vehicles or ships accurately, it can't take off or land in formation, it can't use real missiles, pilots are not allowed to move the stick or rudder's "too rapidly", and it can't fly supersonic, at night, in the rain or near storms... And this is an "upgrade" to a 1/3rd of the price F-16? Dear God, what a screw-up..."

This is a portion of a letter a friend just received from Senator Leahy:

"...I have heard from a number of Vermonters who have specifically questioned the value of the F-35. The F-35 program has been poorly managed and is a textbook example of how not to buy military equipment. The causes of the F-35 program's present difficulties are too numerous to detail in my response to your letter; however, I believe the F-35 program is approaching a point where the military services and a majority of Congress will recognize that the jet is just too costly to proceed with purchases at today's planned levels. That recognition may lead to a decision to diversify of our future fighter jet fleet, with the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps opting to modernize their current fleet of fighter jets and substantially reduce the total number of F-35s that they plan to buy. I do not believe, because of the huge sums taxpayers have already invested and because the F-35 is our only next-generation aircraft presently in development, that a majority of Congress or military leaders will support terminating the program entirely.

I have pushed and continue to push for a better approach to buying military equipment. I don't think "one size fits all," monolithic, ultra-expensive equipment is what our troops need, but enacting a change to the F-35 program at this stage will require the support of a majority of members of Congress. Please know that I am working to find savings in this program and elsewhere in the Pentagon budget to reinvest that money in other critical areas..."

This is the first time any of the VT reps have spoken this accurately about the F-35 program and Leahy is obviously the King of the Delegation . It is going to be seriously hard for the Senator to stick to the "best for our boys" narrative now that this cat is out of the bag. How can you argue that VTANG "deserves" a program that is "a textbook example of how not to buy military equipment" and whose " present difficulties are too numerous to detail" to say nothing of this barn burner:

"I don't think "one size fits all," monolithic, ultra-expensive equipment is what our troops need."

Wow. I'm agog. Game changer.

By Winslow Wheeler
"AFT VISIBILITY WILL GET THE PILOT GUNNED EVERY TIME" 

On February 15, 2013 the Department of Defense's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) sent a memorandum and accompanying evaluation report to Congress and the DOD hierarchy describing the performance of the F-35A and its support infrastructure at Eglin Air Force Base (FL). There, already skilled Air Force pilots are undergoing a basic syllabus of familiarization training with the aircraft. Not previously in the public domain, the unclassified DOT&E materials are available at the POGO website at http://pogoarchives.org/straus/ote-info-memo-20130215.pdf.

DOT&E's report, titled "F-35A Joint Strike Fighter: Readiness for Training Operational Utility Evaluation," reveals yet more disappointments on the status and performance of the F-35. The Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) is particularly valuable as it focuses on the Air Force's A model of the F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter." Many in the political and think tank world have focused more on the Marine Corps B, or Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL), version or the Navy's C model with its heavier structure and larger wings. While the B and C are even more expensive and lower in performance-on certain key performance dimensions-than the Air Force's A model, this OUE (inadvertently) demonstrates that the A model is also flawed beyond redemption.

While the DOT&E paperwork includes an opening memo and an executive summary, they do not do justice to the detailed findings of the report. Specific issues are discussed below-much of it in quotations and showing the appropriate page number of the text of the evaluation.

RESTRICTIONS IN SOFTWARE, SYSTEMS AND FLIGHT

The currently available software essential to control the aircraft (software Blocks 1A and 1B) is "intended to provide only basic pilot training and has no combat capability. The current aircraft have a number of significant operational restrictions . such as limited maneuvering, speeds, and constrained descent rates; no carriage of weapons, no use of countermeasures, and no opening of weapons bay doors in flight." (p. 1.) Also, ". student pilots were limited in flight maneuvering to very basic aircraft handling, such as simple turns, climbs, and descents as the flight envelope of speed and altitude was limited, angle-of-attack and g-loading were restricted, and maneuvers normally flown during a familiarization phase of a syllabus were explicitly prohibited." (p. 2.)

Table 3-1 (starting on p. 14.) outlines the many limitations. The following are prohibited:

· Descent rates more than 6,000 feet per minute (for reference, Wikipedia shows the F-16C rate of climb to be 50,000 feet per minute);

· Airspeed above 550 knots per hour or Mach 0.9 (not the 1.6 Mach or 1,200 mph Wikipedia says the F-35 is capable of);

· Angle-of-attack (attitude of flight) beyond -5 and +18 degrees (e.g. not the +50 degrees the aircraft is capable of);

· Maneuvering at more than -1 or +5 gs (nowhere near the stated +9g capability);

· Take offs or landings in formation;

· Flying at night or in weather;

· Using real or simulated weapons;

· Rapid stick or rudder movements;

· Air-to-air or air-to-ground tracking maneuvers;

· Refueling in the air;

· Flying within 25 miles of lightning;

· Use of electronic countermeasures;

· Use of anti-jamming, secure communications, or datalink systems;

· Electro-optical targeting;

· Using the Distributed Aperture System of sensors to detect targets or threats;

· Using the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) Interrogator;

· Using the helmet mounted display system as a "primary reference;"

· Use of air-to-air or air-to-ground radar modes for electronic attack, sea search, ground-moving targets or close-in air combat modes. (pp. 14-16.)

In addition, ".the radar system exhibited shortfalls that - if not corrected - may significantly degrade the ability to train and fly safely under a typical transition training syllabus, where an operational radar is required. The radar performance shortfalls ranged from the radar being completely inoperative on two sorties to failing to display targets on one sortie, inexplicably dropping targets on another sortie, and taking excessive time to develop a track on near co-speed targets on yet another sortie." (p. 13.)


"AFT VISIBILITY WILL GET THE PILOT GUNNED EVERY TIME"

A key system of the aircraft, the pilot's multi-million dollar helmet-mounted display (HMD) of the aircraft's operating systems, threats, targets and other information "functioned more or less adequately. [but] presented frequent problems for the pilots." These included "misalignment of the virtual horizon display with the actual horizon, inoperative or flickering displays, and focal problems - where the pilot would have either blurry or 'double vision' in the display. The pilots also mentioned problems with stability, jitter, latency, and brightness of the presentation in the helmet display.." Two of the complaints were basically that elements of the helmet made it harder, not easier, to see outside the aircraft. (pp. 16-17.)

There are additional problems for detecting threats in the all-important visual mode: the ejection seat headrest and canopy "bow" (where the canopy meets the fuselage) are designed in such a way as to impede seeing aircraft to the rear: one pilot commented "A pilot will find it nearly impossible to check [their six o'clock position{to the rear}] under g." Another commented, "The head rest is too large and will impede aft visibility and survivability during surface and air engagements," and "Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned [down] every time," referring to close-range combat. (p. 18.)

Indeed, DOT&E stated explicitly "The out-of-cockpit visibility in the F-35 is less than other Air Force fighter aircraft." (p. 17.)

To summarize in different words, the helmet-mounted display and the F-35 system does not present an enhanced, clearer view of the outside world, targets and threats to the pilot; instead, they present a distorted and/or obstructed view. This is one of the most serious backward steps that the entire F-35 system takes, and it presents an even greater threat to the survivability of the F-35 and its pilot than the astounding evidence of the flammability of the F-35 (all versions) in the recent analysis of another DOT&E report by military analyst Lee Gaillard at Counterpunch at http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/04/when-money-is-no-object-the-strange-saga-of-the-f-35/.

In the event of the pilot needing to escape from the aircraft, there are also some incompletely explained problems with the ejection seat in "off-normal" situations, i.e. those that can occur in combat or even real training. (p. 43.)

"SUSTAINMENT"

While there is little that is more important than pilot and aircraft survivability, additional, almost-as stunning revelations about the F-35A involved its "sustainment"-or reliability, maintainability, and availability.

While the report states "Sustainment of the six Block 1A F-35A aircraft was sufficient to meet the student training sortie requirements of the syllabus" (p. ii.), it further explains that this was despite "generous" Air Force resources and a "hybrid of government and contractor support personnel that relies heavily on workaround procedures, non-standard support procedure, and specialized support equipment to generate sorties and maintain the F-35A fleet.." (p. iv).

Moreover, "the program is not meeting reliability growth targets.." That is to say, it is not as reliable as it should be for this stage of its development. (pp. iv and 27) It is also important to note that this was despite the aircraft lacking many mission systems "which resulted in far fewer failure modes and a narrower scope of demand on the supply chain" than would a combat capable aircraft. (In other words, had more of the F-35's complex components and systems been available for use, the aircraft would have required still more maintenance, with the commensurate, additional loss of reliability and availability. [p. 27])

The as is sustainment numbers were not impressive.

