F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

F-35 is a boondoggle.

$200M for one fighter plane is insane.

If the USA ever had to go to war with this weapon, a huge number of them would be offline at any given time, and every single airframe loss would cause a huge dent in overall combat power.

I don’t understand why our military and political leaders keep trying to buy ridiculously overpriced Swiss Army knife weapons (lots of flexibility but great at nothing) instead of mass producing combat knives (only good for one thing but great at it and lots of them).

The Air Force's F-35A variant has an "average" flyaway cost of $82.5 million for the jet's 15th, 16th and 17th production lots.

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/10/newest-f-35-f-15ex-contr...

The F-35 base model is around $80 million, rising to the highest known price of $109 million per unit for the F-35B vertical takeoff and landing variant.

And then there's this:

"The flyaway cost for the F-15EX Eagle II is approximately $90 million for each aircraft in the program’s second production lot, about $7.5 million more than the newest price for an F-35A"