Conn Hallinan
Trains, boats and a feathered spy ring Our contributor makes his annual awards to individuals, companies and governments that make reading the news a daily adventure
Photo: Wikimedia
l The Golden Lemon Award goes to Lockheed Martin for its F-35 fifth generation stealth fighter, at $1.5-trillion the most expensive weapons system in history. The plane currently has 883 “design flaws”, including nine “category 1” flaws. The latter “may cause death, severe injury, or severe occupational illness” to pilots and “major damage” to weapons systems and combat readiness ( which sounds like those TV ads for drugs that may or may not treat your disease, but could also kill your first born and turn you into a ferret). But the company got right to work on those flaws, not by fixing them, mind you, but by reclassifying them as less serious. As for the rest of the problems, Lockheed Martin says it will fix them if it gets paid more. The company cur
KILLING machine? The F-35 stealth fighter
4 ColdType | February 2021 | www.coldtype.net
rently receives $2-billion a year to keep some 400 F-35s flying, a cost of $50-million a plane. It costs $28,455 an hour to fly an F-35. US aircraft are following industrialist Norman Augustine’s prediction that war plane costs increase by a factor of 10 every decade. He predicted that by 2054 the Pentagon will be able to buy just one fighter plane
Vehicle with – ah, nothing? Not that it didn’t spend all that money. First there was the M2, but its armour was too thin. Then it built the Future Combat System, but it was too big and also had inadequate armour. Then they built the Ground Combat Vehicle, which was a monster and weighed three times more than the Bradleys. Solution? Keep the old Bradleys.
l The Silver Lemon goes to the US Navy for mothballing four of its Littoral Combat ships after less than two decades in service. All 10 Littoral ships apparently have a “fundamentally flawed” propulsion system. The ships cost over $600million apiece. There are plans to build six more. The navy plans to build 82 ships overall in the next six years at a cost of $147-billion, including – at $940million apiece – 20 frigates to replace the Littoral Combat ships.
l The ET Award to the new US Space Force for the design of its uniforms: jungle foliage. As George Takei (Helmsmen Hikaru Sulu from Star Trek) commented, “Unclear why there is a need for camouflage in space”.
l The Bronze Lemon to the US Army for spending $24-billion to replace its aging, 27-ton Bradley Fighting
l The Golden Covid-19 Award to Solange Vierira, Brazil’s Superintendence of Private Insurance in President Jair Bolsonaro’ rightwing government. According to former Health Ministry official and epidemiologist Julio Croda, when told that older people were more likely to die from the virus, Vierira told him that “it’s good that deaths are concentrated among the old. That will improve our economic performance as it will reduce our pen-