The F-35 program required an air abort rate no greater than 1,000 aborts per 100,000 flight hours to commence F-35A training (p. 27): while they were previously even higher, in late 2012-well after the training started-the aircraft had an air abort rate of 3,600 air aborts per 100,000 flying hours. (p. 28)

Mission aborts while the plane is still on the ground (ground aborts) were also a serious problem: one in seven sortie attempts resulted in a ground abort. (p. 28)

The Air Force wanted the F-35As at Eglin AFB to be available for training missions 33 percent of the time: the equivalent of each aircraft flying one sortie every three days. (pp. 29, 30) By late 2012 this very modest minimum was basically being achieved (p. 29), but certain aircraft at various times during the OUE flew as seldom as one sortie every 7 to 10 days. (pp. 30, 31)

Mean Flight Hours Between Critical Failures (a typical measure of reliability) occurred every four hours, on average-well short of the expected 11 hours at this stage of the F-35's development-and well below the aircraft's ultimate goal of a modest 20 hours. (p. 34) The F-35As at Eglin also failed reliability goals for this stage of development: a major problem was the poor reliability of the complicated, badly performing helmet. (p. 34)

Similar problems occurred on the maintenance time the aircraft required. (pp. 36, 37) For example, the mean elapsed time for an engine removal and installation was 52 hours; the system threshold is 120 minutes. (p. 37)

The aircraft's Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) was limited and required workarounds throughout the operating cycle (p. 38), and it has potential problems in hot weather when air conditioning is not available, which would cause ALIS to shut down altogether. The system was also cumbersome and time consuming. (pp. 39-41)

CONCLUSION
The conclusion is obvious: The F-35A is not viable.

by LEE GAILLARD

On 14 January, very shortly after the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) released its 2012 annual report on progress in various Pentagon programs (including a 16-page section on the F-35), Turkey announced a one-year delay in the purchase of its first two Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Why? "High cost yield" and flight and combat capabilities that "are not at the desired level yet". In short, the F-35 doesn't work and it's too expensive. (See GlobalFlight.)

That's just the tip of the iceberg for what is the most expensive military procurement program in history. While some will argue that the key word in the Turkish statement is "yet", one must ask whether Turkey or the United States and all other partner F-35 nations will ever get what they were initially promised.
Several sources (Aviation Week & Space Technology, FlightGlobal, et al.) have provided briefer summaries of the DOT&E's F-35 annual report. But few examine the implications of what the DoD has published, or ask questions that should have been asked years ago.

For its competition against Boeing's X-32, Lockheed Martin built two X-35 prototypes, the first of which flew on 24 October 2000; the first Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) version flew about six years later, on 15 December 2006. Now, over 12 years since that first flight, roughly 65 F-35 airframes have been delivered-43 of them produced during 2011 and 2012; the 100th aircraft is now on the assembly line.
Not one is combat capable. Even in training flights they face restrictions.

We are dealing with an aircraft that has been produced and tested in fits and starts, hobbled by a massively expensive and ineffective program of what is euphemistically called "concurrent production" where you build, fly, test, repair, redesign, retrofit, re-test-all at the same time, a process patented by R. Goldberg; money is no object.

Part of the problem is, of course, that Lockheed Martin presented us with two versions of what Detroit would call a 'concept car': a one-off only superficially representative design smaller and lighter than the actual fighter of which it was supposed to be a working prototype. The X-35A flew only 27 test flights in the one-month period before its test regimen ended on November 22; the X-35B (converted from the -A) flew 48.9 hours of tests in 66 flights during the roughly six weeks from June 23 to August 6, 2001. And the -C variant's test regime lasted less than a month-from February 12 to March 10, 2001: 73 test flights totaling 58 hours (including 250 carrier-type landings on the runway at Patuxent River; no mention of how successful the arresting hook turned out to be). For the most part, then, test sequences of roughly one month with flights averaging less than an hour each.

Under those conditions, what kind of 'wring-out' testing could these two aircraft do that would reveal future problems with transonic buffet, wing roll off, and the other significant issues that appeared from the start during testing of LRIP aircraft? Thus, when the Pentagon signed on the dotted line for the first lot of LRIP F-35s, it was buying an untested, larger, heavier paper design that hugely increased risks in any 'concurrent production' program. We are now facing the consequences.

F-35 Lightning in flight.For all F-35 versions, according to the DOT&E report, the pilot's helmet-mounted display system doesn't work; the F-35C is not yet carrier-qualified because the tail hook didn't work, had to be redesigned, and only now is being re-tested; the ejection seat in all models would put pilots at serious risk in any non-level flight mode above 500 knots (i.e., most dogfight scenarios); since flight control software is itself still under development, the computerized flight control system lacks crucial intended capabilities; key structural components have cracked and require redesign. The list goes on. Yet Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth plant keeps churning out F-35s in all their defective glory. And those aircraft already produced now need retrofits of software and flight critical hardware.
Let's take a closer look.

Structural Problems
In the recently released DOT&E report on 2012 F-35 testing and development, we observe that:
* High-speed high-altitude flight results in delamination and heat damage to the horizontal stabilizers and their stealth coatings (pages 30, 32, and 33 in the DOT&E report; all further numbers in parentheses refer to this report);
* A cracked wing carry-through bulkhead (36) halted durability testing for over a year until it could be analyzed and repaired;
* Weakness in the auxiliary air inlet doors on the -B version led to redesign and retesting and time lost (32);
* A crack was found in a forward rib of the F-35A's right wing root-in addition to the similar crack reported on in the FY11 DOT&E Annual Report (36);
* A crack was found in the right engine thrust mount shear web (37);
* Multiple cracks appeared in the lower fuselage bulkhead flange (37), effectively halting F-35B testing;
* All this in addition to earlier cracks discovered in the -B's right side fuselage support frame as well as under a wing where a pylon and its weapon get attached (37)-and yet another in an internal support structure.All may require redesigning of parts and subsequent added weight (since strengthening weak parts often involves adding mass to the component as part of the redesign) when for two of the F-35 versions there is less than a one-percent weight gain margin left for the entire remaining development process, and only a one percent margin available to the F-35C. "Managing weight growth with such small margins will continue to be a significant program challenge" (32); that's an understatement. Then there's the issue of retrofit to aircraft already delivered and others on the production line. (There are, of course, other structural issues not listed here-such as the drive shaft for the lift fan (31), now undergoing its second redesign, plus damaged door attachments (31), etc., etc.) Trenchant DOT&E observation: "Results of findings from structural testing highlight the risks and costs of concurrent production with development" (37).
Some obvious questions:
* Why yet another 'spiral development/concurrent production' program when the same kinds of major problems and expenses had appeared years earlier with the V-22 Osprey during whose development 30 Marines were killed? (Not to mention our similar 'concurrent development' fiasco involving the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS): as Rear Adm. Tom Rowden wrote recently in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, "In the interest of quick delivery to the fleet, ship design began before requirements were finalized, and building started before designs were stable." No wonder the Navy has conceded that "LCS vessels are only rated for Combat 1+ levels-lower than a tanker" [as quoted by Mike Fabey in Aviation Week's January 28, 2013 Defense Technology Edition]. Pathetic. Reminiscent of the current barely Block 1 training capabilities of the F-35?
* What was missing from wind tunnel tests and 3D computer modeling studies of flow, weight, and stress that permitted the cracking found in that wing carry-through bulkhead and other basic structural weaknesses to get through?
* Why weren't two representative pre-production aircraft put through the wringer with several months of test flights to find these areas of stress and their causes before completion of final design and authorization of Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP)?Performance Shortfall
Performance-where the chickens come home to roost. The intended performance envelope for the F-35 is, roughly speaking: altitude capability of 50,000 feet; 700 kts./Mach 1.6 airspeed; maximum g rating of 9.0 (-A), 7.0 (-B), 7.5 (-C) ; turn performance of 5.3 sustained g's (-A), 5.0 sustained g's (-B), and 5.1 sustained g's (-C); acceleration from Mach O.8 to Mach 1.2 intended to be within 65 seconds (See Aviation Week.); angle of attack (AoA) capability to 50 degrees.

At the moment, however, this all seems wishful thinking. Undeveloped software, combined with disappointing results in real-world flight tests ("results of air vehicle performance and flying qualities evaluations" (30) ) have triggered flight restrictions and rolled back overly optimistic Key Performance Parameters (KPPs). For these and a variety of conditions that should not be occurring, flights are limited to top speeds of 550 (not 700) kts. (38) and altitudes of 39,000 feet (38) rather than 50,000 feet; AoA to be no greater than 18 degrees (vs. 50 degrees).as well as the imposition of other "aircraft operating limitations that are not suitable for combat" (38). KPPs for sustained g's in a turn have been weakened-by 20 percent for the -A (5.3 down to 4.6)(30), by 10 percent for the -B (5.0 down to 4.5) (32), and by 2 percent for the -C (5.1 down to 5.0) (33). Transonic acceleration from Mach 0.8 to M. 1.2 suffers significantly: with the -A version, it takes 8 seconds longer; 16 seconds longer with the -B; and a worrisome 43 seconds longer with the -C.an increase of about two thirds. Although the F-35 is essentially a strike aircraft, acceleration capability could be critical in combat.

Transonic roll-off (where one wing loses lift sooner than the other when a shock wave forms at the top of the wing as the airflow reaches the local speed of sound) and buffet (or shaking of the entire aircraft) as more surfaces form shock waves and boundary layer flow becomes turbulent-both were more serious than expected in the -B and -C versions, especially with the latter, whose wingspan is greater than that of the other variants: another possible problem in a combat situation.
Some fighter pilots offered their comments on FlightGlobal: " 'What an embarrassment, and there will be obvious tactical implications,' another highly experienced fighter pilot says. '[It's] certainly not anywhere near the performance of most fourth and fifth-generation aircraft.

'At higher altitudes, the reduced performance will directly impact survivability against advanced Russian-designed "double-digit" surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems such as the Almaz-Antey S-300PMU2 (also called the SA-20 Gargoyle by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the pilot says. At lower altitudes, where fighters might operate in the close air support or forward air control role, the reduced airframe performance will place pilots at increased risk against shorter-range SAMs and anti-aircraft artillery" ( See GlobalFlight).

