Actual code i have seen with my own eyes. (Not in F-35 code)
Its a way to avoid removing an unused parameter from a method. Unused parameters are disallowed, but this is fine?
I am sceptical that these coding standards make for good code!
Notably this document is from 2005. So that's after C++ was standardized but before their second bite of that particular cherry and twenty years before its author, Bjarne Stroustrup suddenly decides after years of insisting that C++ dialects are a terrible idea and will never be endorsed by the language committee, that in fact dialects (now named "profiles") are the magic ingredient to fix the festering problems with the language.
While Laurie's video is fun, I too am sceptical about the value of style guides, which is what these are. "TABS shall be avoided" or "Letters in function names shall be lowercase" isn't because somebody's aeroplane fell out of the sky - it's due to using a style Bjarne doesn't like.
I doubt I can satisfy you as to whether I'm somehow a paid evangelist, I remember I got a free meal once for contributing to the OSM project, and I bet if I dig further I can find some other occasion that, if you spin it hard enough can be justified as "payment" for my opinion that Rust is a good language. There was a nice lady giving our free cookies at the anti-racist counter-protests the other week, maybe she once met a guy who worked for an outfit which was contracted to print a Rust book? I sense you may own a corkboard and a lot of red string.