
The F-35: The Most Notorious Weapon Ever Produced? - jseliger
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/magazine/f-35-joint-strike-fighter.html
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Causality1
The root cause of the problem is the paradigm of Cost+ contracting where
companies are rewarded for going over budget and over timetable.

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tlb
The article mentions that "there are no simple answers for fixing the F-35
program, as tempting as it is to look for a single root cause for its
problems."

Cost+ is one of many problems. Some others are described at
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/magazine/f35-joint-
strike...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/magazine/f35-joint-strike-
fighter-program.html?module=inline)

Cost+ does create misaligned incentives, but you also can't just expect a
company to develop a project that big on a fixed-price-on-delivery contract.
Nobody has $1T (or even, if you think it could be done for 1/4 the price,
$1/4T) to invest in R&D before getting paid.

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Causality1
I'd have no problem with a money up front approach. It's the projects that
become disgustingly over budget I take issue with. For example, the James Webb
Space Telescope was sold to Congress and by extension the American taxpayer as
a ten year, 500 million dollar project. It is currently a twenty-four year,
ten billion dollar project.