A few questions:
Why didn't earlier wind tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamic modeling predict problems involved in maintaining intended sustained g's in a turn?

Why was not poor F-35 transonic acceleration also predicted-especially for the F-35C, whose eight feet greater wingspan contributes to the significantly larger Mach Cone (the zone of disturbed air behind the shock wave system generated by an aircraft at supersonic speed) that must be dragged during the transonic regime?

Why was there not greater fuselage application of area rule (that pinched waist so visible on the ubiquitous T-38 supersonic trainer), that brilliant 1950s design breakthrough by aerodynamicist Richard Whitcomb specifically to minimize transonic drag?

For the -B model, the lift fan may have prevented such a waist pinch. But why have this tail wag the dog, mandating that commonality be based on the least aerodynamic of the three variants when fuselage area rule could well have been applied to the -A and -C versions, establishing a common baseline design of improved transonic efficiency and performance across the 2243 aircraft intended (in current projections) for the Air Force and the Navy-plus all international customers not intending to order the specialized STOVL version that will be produced in the smallest numbers? Pinched-waist commonality would seem to make sense for the vast portion of the fleet numbering more than four times the 540 -B variants tentatively listed for the Marine Corps and the Royal Navy. As it is, given unique differences in wingspan and arresting gear requirements and STOVL mechanical provisions, each version already differs from the other two versions. Commonality? But applying area rule to 75 per cent of F-35s produced would have added commonality where it is most needed, cutting transonic acceleration time while improving combat efficiency, range, and speed.

Weapons and Guidance Glitches
Most weapons tested for compatibility and safe release have worked so far, but under 1-g conditions in level flight. Have possible wind tunnel-based concerns about post-release unstable airflow around wing and fuselage attachment locations prevented more combat-realistic testing under higher g's and in banking or diving modes?

Then there's the high-tech computer-linked helmet-mounted display system that will control these weapons (already in use with other aircraft and in other air forces)-classified as "deficient". Doesn't work. Why? "Expected capabilities that were not delivered" (35) include latency problems with the distributed aperture system (DAS) in the helmet-mounted video display. Latency-some call it 'transport time'-is the time between aircraft sensors' signal acquisition and its transmission and projection in readable format on the pilot's helmet video display. Currently at .133 seconds, that time delay of over an eighth of a second then has to be added to the pilot's additional physical response time of about .15 seconds if he or she is to react to the data displayed and launch a weapon. In dogfights with closing speeds of over 1000 knots, this cumulative delay of more than a quarter of a second can be potentially fatal, and the latency-derived .133 second margin of error in initial aim point stands as an unacceptable contributor to this dangerous combat deficiency. Then add in deficient "night vision acuity," excessive jitter that degrades data and images, inconsistent bore sight alignment, distracting "green glow" seepage from other avionics, imagery and data unable to be recorded (35). So-those high-tech air-to-air missiles and guided bombs cannot even be launched.

And the 25mm four-barrel rotating cannon with its 180 shells? Intended only for the Air Force F-35A version; -B and -C versions have no cannon, but will require external gun pods mounted by ground crews. Why did F-35 designers intentionally ignore the F-4 dogfighting débacle in Vietnam? The F-4-with no internal cannon and radar-guided Sparrow missiles that did not work at short range-could not shoot down the MiG-17s and MiG-21s thrown against them. Gun pods then provided a poor interim solution before the F-4E was redesigned to carry an internal 20mm cannon.

Now we have the F-35-"F" for its "Fighter" role, although it seems primarily an expensive attempt to replace early model F/A-18s and the Marines' subsonic AV-8B Harrier II STOVL aircraft in their ground attack roles. (Ironically, what Hussein's tank crews feared most was the A-10 Warthog with its GAU-8/A Avenger seven-barrel 30mm cannon, which tore them to bits from above, where their armor was thinnest.)
Why, then, in the DOT&E report are there no results listed from airborne firing tests of the F-35A's cannon? If there have not yet been such tests, has a qualifying 25mm shell even been chosen? (We remember what inappropriate propellant selection did to M-16 rifle performance in Vietnam.) Such testing early on will be crucial in determining the effect of recoil shock on the aircraft's structure and engine operation. Not to mention effects of the muzzle blast and combustion gasses on adjacent stealth coatings given that heat from air friction and radiational heating from the afterburner seemed to do such a job on the skin and coatings of the horizontal stabilizers.

No discussion. So-cannon not tested and other external and internally carried weapons for all practical purposes unlaunchable because of "deficient" sighting system available to pilots, thus rendering all F-35s produced so far as little more than expensive aerial targets for their adversaries.

Vulnerability Increased, Combat Survivability Jeopardized
* In the live fire test and evaluation, "None of the F-35 variants met the operational requirement for the HEI threat" posed by fragments and damage from a 30mm high explosive incendiary (HEI) shell (41). The Mirage 2000, MiG-29, and the Su-27 and its derivatives (these in service with a number of countries)-and the T-50/PAK-FA shaped for stealth and now in development-all carry 30mm cannon and could be considered potential adversaries for the F-35.?* But, given the F-35's basic design, it's not just 30mm shells that pose a threat: any 20mm, 7.62mm, 5.56mm round from the ground or fragments from the smallest of shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles penetrating the F-35's skin could trigger catastrophic loss of aircraft. The -A and -C variants have massive volumes of fuel surrounding the engine inlets, and the 270-volt electrical system provides ample charge for a fatal spark in the air/fuel mixture. Since the fuel is also being used as a heat sink to cool avionics and other systems (and has considerable trouble doing so on hot summer days), it is already at an elevated temperature. Furthermore, this pre-heated and volatile fuel is being used as the operating liquid in the -B's "fueldraulic system" that swivels the extremely hot engine exhaust nozzle during STOVL mode. (Eaton supplies the VDRP fueldraulic boost pump and the 4000 psi hydraulic power generation system.) What happens when a stray rifle bullet nicks a fueldraulic line and raw fuel sprays at 4000 psi into the broiling engine bay next to the 1500-1700 degree exhaust nozzle??* All F-35 models rely on a highly computerized fly-by-wire flight control system, with primary avionics bays nested in the lower forward fuselage-where they are most susceptible to ground fire. With even one hit to that flight control computer, the pilot immediately loses control of the aircraft and must eject.
*And that poses a further problem: the Air Force found the early LRIP pilot escape system to be a "serious risk" since "interactions between the pilot, the ejection seat, and the canopy during the ejection sequence .are not well understood" (38). So-don't get into a dogfight with MiG-29s or Mirage 2000s or Su-27s or PAK-FAs or any other fighter armed with 30mm cannon, and don't bail out if you survive their cannon fire? (We are reminded of equivalent survivability issues with the MV-22 Osprey, which cannot autotrotate to a safe landing if both engines fail, nor has it ever been tested in a power-out dead-stick landing: its glide ratio is abysmal, its fuselage is brittle (composites), and it has no crew ejection seats; yet it's been in full production for the Marines and the Air Force for several years.)F-35B: STOVL Missions Raise Risks
That the F-35B's lift fan system remains untested against live fire while in operation (when its rotating blades would be most failure prone) is probably irrelevant since AV-8B Harrier II-type vertical landings on unprepared surfaces just behind front lines will be problematic at best and even downright dangerous for the F-35B. Despite best USMC intentions regarding close air support and the F-35B's specialized STOVL capabilities, discussions had already begun three years ago on ways to "limit heat damage to carrier decks and other surfaces," very possibly leading to "severe F-35 operating restrictions and or costly facility upgrades, repairs or both" (http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/07/19/jsf-heat-woes-being-fixed-trautman/). Indeed, Bill Sweetman (in his Ares blog for Aviation Week) quotes from a Navy report issued in January of 2010 which "outlines what base-construction engineers need to do to ensure that the F-35B's exhaust does not turn the surface it lands on into an area-denial weapon. And it's not trivial. Vertical-landing 'pads will be exposed to 1700 deg. F and high velocity (Mach 1) exhaust,' the report says. The exhaust will melt asphalt and 'is likely to spall the surface of standard airfield concrete pavements on the first VL.' (The report leaves to the imagination what jagged chunks of spalled concrete will do in a supersonic blast field.)" Heat-resistant reinforced concrete, special sealants.the list goes on. And what about that unprepared field, where debris thrown up and sucked into the intakes as the F-35B touches down causes incapacitating foreign object damage (FOD) to the aircraft's engine? And what would be long-term effects on carrier decks? Not a pleasant scenario. Discussion of these problems-and their solutions-do not appear in the 2012 DOT&E report.

