Skelton Dares Obama to Veto Defense Bill With ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ Second F-35 Engine

As I wrote last month, the House’s version of the defense bill has a provision that could jeopardize a hard-won effort to repeal the military’s ban on open gay service: a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet. Obama has publicly threatened to veto the bill because of the More…

Gates Fires the Head of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program

See this guy? Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Heinz? He’s the program manager for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program plagued by cost overruns. Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, just fired him.

One reporter called it a “bombshell” in a still-ongoing press briefing. But Gates canceled the More…

Defense Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Much as I agree with Andrew Exum that this Washington Post post-mortem tick tock on the killing of the F-22 is worth reading, this paragraph seems a bit, well, incomplete:

[Defense Secretary Robert Gates] bluntly warned Lockheed Martin that he would slice funding for the more modern F-35

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