The F-35 Lightning II just hit another milestone nobody asked for: the Government Accountability Office dropped a report confirming the program will cost taxpayers around $1.7 trillion over its lifetime.
Enough money to buy every American a slightly used Honda Civic and still have cash left for the extended warranty we all know is a scam.
For those lucky enough to avoid defense Twitter, the F-35 is that stealth fighter jet that was supposed to do everything—air superiority, bombing runs, reconnaissance, maybe your taxes—and instead became the world's most expensive ongoing argument.
The program has been "almost ready" since roughly the Bush administration, and by Bush I mean the first one.
Here's the fun part: the GAO report says the jet still has over 800 unresolved deficiencies.
That's not a fighter jet, that's a group project where everyone assumed someone else was handling the landing gear.
The plane reportedly can't even fly in lightning for years, which is a bold design choice for something that operates outdoors.
Lockheed Martin, to their credit, has mastered the art of the defense contractor Jedi mind trick.
Every time costs balloon or deadlines slip, they just say "but China" and Congress opens the checkbook like a tipsy uncle at a casino.
Meanwhile, the actual pilots keep flying the thing because it's genuinely good at some stuff—when it works, which is apparently a coin flip with better PR.
The military plans to buy around 2,500 of these things.
That's like discovering your car is a lemon and then ordering 2,500 more, but with a PowerPoint presentation explaining why this time will be different.
Critics point out you could build entire air forces for the cost of one F-35 squadron program.
Supporters say stealth and sensor fusion are worth it because future wars will be won by whoever sees the other guy first.
Both sides agree on exactly one thing: nobody's canceling this thing.
It's too big to fail, like a defense-industry version of a bank that also happens to drop bombs.
So next time you file your taxes and wonder where it all goes, picture a $135 million jet that might need a software patch to not crash.
If the F-35 were a Kickstarter, backers would've demanded refunds years ago and started a Change.org petition.
But defense procurement doesn't work like that—it works like a subscription service you can't cancel, where the product gets worse and the price goes up.
Final Thoughts
At least with Netflix you occasionally get a good show.