F-35C: Carrier Capabilities in Jeopardy
Carrier capability is currently nonexistent: the F-35C is therefore unable to perform carrier-based missions for which it was designed.
* Arresting hook: not operational-could not catch the cable and had to be entirely redesigned. A basic design issue is that the distance between the F-35C's main landing gear (MLG) and the tail hook is too short, providing insufficient time after passage of the main wheels over the wire for it to bounce up and be snagged by the hook. The new hook, with a sharper point, is now being tested on an arresting cable-equipped runway simulating a carrier deck. Unfortunately, these tests have been less than fully successful. In addition, the situation has now morphed into a systems engineering issue in that a recent study shows "higher than predicted loads" (39) being passed from the hook to the airframe. Will further cracking soon occur in key support frames to which the hook system is attached, requiring additional redesign of basic structure and adding yet more weight?
* Significant carrier landing approach problems: when "30 degrees of flaps are required to meet the KPP for maximum approach speed of 145 knots at required carrier landing weight" (33), poor handling qualities result; a 15-degree flap setting improves handling (33) but raises approach speed above the KPP limit. (And higher touch-down speed will further degrade arresting cable bounce time needed for the arresting hook even as it further increases stress on the aircraft's tail hook mounting points.)* The need for 43 additional seconds to accelerate from Mach .8 to Mach 1.2 (33), along with more severe transonic buffeting and wing roll off than in the other two variants, suggests that the -C has become essentially a subsonic aircraft in both air-intercept and ground-attack modes.* Tactical data transfer: doesn't work-pilot cannot transfer video data or crucial recorded mission data to the carrier's intelligence system, and the carrier cannot receive Link 16 datalink imagery transmissions (39).* Maintenance Repair & Overhaul (MRO) datalink: inoperable-"design of the JSF Prognostic Health Maintenance downlink is incomplete" (39)-as are so many other software-reliant systems. (How do you deliver an aircraft-or more than 65 of them-when basic parts or systems have not yet even been designed?!) Result? An efficient pre-landing prognostic maintenance transmission becomes a lengthy and inefficient post-mission diagnostic analysis. And, as in so many other time-consuming cases with the F-35, once design is complete, more time will have to be wasted in regression testing of the revised system for all versions of this aircraft (see below for further examples).In short, it would seem that the Navy has a 5th-generation 'supersonic' carrier-based strike fighter that struggles in the transonic regime, has significant speed or handling problems during landing approach, is currently equipped with a tail hook that does not work, and-once on board-cannot download crucial mission data or essential maintenance requirements.
* Mission Availability, Reliability, and Maintenance With this Prognostic Health Maintenance datalink inoperable, the degrading of efficient MRO operations has an obvious impact on subsequent aircraft reliability. Meanwhile, concurrent development has forced the incorporation of other unproven and immature subsystems into the overall JSF systems package with predictable results on reliability. Mean flight hours between flight critical failure were 40 percent below expectations for the F-35A, 30 percent below for the F-35B, and 16 percent below for the F-35C (41).* Corrective measures related to these critical failures? The F-35A's mean corrective maintenance time is 2 to 3 times the period allotted. For the -B, it's 78 percent more than time allowed, and 65 percent over for the -C (42). Massive immaturity of the Joint Technical Data (JTD) maintenance program and the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) require multiple workarounds (42) by the maintenance crew and further compromise aircraft availability, causing frustrating additional operational delays. Indeed, regarding those USMC F-35Bs deployed to Yuma, AZ: "Without a certified and functional ALIS system, the aircraft are essentially inoperable" (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/senior-f-35-official-warns-on-software-breakdowns-relationship-crisis-376590/).It's little surprise that the Air Force's Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) that ran for two months from September through November, 2012, "included no combat capabilities" (27) because the overall system itself was still under development and so immature that "little can be learned about operating and sustaining the F-35 in combat operations from this evaluation" (27). But they did discover the disconcerting impact of the critical failures and maintenance problems listed above:
* Mission availability rate for the F-35A consequently averaged less than 35 percent, "meaning three of nine aircraft were available on average at any given time" (38);* And for those 'available' aircraft, reports from the field at Eglin indicate that pre-flight prep for the F-35 requires roughly 44-50 maintenance man-hours, close to double the total maintenance man-hours per flight hour for the F-16.* Despite that extended pre-flight prep, cumulative air abort rates for both the -A and -B variants averaged roughly five aborts per 100 flight hours-despite the "goal of 1.0 air abort per 100 flight hours as a threshold to start an evaluation of the system's readiness for training" (author emphasis; 38). Readiness for combat? Not mentioned.Software: The Noose That's Strangling the F-35
In a nutshell, the software just isn't ready. We're no longer climbing into P-51s. Since at least the F-16, software has been absolutely essential for onboard computer systems that maintain stability of fly-by-wire aircraft whose design intentionally places them on the thin edge of instability to permit almost instantaneous change in flight path-crucial in a high-speed dogfight or in avoiding a SAM. Without such computers and software, pilots cannot control the aircraft.

Now take the F-35 and all its automated functions-from helmet-cued weapon sighting to datalink sensor transmissions to other aircraft and.the list goes on. It is said that the F-22 Raptor, the F-35's older brother, has 2.2 million lines of computer code; a recent estimate for the F-35's Block 3 (combat capable) mission systems software postulates that the aircraft's own computers will harbor approximately 8.6 million lines of software code-not counting even higher requirements in related ground systems. Yet "Block 3i software, required for delivery of Lot 6 aircraft and hosted on an upgraded processor, has lagged in integration and laboratory testing" (34). Block 2B software is what is required for only the most basic "initial, limited combat capability for selected internal weapons (AIM-120C, GBU-32/31, and GBU-12)" (34), yet DOT&E admits that "the program made virtually no progress in the development, integration, and laboratory testing of any software beyond 2B" (author emphasis; 34)-i.e., no tangible progress toward anything resembling real combat capability. In the wishful thinking department, full combat System Design and Development capability is tentatively scheduled for Block 3F software to be installed starting with production Lot 9 (34), which means on airframe number 214 at the earliest.possibly sometime in 2017. As for that Block 3i software, those Lot 6 aircraft are already on the assembly line (starting with airframe number 96); while delivery may begin in 2014, don't hold your breath: given program history to date, this mission software may well not be ready and Lot 6 aircraft will be in danger of being undeployable-not much better than 'hangar queens' so often grounded for other glitches. (Will Turkey have waited long enough?)

How bad is it? It's all summarized in that Pentagon report: "Flight restrictions blocked accomplishment of a portion of the planned baseline test points until a new version of vehicle systems software became available" (33). And when it comes to internal weapons release and guidance, "basic mission systems capabilities, such as communications, navigation, and basic radar functions" (34), and more-fully coded software is essential. Yet aircraft are being delivered with major variances that defer testing and add "a bow wave of test points that will have to be completed in the future" (34), while such regressive testing of systems that should have been tested earlier but were forced to be deferred massively complicates any results-based linear (not concurrent) testing and development program. At the time of the report's release, even the minimal capability of Block 1 software included in delivered aircraft was deficient by 20 percent (34). Block 2A software was delivered to flight test four months late and 50 percent deficient (34). Let the report speak for itself: "Testing needed for completion of the remaining 20 percent of Block 1 capabilities and 50 percent of Block 2A capabilities will have to be conducted while the program is introducing Block 2B software to flight test. Software integration tasks supporting Block 2B (and later increments) were delayed in 2012 as contractor software integration staff were needed to support Block 2A development, test, and anomaly resolution" (35). So much for any attempt to install mission and flight control software in any logical sequence where later and more complex versions can build on a foundation of previously installed systems. And that's just a small sampling. Sounds like absolute chaos.

Who is the supervisor for software development? For software integration? Why haven't they been replaced?

Better yet, why hasn't software development and integration, at this point, been transferred to a different vendor?

These seem to be some basic questions that no one is asking.

Equally depressing news has appeared in previous Pentagon annual reports on the F-35, and surely these reports have been distributed to members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
Why have they taken no action regarding the mismanagement of the most massive and expensive military procurement program in our history?

More important, when will they start to do so?

Lee Gaillard holds degrees from Yale University and Middlebury College. He served in the Marine Corps Reserve, worked in publishing for Time-Life International in New York, in industry as a senior product marketing specialist for the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductor assembly equipment, and in secondary education as teacher, department head, and school administrator. In 2002, Gaillard attended the Royal Institute of International Affairs defense conference in London, U.K.: "Europe and America: A New Strategic Partnership," subsequently writing two related articles that appeared in Defense News. After Airways Magazine (July 2005) published his examination of the National Transportation Safety Board's flawed investigation of the American Airlines Flight 587 disaster, he served as a consultant to "Airline Cracks," a documentary on load-bearing composite structures in commercial jetliners, telecast by ITV-West (Bristol, U.K.) on Oct. 4, 2005. In 2006, the Center for Defense Information published his monograph on the V-22 Osprey.
Gaillard has been writing about aviation and defense issues for over 25 years. His more than 100 articles and book reviews have appeared in newspapers, professional journals, and magazines around the country-on topics ranging from the role of luck in the Battle of Midway (Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS) to "Submarine Design: Aeroengineering Dimensions" (Submarine Review) and the V-22 Osprey's readiness for combat (Jane's Defence Weekly). He is listed in recent editions of Who's Who in America and is a contributor to the Straus Military Reform Project.

For further information contact:
Jim Dumont 802 453-7011(o) 802 349-7342(c)
James Marc Leas 802 864-1575

Town Meeting Day in Burlington
Launching--for next year's town meeting--a ballot item petition to stop the F-35!

Outside Mater Christi School (Ward 1 polling location)
100 Mansfield Ave, Burlington
Town Meeting Day
Tuesday March 5
9:00 am

Launching the petition drive and collecting the first signatures on the petition (see below for text of resolution)
News conference 9:00 to 9:30am to launch the petition drive Speakers include Attorney Jim Dumont
and Burlington, Winooski, South Burlington, and Williston neighbors in the zone the Air Force says will be rendered "unsuitable for residential use"

We have nearly 10 months to collect the signatures for next year's town meeting. Most signature gathering will be delayed until after the Air Force decision and then only if the Air Force selects Burlington. But launching now is important because the petition and the resolution can influence the Air Force not to select Burlington.

