The man now in charge of buying weapons for the U.S. military said that
the stealth F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- one of the most expensive
defense programs in U.S. history at three quarters of $1 trillion --
was put in production so prematurely the error amounted to "acquisition
malpractice."
"I can spend quite a few minutes on the F-35, but I don't want to,"
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's Acting Undersecretary of Defense for
Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said Monday. "Putting the F-35
into production years before the first test flight was acquisition
malpractice. It should not have been done, OK? But we did it, OK?"