The voters of Burlington do have the power to stop the Pentagon plan to base the F-35 at the airport!
This is because Vermont law provides that the people must vote on airport expenditures (see text of the law below). If approved by the voters the resolution provided in the petition effectively prevents the basing of the F-35 at the Burlington airport. We can win this vote.

Here is why this strategy can work
The F-35 issue is not a matter of federal preemption--it is a simple landlord/tenant issue--the City of Burlington is the landlord of the airport and the Air Guard is the tenant.

Any landlord can tell her tenant not to make noise!

If the landlord permits her tenant to make so much noise that other homes are rendered "unsuitable for residential use" the landlord can be held liable for the damages.

In 2005 62.4% of the voters in Burlington voted to "support our soldiers in Iraq, and the best way to support them is to bring them home now and take good care of them when they get home." The resolution won in all 7 wards of the city. It won at a time when a city sponsored resolution regarding the YMCA was voted down. Merely launching this petition will put the decision makers in the Air Force on notice that their decision as to basing is subject to review by the people of Burlington. Along with public events and legal initiatives--all based on facts provided by the Air Force itself in its draft Environmental Impact Statement--launching the resolution before the Air Force makes its decision may help the decision makers in the Air Force to decide not to choose Burlington.

5 VSA § 606. Vote; income; issuance of notes or bonds
An airport or landing field shall not be established or constructed, or equipped, maintained, or improved from time to time by a municipality, acting either singly or jointly with one or more other municipalities, unless and until a proposition therefor fixing the maximum amount which may be expended thereunder by such municipality for such establishment, construction, equipment, or improvement has been submitted to an annual or special meeting of the municipality and adopted by a majority vote of the qualified voters voting thereon.

Text of the resolution: Petition for annual or special meeting to stop basing of F-35 at Burlington International Airport
“Shall the voters of the City of Burlington approve a resolution to stop the basing of the F-35 at Burlington International Airport in view of the following facts:

∙ The F-35 is more than 4 times louder than the F-16. F-16 noise has already caused blocks of abandoned and demolished homes in South Burlington--at a cost of $39 million. The F-35 will put 3000 more homes in the noise zone the Air Force says is “incompatible with residential use.”

∙ Burlington owns the airport and has authority to prevent such damaging actions by its military tenants. Burlington voters have authority under Vermont law to set the airport budget to ensure that no more homes need be demolished.

Therefore, pursuant to Vermont statutory authority 5 VSA 606:

So as to prevent the basing of the F-35 at the airport, and to support the Vermont Air Guard’s own stated mission, “to protect life and property” and “add value to our communities,” no more than one dollar may be spent for construction, equipment and improvement of Burlington International Airport so long as F-35 jets are regularly based at this airport.”

A report produced by the Stop-the-F35 Coalition

Introduction

If the F-35 is based at Burlington International Airport, thousands of people
in the surrounding communities will be exposed to high levels of noise
pollution. The scientific consensus that has emerged over the past ten years
demonstrates that noise pollution at the level anticipated in most of
Winooski, and large parts of S. Burlington, and Williston—a 65 dB average
daily noise level—is associated with cardiovascular disease and cognitive
impairment in children. The scientific community now regards the evidence as
sufficient—the term used to indicate the highest level of confirmation in
scientific research—to establish the connection between noise pollution and
disease.

Extreme noise has direct and involuntary physiological effects. It increases
levels of stress hormones and neurotransmitters that raise blood pressure,
leading to cardiovascular disease in adults and children. There are further
implications for children because their brains are in the process of
development.

Over 20 studies have shown negative effects of noise on reading and memory in
children: epidemiological studies report effects of chronic noise exposure.
Exposure during critical periods of learning at school can impair development
and have a lifelong effect on educational attainment. The WHO estimates that
50% of the children in the 65 dB noise zone will suffer cognitive impairment.
Additionally, altering neurotransmitter levels can lead to psychiatric
disorders later in life for these children.

The Air Force, in the F-35A Draft Environmental Impact Statement, does not
acknowledge the severity of the risk because it unjustifiably rejects the 65
dB health effect threshold. Instead, the Air Force inaccurately proposes a 75
dB threshold, claiming that few if any health effects would result from the
F-35. How does the Air Force justify a higher threshold? It relies on
outdated studies and ignores the last decade of research.

While F-35 proponents downplay health effects, they do acknowledge
“community concern” and they have an answer to this concern: mitigation.
They say that once the planes are here, efforts will be made to mitigate the
noise impact.

But no credible plan, with the exception of avoidance (rejecting the planes),
has been proposed or implemented, here or elsewhere, that would even begin to
adequately reduce the noise. Homes are currently being torn down in South
Burlington as a result of F-16 noise, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of
mitigation measures. In the case of the F-35, tearing down the 3,000 homes in
the projected noise zone and displacing the 8,500 residents is not a
realistic or acceptable option. Mitigation is an empty promise.

Read The Full Report:
http://www.stopthef35.com/sites/default/files/F-35%20Health%20Report.pdf

By William Boardman 
Grounded yet again by the Pentagon as unsafe to fly, the Air Force’s most expensive warplane, the experimental F-35 nuclear-capable stealth bomber is under increasing attack around the country, but especially in Vermont where citizens trying to protect local health and welfare are taking actions against the Air Force in federal court, in the state legislature, and before a state environmental board.

The F-35, a weapon of mass destruction with a lifetime cost of $1.5 trillion dollars, has already cost the U.S. some $400 billion and is considered a target of opportunity by some budget cutters and deficit reducers. With the March 1 sequester focusing minds across the federal government, a fancy warplane plane with outdated technology and an obsolete mission, is looking like an easy way to save more than $500 billion, especially if it can’t fly anyway.

Others suggest that the world’s most expensive weapons system is “Too Big to Kill, even though it’s a decade behind schedule and 100% over budget, with both measures getting worse. And as the Pentagon acknowledges, the country would be getting less for its money with the final plane, since it can’t meet its promised performance specifications. For the second time in a year, the Pentagon has lowered F-35 specs to a level the brass hope the plane will be able to meet. .

And even as some national media like Time bring more attention to the failures of the F-35 program to live up to its promise in performance, cost, or delivery, a group of dedicated Vermonters are fighting their state and federal leadership to prevent hundred of Vermont homes from being destroyed as surely as if the F-35 had bombed them into oblivion.

Air Force Refuses to Reveal Relevant Data

For almost a year, the Air Force has refused to reveal relevant data that it used to pick Burlington, Vermont, as one of its top choices for basing the F-35, even though the Air Force’s own published analysis demonstrates that Burlington will suffer more than any other location socially, economically, and environmentally from any F-35 base established at the Burlington Airport, which is owned by Burlington, but actually located in two other cities that have no say in how it’s run.

For almost a year, Vermonters have appealed to the state’s Congressional delegation, all Democrats, to meet with them, review the issues, get the hidden data from the Air Force. Both U.S. Senators, Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, as well as Vermont’s lone Congressman Peter Welch, have all endorsed the F-35 without showing any detailed understanding of the program. They have all refused to meet with opponents who have spent years studying the issue. They have been unwilling or unable to shake loose the information the Air Force holds secret.

Now the issue is before the United States District Court for the District of Vermont, where four plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to order the Air Force to release the relevant material. The complaint describes a pattern of Air Force stonewalling since the plaintiffs’ first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 5 U.S.C. 552) request in mid-September 2012, as the Air Force, delayed, missed its own promised deadlines, and ultimately denied the request, and then repeated the pattern when considering the plaintiffs’ appeal.

With the Air Force saying it would decide the F-35 decision in the near future, the plaintiffs waited till mid-February for a decision on their FOIA request appeal. Having heard nothing further from the Air Force since mid-December, the parties took their case to federal court.

Comparison Depends on Seeing All Scoring Sheets

Although the Air Force provided some material in the plaintiffs’ initial request, the Air Force has refused to comply with this part of the request:

“Please provide copies of the scoring sheets used to rate each potential site for basing the F-35s, including but not limited to the Burlington Airport.”

The Air Force had released the Burlington scoring sheets to Senator Sanders in June 2012, and he had shared them with some constituents, but in response to the FOIA request for scoring sheets, the Air Force provided only blank pages – 205 of them.

Explaining the importance of seeing all the scoring sheets for all the locations, the federal complaint stated:

“… the scoring sheet for the Burlington International Airport was released to United States Senator Bernard Sanders, who provided it to members of the public. The scores assigned included purely factual information such as whether there are homes within the noise and safety areas and such as the total score assigned to each of the other airports.

“The scores released for Burlington are unambiguously erroneous -- at the Burlington site, there are thousands of such homes but the scoring sheet erroneously stated there are none.

“The total score Burlington received thus may have put it at the top of the chart – in error. Thus it is necessary for the public to compare Burlington’s total score, which was released, to those of its competitors, which have not been.”

Air Force Neither Admits Nor Denies Errors

The Air Force has not publicly responded to or corrected its manifest error on the scoring sheet, even though its environmental impact report does not make the same error. The federal complaint also criticizes the Air Force for releasing some scoring sheets but not others, calling this a violation of the law:

“…there is no basis upon which the Air Force may lawfully refuse to produce the scoring sheets or any part of them, having released the Burlington scores….

“The decision to release only the Burlington scores transgresses the rule that ‘FOIA was designed to preclude a government agency from cherry-picking the materials to be made public. FOIA operates on the premise that government will function best if its warts as well as its wonders are available for public review.’ “

The Air Force is expected to answer the federal complaint by mid-April. The Air Force has also indicated it would announce a decision about the F-35 basing some time in the spring, although it has postponed that announcement twice already.

Meanwhile, it remains a fact on the ground that if the F-35 base were to become a reality, it would be in the in the midst of Vermont’s only urban area, where it would render upwards of 1,300 current residences “unfit for residential use.”

Vermont’s Democratic leadership – Leahy, Sanders, and Welch, as well as governor Peter Shumlin, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, and various Democratic state legislature have all expressed “concern” about the people whose homes will become uninhabitable due to jet noise – but none of them has yet shown any public interest in knowing the exact number of houses or the people who live there.

Committee on Military Considers F-35 Relevance

Appearing before the Vermont House Committee on General, Housing & Military Affairs on February 14, attorney James Marc Leas presented himself as a candidate for the open position of Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard and addressed the F-35 basing question which affects the future mission of the Vermont Guard. He urged the committee to hold hearings and make recommendations regarding the F-35 before the Air Force announces its decision.

Leas held up a copy of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement that the Air Force paid $2 million to produce and emphasized that its is this document that provides the fact that are used by opponents of the F-35. Urging the committee to address the facts, he noted that

“It’s the Air National Guard that won’t discuss the facts that are in here and that are devastating to the people of Winooski, Williston, Burlington and South Burlington….

“The Guard has a mission statement, and I think the challenge for the Guard is to implement its own mission statement, which says that it will protect lives and property in Vermont, and that it will contribute to the community, and that it will protect the health and safety of Vermonters. That’s the mission statement of the Vermont National Guard.

“Having a National Guard that is attempting to bring in an airplane, that it knows from its own environmental impact statement – that it refuses to discuss – is going to destroy almost 3,000 homes and is going to tear up the lives of more than 6,000 people in Vermont is not consistent with that mission….

He urged the committee to hold hearings on the issue, as well as two resolutions submitted by legislators and referred to this committee, one resolution supporting the F-35 and the other suggesting that the state take the time to determine the impact of the base before making a decision.

New General Avoids Predecessor’s Fear-Mongering

The Committee on General, Housing & Military affairs later decided that the question of the F-35 and its impact on Vermont low income housing was not relevant to the committee. The committee is headed by two Democrats, Helen Head of South Burlington and John Moran of Wardsboro.

Leas was not chosen adjutant general for the Vermont Air National Guard, nor did he expect to be. He did get four votes. As he told the committee somewhat ruefully,

“We have the facts. We have the arguments. But somehow our political leaders are immune to facts and arguments unless large numbers of people come out.”

The new adjutant general, Brig. Gen. Steven Cray, said publicly after his election that even without the F-35, the Vermont Air National Guard base won’t close, though its mission and size might change. This is a sharp change from his predecessor, Gen. Michael Dubie, who frequently warned the public to be afraid that, without the F-35, the base would close.

A little more than a year ago, Senator John McCain, R-AZ, commented on the F-35, also known as the JSF – Joint Strike Fighter, in remarks on the Senate floor:

“In a nutshell, the JSF program has been both a scandal and a tragedy.”

McCain has softened his rhetoric since then, but he hasn’t retracted the characterization. And the F-35’s performance has not improved.

Gross!!!
The Most Expensive Weapon Ever Built
"We are spending maybe 45% of the world's budget on defense. If we drop to 42% or 43%, would we be suddenly in danger of some kind of invasion?" asked Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican and part of a new breed of deficit hawks who talk of spending as a bigger threat than war. "We're bankrupting our country, and it's going to put us in danger."...
"The resulting bastard child was a compromise, not optimum for any one service but good enough for all three. Neither the Air Force nor the Navy liked its stubby design. The F-35C's squat fuselage puts its tailhook close to its landing gear (7 ft., compared with 18 on the F-18 it is replacing), making it tough to grab the arresting cable on an aircraft carrier. Its short range means aircraft carriers ferrying it into battle will have to sail close to enemy shores if the F-35C is to play a role. It can fly without lumbering aerial tankers only by adding external fuel tanks, which erases the stealthiness that is its prime war-fighting asset....Cramming the three services into the program reduced management flexibility and put the taxpayer in a fiscal headlock. Each service had the leverage generated by threatening to back out of the program, which forced cost into the backseat, behind performance. "The Air Force potentially could have adopted the Navy variant, getting significantly more range and structural durability," says John Young Jr., a top Navy and Pentagon civilian official from 2001 to 2009. "But the Air Force leadership refused to consider such options."
"Yet if the Navy, and Young, were upset with the Air Force, the Air Force was upset with the Marines. "This is a jobs program for Marine aviation," says retired general Merrill McPeak, Air Force chief of staff from 1990 to 1994. "The idea that we could produce a committee design that is good for everybody is fundamentally wrong." He scoffs at the Marine demand for a plane that can land vertically, saying, "The idea of landing on a beach and supporting your troops close up from some improvised airfield, à la Guadalcanal, is not going to happen."..."Focused on waging two post-9/11 wars, the Pentagon let the F-35 program drift as costs ballooned and schedules slipped for a decade. The Marines' F-35 was supposed to be capable of waging war in April 2010, the Air Force's in June 2011 and the Navy's in April 2012. In a break with Pentagon custom, there now is no such "initial operating capability" date for any of them; each is likely to be delayed several years.

Regardless of the plane's merit, the lawmakers pushing for it are hardly disinterested observers. The then 48 members of the Joint Strike Fighter Caucus, many of whom sit on key Pentagon-overseeing panels, pocketed twice as much as nonmembers in campaign contributions from the F-35's top contractors in the 2012 election cycle. Those lawmakers' constituents, in turn, hold many of the F-35 program's 133,000 jobs spread across 45 states."
...
"Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, the bible of the aerospace industry and a traditional supporter, published an editorial last fall that declared the program "already a failure" on cost and schedule and said "the jury is still out" on its capabilities. It suggested pitting the F-35 against existing fighters--Air Force F-15s and F-16s and Navy F-18s--for future U.S. fighter purchases."
...
"While debate swirls around how to build the F-35 right, there's a more important question: Is it the right kind of plane for the U.S. military in the 21st century? The F-35 is a so-called fifth-generation fighter, which means it is built from the ground up to elude enemy radar that could be used to track and destroy it. Stealth was all the rage in military circles when the Pentagon conceived the F-35. But that was well before the drone explosion, which makes the idea of flying a human through flak and missiles seem quaint. "The Air Force," Aboulafia says, "eagerly drank gallons of the fifth-generation purple liquid."
...
Improved sensors and computing are eroding stealth's value every day, says Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations. Eventually, he warns, they will give potential foes "actionable target information" on stealth platforms.

The Air Force feared "additional fourth-generation fighter acquisition as a direct threat to fifth-generation fighter programs," Air Force Lieut. Colonel Christopher Niemi, a veteran F-22 pilot, wrote in the November-December 2012 issue of the service's Air & Space Power Journal. Its refusal to reconsider buying new fourth-generation F-15s and F-16s in lieu of some F-35s "threatens to reduce the size of the Air Force's fielded fighter fleet to dangerously small numbers, particularly in the current fiscal environment."

I am in awe of Jimmy Leas' chutzpa. Way. To. Go.

WPTZ: F-35 opponent running for top guard job: Leas seeks public hearing
http://www.wptz.com/news/vermont-new-york/burlington/-F-35-opponent-running-for-top-guard-job/-/8869880/18557534/-/njnb0g/-/index.html?absolute=true"The House Committee on General Housing and Military Affairs held an interview session Thursday night for the four men vying to become the state’s next adjutant general.
James Marc Leas, a patent lawyer who has no military experience, was one of them.
The state is filling the position after Gen. Michael Dubie left Vermont for United States Northern Command.
“The F-35 jets based in South Burlington will cause nearly 3,000 homes and 7,000 people to be in a noise zone that the Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration say is generally not suitable for residential use,” Leas told the committee.
The data comes from a draft of the Air Force’s Environmental Impact Statement. The final version, with the Pentagon’s basing decision, is due this spring.
The state has yet to hold any formal hearings about the possibility of basing the jet at the Air Guard Base in South Burlington, Leas said.
By throwing his hat into the ring, Leas effectively made Thursday night’s interview process a hearing of its own.
Opponents of basing the jet in South Burlington have asked state lawmakers and the congressional delegation to hold hearings on the plane’s environmental and health impacts.
“We should have an investigatory team to determine the facts,” Leas said. “That investigatory team is sitting right here. You’re the elected representatives of the military affairs and housing committee. This is your job.”
WCAX: Vt. lawmakers question candidates for Vt. adjutant general: http://www.wcax.com/story/21201374/vt-lawmakers-to-question-candidates-for-vt-adjutant-general

WCAX: Fourth candidate for Vt. adjutant general: http://www.wcax.com/story/21197648/fourth-candidate-for-vt-adjutant-general

Burlington Free Press: Four who would be adjutant general: House panel interviews candidates as decision nears
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20130214/NEWS03/302140046/Four-who-would-adjutant-general?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p

VTDigger article: Legislators should ask adjutant general candidates tougher questions on F-35
http://vtdigger.org/2013/02/13/leas-legislators-should-ask-adjutant-general-candidates-tougher-questions-on-f-35/

Dear Legislators,

I am writing today to urge the House Committee on General, Housing and Military Affairs to give full consideration to Representative Cross’s F-35 Resolution, including a session dedicated to hearing citizen and expert testimony on the DEIS.

In 2010 the Vermont legislature passed a resolution supporting the F-35 without any knowledge of the potential damage this program would inflict on the neighborhoods near the airport. They did so based on the hearsay of a single USAF official. Your committee now have $2 million worth of information to use to correct this rather embarrassing misstep. Yet it appears the committee does not see fit to examine this information even now. Apparently, your committee has higher priorities than the potential degradation of $600,000,0000 in property and the lowered educational attainment of students in South Burlington, Winooski, Colchester, and Burlington.

Let me cut right to the chase: it would be a dereliction of duty for this committee to fail to conduct a lengthy and through hearing on this issue. Your failure to do so would not “just” be unfair to the thousands of people that will be hurt by this basing. Your failure to conduct such a hearing would represent a fundamental failure of representative democracy in the Vermont legislature.

By continuing to stifle your constituent’s efforts to be heard, your committee risks to showing that you have chosen to put the interests of the powerful, the politically connected and the wealthy above your constituents’ basic right to continued health and well-being in their homes and their neighborhoods.

Sincerely,

Juliet Buck

Chittenden 3-8

(I know, I know, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar blablabla. At this point in the game, given what's a stake, I can't muster whatever would need to be mustered to send these people anything even slightly sweet.)

By William Boardman panthers007@comcast.net

Vermont’s highest elected officials continue to promote class warfare in their reflexive support for basing the F-35 stealth nuclear-capable strike fighter in the middle of Vermont’s only urban area even though the world’s most expensive weapons system, $396 billion and counting, has been grounded since mid-January because it’s unsafe to fly.

Directly challenging the state leadership’s willingness to let poor and minority communities bear the greatest cost of putting an F-35 in the middle of greater Burlington, a state representative is introducing a bill in the Vermont legislature that, while it would not protect people against harm, would at least compensate them for whatever damage the government decision does to their property or health.

The Air Force draft environmental impact statement of March 2012 is unambiguous in its finding that the detrimental impact on Vermonters near the base in the categories of noise, land use, and environmental justice are far worse for the Burlington base than for people living near any of the five alternative choices, some of which would suffer no such negative impacts at all, in the Air Force assessment.

As the Air Force puts it, when it comes to noise, land use, and environmental justice, if the F-35 were to be based at the Burlington airport, “Analysis has identified unavoidable adverse environmental impact” from excessive noise, land degradation, and harm to the most vulnerable base neighbors.

When Government Hurts People, Then What? 

Given the unavoidable negative impact promised by the Air Force, a state legislator elected in 2012, Rep. George Cross, a Democrat of Winooski, has drafted a bill that addresses “environmental injustice,” which is the Air Force euphemism for the disproportionate harm inflicted on poor and minority citizens, the effect some characterize as class warfare.

Winooski is one of two communities that would suffer the most impact from the F-35 basing, and its city council has taken no position on the F-35, but has asked the Air Force for more information before the Pentagon makes a decision. That request has not yet been fulfilled.

South Burlington is the other community that would bear the brunt of an F-35 basing impact. The South Burlington city council has voted twice to reject the F-35, the second time unanimously. The city council chair, Rosanne Greco, is a retired Air Force colonel who worked for years as a Pentagon planner. She has taken an active role not only in speaking out against the F-35 as harmful to South Burlington, but also pointing out errors in the Air Force impact statement that made the impact of the F-35 seem less severe than the data demonstrated.

If The F-35 Doesn’t Harm Anyone, There’s No Cost 

Rep. Cross’s bill is as direct as it is uncomplicated in addressing any possible future distress that Winooski or South Burlington residents may suffer as a result of the F-35’s impact. First, the bill would establish a seven member F35A Adverse Impacts Compensation Board,

“… for the purpose of awarding compensation to property owners, landowners, and other persons harmed or damaged by the noise and other adverse impacts generated by the basing of the F-35A or any other military aircraft by the Vermont Air National Guard at the Burlington International Airport.”

The seven members would include representatives from each of the four closest towns, as well as an airport representative, a medical professional, and a financial professional. This board would have the authority to compensate people for damage inflicted by the F-35, including loss of property value, costs of relocating to a safer place, or costs of treatment for physical or psychological harm “caused or aggravated” by the F-35 “or any other Vermont Air National Guard military aircraft” based at the airport.

Rep. Cross’s bill would also establish the “F-35A Adverse Impacts Compensation Fund” for the compensation board to administer in carrying out it’s purpose. The bill proposes to support the compensation fund with 20 per cent of the state appropriation to the national guard and a 5 per cent surcharge on the cost of each ticket to or from Burlington airport. The bill also allows for private gifts and other state funding.

Although supporters of the F-35 basing in Vermont have been saying for months that the F-35 would do no harm to person or property, they promptly objected to the compensation bill. Speaker of the House Shap Smith, an attorney and a Democrat, was immediately non-committal about what committee might look at the bill. The speaker’s website contains no reference to “F-35,” “joint strike fighter,” or “Burlington airport.” Smith did not reply to inquiry on the subject.

Reaction Among Politicians Has Been Timid

From the Congressional level on down there has been bi-partisan reticence about the F-35, though it’s mostly Democrats who make vague statements of support without demonstrating any mastery of the details of the problem. More often than not, elected officials of the two major parties say little more than that they support the Vermont Air National Guard (VTANG) and that they hope any difficulties can be worked out.

Rep. Kurt Wright, Republican of Burlington told WCAX-TV: “I think it’s important to our guard and our economy that they [F-35s] are based here.” This is a commonly repeated opinion that has little evidence to support it. Even the Air Force says that basing 18 F-35s in Burlington “would not impact regional employment, income, or regional housing market,” although that changes with 24 F-35s based in Vermont.

What the view expressed by Rep. Wright and many others apparently references is their fear that, without the F-35, VTANG will have no mission and dissolve. No Air Force or Pentagon official has said such a thing, but National Guard generals and commercial supporters of the F-35 base have been using this fear as a tactic at least since 2010, even though there’s no evidence to support it.

Rep. Clement Bissonnette, Democrat of Winooski, like Rep. Cross, captured the VTANG loyalty when he told FOXnews44, “I was proud on 9-11 when our jets took off and protected the east coast.” When asked about jet noise possibly causing hearing loss or other medical problems, Rep. Bissonnette replied, without offering support, “There are people who say that, there’s also studies out there that say just the opposite.” The reporter added that:

“Representative Cross plans to present a bill asking the state to compensate people who would be impacted by the noise. Representative Bissonnette says there's no money available.”


While this response ignores the bill’s content, that includes proposed funding means, it does encapsulate the apparently widespread indifference of Vermont’s political leaders to any hardship imposed on their constituents by a warplane that is already 100% over budget, a decade overdue, cannot yet fly safely, and is expected to cost more then $1 trillion over its service lifetime if it ever is deployed.

Vermont Progressives Opposed the F-35 Early 

In May 20109, the Vermont Progressive Party adopted a resolution titled “Stop the F-35” that said in part:

“We oppose the installation of F-35 fighter jets at the Vermont Air National Guard base in South Burlington. The health, safety, and quality of life of all Vermonters will be harmed by these fighter jets. Our environment will be degraded. Removal of more rows of affordable houses near the airport will likely be required….

“In town meetings Vermonters voted overwhelmingly that the best way to support our soldiers is to bring each and every one of them home now. These planes are counter to those votes, and they will not benefit Vermont. We say to the Federal Government: cancel the F-35, and send the money to Vermont instead.”

In contrast, Vermont Democrats have yet to express doubt about the worth of the F-35. Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, recently went to Florida to listen to the F-35 with earmuffs on and concluded it wasn’t too loud. During the 2012 election campaign, a questioner asked him about compensating those harmed by the basing if it happens. Shumlin flipped off the voter, saying casually that he “didn’t have the coin.”

Some 200 houses are already vacant and condemned in South Burlington because they were within the area where jet noise is so loud that the Air Force labels it “unsuitable for residential use.” With the arrival of the F-35s, the Air Force estimates that another 1,300 houses or more will be rendered “unsuitable for residential use.”

Why Rush to Judgment Amidst Uncertainty?

Rep. Cross has also introduced a non-binding resolution asking the Air Force to take Vermont out of consideration for F-35 basing during this initial round of basing decisions. Vermont is one of six bases currently under consideration, with others located in Idaho, Utah, Florida, and two in South Carolina. According to Vermont Public Radio, Cross’s resolution has “more than 30 co-sponsors” in the 150-member Vermont House. He has five as of February 8.

The House voted on a similar non-binding resolution in 2010, expressing support for having the F-35 in Vermont. As Cross points out, this vote was taken before anyone had seen the 2012 environmental impact report that shows how much more impact the plane will have on Vermont compared to the other bases under consideration.

“Of all the other bases being considered for the F-35, only our community will suffer such terrible consequences,” South Burlington city council chair Greco told a news conference at the state capitol on February 7, appearing with Rep. Cross in support of his resolution.

A day earlier, Rep. Jim McCullough, Democrat of Williston, introduced a non-binding resolution of his own in support of basing the F-35 in Vermont.

Whether the Speaker of the House will let any of this legislation come to a vote is anybody’s guess, but the longer the delay, the more people will see reporting from sources such as the Defense Industry Daily suggesting that the F-35 “Can’t Turn, Can’t Climb, Can’t Run” or Business Insider explaining “How The F-35 Turned Into Such A Disaster” as bad news about the F-35 continues to accumulate.

The Air Force initially planned to announce its basing decision in late 2012, then early 2013, and now the decision is expected some time in the spring. Meanwhile the Air Force continues to keep secret the data on which its draft environmental impact assessments were base. The Air Force has denied Freedom of Information requests and internal appeals, which are now in federal court.

Meanwhile, at least for the time being, none of it matters, because the world’s most expensive weapons system still can’t fly.

Joint resolution supporting the assignment of the F-35A aircraft to the Vermont Air National Guard
Offered by:  Representative McCullough of Williston
Whereas, the Vermont Air National Guard Air Station at Burlington International Airport (BTV) has hosted the F-16 since 1986, and the F-16’s presence has had a positive economic impact at the airport and beyond, and
Whereas, according to the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, the Vermont Air National Guard (VANG) plays an important role in the economy of Vermont including the maintaining of a contingent of 400 full-time employees and 700 part-time employees whose combined annual payroll is $53 million, and
Whereas, annually, the VANG provides $2.5 million in fire and rescue services to BTV, and this expenditure represents 14 percent of the airport’s total budget, and
Whereas, other annual VANG economic contributions are the $325,000.00 in lodging and food industry revenues associated with weekend drills and the $50,000.00 in revenue associated with training center support activities, and
Whereas, the F-16 is aging, and the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Air National Guard intend that the more technologically advanced fifth generation F-35 Lightning II (F-35A), the conventional takeoff and landing version of the F-35, will replace the F-16 in their respective fighter jet fleets, and
Whereas, in April 2012, the U.S. Air Force released a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) assessing operational deployment locations for the F-35A within the continental United States, and
Whereas, according to the DEIS, the Burlington Air National Guard Station is one of the primary sites on the consideration list, and
Whereas, for several years, a number of residents of South Burlington and other nearby municipalities have expressed concern about the noise level of F-35A jets at Burlington International Airport, and
Whereas, in 2010, in response to these concerns, Brigadier General Steven Cray spoke at a forum in South Burlington about the Vermont Air National Guard’s decades of experience and excellent heritage of working with neighbors on fighter jet noise problems, and he indicated this tradition will continue with the F-35A, and
Whereas, cumulative and excessive noise is a type of pollution, and
Whereas, those persons required to bear the burden of this pollution innocently suffer collateral damage for a perceived greater good, now therefore be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives:
That the General Assembly looks favorably upon the permanent assignment of the F-35A fighter jets to the Vermont Air National Guard’s base at Burlington International Airport in South Burlington, and be it further
Resolved:  That the General Assembly supports the Vermont Air National Guard’s transitioning to the next generation of aviation technology provided that the proposed use of F-35A fighter jets meets acceptable noise level standards for populated areas and that the final environmental impact statement demonstrates that the use will satisfy these standards, and be it further
Resolved: That the General Assembly encourages collaboration among the Vermont Air National Guard, the Cities of South Burlington and Winooski, and the Towns of Williston and Essex, and other affected municipalities to identify and address environmental, health, housing, and workforce concerns, and be it further
Resolved:  That the General Assembly encourages the U.S. Air Force to broaden the scope of the final environmental impact statement for the purpose of real-time noise comparisons between the F-16 and the F-35A at Burlington International Airport under varying weather conditions, and be it further
Resolved:  That the Secretary of State be directed to send a copy of this resolution to U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley; the Vermont National Guard Adjutant General, Brigadier General Thomas E. Drew; and the Vermont Congressional Delegation.
 

There is a press conference scheduled for Thursday, February 7, 2013 at 11:00am in the Cedar Creek Room at the State House in Montpelier to publicly present the F-35 resolution introduced by Representative George Cross and others. 
It is expected that Rosanne Grecco will address the press and answer questions. There will also be other speakers at the press conference. This is an opportunity to gain additional public support for the Stop the F-35 and Save Our Skies movement. 
 Everyone is invited to attend, if it can work into one’s schedule. The press conference will probably last no longer than 30 minutes, thus parking on the street is the best option. Parking is metered in Montpelier.

The Resolution will be posted on the legislative web site at some point this week. It basically parallels the open letter signed by 15 members of the clergy. The resolution calls for Vermont to skip this first round of basing decisions so that all can have the necessary time to learn more about the many issues which surround the deployment of the F-35.

Seven Days will carry an article about the resolution and the F-35 issues this Wednesday.

Hope to see you all there!

Joint resolution related to the conduct of collaborative hearings and the basing of the F-35A in Vermont
Offered by:  Representative Cross of Winooski
Whereas, since 1946, the Vermont Air National Guard (VTANG) at the Burlington International Airport (BTV) has been an integral part of the Vermont National Guard family, and
Whereas, all Vermonters appreciate the dedication and sacrifice made by the many men and women who serve in or work for the VTANG, both those who are full-time and those who are part-time, and
Whereas, although Vermonters greatly appreciate the many contributions the VTANG has made to Vermont, the proposed basing of the F-35A fighter jets at BTV as a replacement for the currently based F-16 fighter jets raises significant noise issues that warrant the completion of a comprehensive collaborative hearing process prior to a final decision on F-35A basing at BTV, and
Whereas, the U.S. Air Force has prepared a draft Environmental Impact Statement (draft EIS) as part of the decision-making process for determining basing sites for the F-35A, and
Whereas, the statistics presented in the draft EIS were initially based on data from the 2000 U.S. Census, and
Whereas, the implementation of the F-35A proposal at BTV would result in a peak noise level of 115 decibels, which is four times louder than the current F-16 peak noise level, and
Whereas, there would be 2,944 homes and 6,675 persons located in the 65 decibel day-night average sound level contour zone, which is described as “generally not considered suitable for residential use,” and which includes more than half of the city of Winooski, and
Whereas, revised statistical estimates based on the 2010 U.S. Census increase the impacted population to 8,592 and the housing units to 4,200, and
Whereas, according to a December 19, 2012 Burlington Free Press article, slightly less than $39 million of federal funds was spent to purchase 136 residential properties in South Burlington that have been or are scheduled to be torn down because the noise level to which these properties are exposed exceeds the Federal Aviation Administration’s recommended maximum level, and
Whereas, the draft EIS included a scoring system of factors at each of the proposed F-35A bases, and
Whereas, with respect to air and noise standards, the U.S. Air Force awarded BTV the maximum three points for the clear zone category, which indicates there is no development within a specific distance of BTV even though this is not an accurate fact, and
Whereas, similarly, the 65 decibel day-night average sound level contour zone score of three indicates there is no development within this zone, even though the draft EIS, using 2000 U.S. Census data, estimated that 6,675 persons reside in this zone, and
Whereas, the City of Burlington, the Burlington Airport Commission, the Congressional Delegation, the Governor of Vermont, and the U.S. Air Force have refused to respond adequately to the many questions raised by both the South Burlington City Council and concerned citizens, and
Whereas, the General Assembly’s adoption of J.R.H. 51 occurred on May 12, 2010, a full 22 months before the draft EIS was released in March 2012, and one of the clauses in J.R.H. 51 provided:
Resolved: That the General Assembly encourages collaboration among the Vermont Air National Guard, the city of South Burlington, and other affected municipalities to identify and address environmental, health, housing, and workforce concerns, andWhereas, the collaborative process that the General Assembly requested in J.R.H. 51 of 2010 has yet to occur, and
Whereas, this is only the first round of F-35A basing decisions, and according to the U.S. Air Force, there will be future rounds, and
Whereas, during a future round of F-35A basing decisions, considerably more data may be available regarding the impact of basing the F-35A in Vermont, and
Whereas, in a statement released on December 11, 2012, 16 members of the Vermont clergy recommended that “Vermont be removed from the first round of basing decisions so that we Vermonters can reach a consensus, based on clearing up so many of the questions that remain unanswered in the minds of many residents,” now therefore be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives:
That the General Assembly agrees with the learned clergy’s advice and requests that Vermont be removed from consideration in this round of F-35A basing decisions, and be it further
Resolved:  That in accordance with the General Assembly’s adoption of J.R.H. 51 of 2010, Joint resolution supporting the assignment of the F-35 aircraft to the Vermont Air National Guard, the General Assembly requests the U.S. Air Force, the Vermont Air National Guard, the City of South Burlington, the City of Winooski, the Town of Williston, and the City of Burlington to conduct collaborative hearings with concerned citizens on environmental, health, housing, and workforce issues related to the F-35A prior to the issuing of a final decision on basing F-35A fighter jets at Burlington International Airport, and be it further
Resolved:  That the General Assembly respectfully requests that the collaborative hearing process provide detailed responses to all concerns that affected residents may raise, and be it further
Resolved:  That the Secretary of State be directed to send a copy of this resolution to U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley; to the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, General Mark A. Welsh III; to the Vermont National Guard Adjutant General, Brigadier General Thomas E. Drew; and to the Vermont Congressional Delegation.