Questioning our Defenders

Feb. 1, 2015

Over the last nine years, the United States Military has spent nearly four hundred billion dollars developing a new aircraft. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II has quickly become the most expensive military project in history. I’m sure most of you have heard very little on the F-35, other than "˜new military plane,’ which frankly is scary. The F-35 is a failure. This new high tech machine is supposed to be a cost cutter, having a version for each branch of the military, a new jack of all trades. By attempting to do everything, however, we’ll soon find out it does nothing. The F-35 is absolutely rife with issues, from engines catching fire during takeoff to cracks developing in the structure and even the inability to fly reliably in clouds or storms. Yes, you read that correctly, the inability to fly well in clouds. Over years of development and service, total costs for this machine are going to total $1.5 trillion. I can assure you this isn’t a lie; after final development, maintenance and actually buying a few thousand of these machines that don’t work, we’ll be paying as much as we did for the entire Iraq War. We as Americans are largely to blame for this due to our distance from the military.

So why do we continue to spend on this machine, asting years and tax dollars on something so obviously flawed and expensive? Simply because no one knows about it; the general public does not know or largely care for that matter. Along with this, a large number of politicians are actually defending it. Why would they do that? Politicians defend this machine because it will get them votes. Though they aren’t going to run with a platform about the F-35, they do run a race with a platform based on jobs. It’s a good way to get the attention of some people. The development and construction of the F-35s take place in over 1,200 facilities throughout the U.S. That’s a lot of jobs, which translates into a lot of voters.

Now let me tell you why I find all of this so scary. Nobody knows about it, which means nobody is going to stop it. If we questioned our military like we do over healthcare, education, or any other number of issues that dominate the news, we would actually understand what is happening not just with the F-35, but in so many other military contracts as well. Our society is by and large distanced from the military; we look at it through rose tinted binoculars.

Think of it this way. A solider comes home after a tour, having lost friends who are basically family members he fought and bled with for nearly a year or more. He stays awake at night, sleeps alone; the smallest things can bring him back to where he was. So what do we as a people do? We pass him around like a party favor, making appearances at football games, political speeches, and at other various events just to show we care about our troops. Then he’s shipped back off for another tour and we can all rest easier. We do not honor them because they deserve it, we honor them because it helps us feel better about ourselves. As Americans that’s what you are told to think of your military: Some distant giant giving you the right to sit at home after a long day at work and hug your family, free to think and feel what you wish. As an American, this is what you are told, and we do it because it’s all we know.

We as a society are distanced from the military so far that questioning it can bring about remarks such as "unpatriotic" and "un-American." Yet we question every other facet of the government to the point that if you look around a little, you could find every single part of a bill, and arguably know as much if not more about it than an actual politician. Meanwhile, contracts in the military continue to absorb taxpayer dollars for needless equipment, and we enter wars out of our comfort zone. All the fancy technological gadgets in use today aren’t much help when you’re fighting an insurgent force that for all intents and purposes are the exact same as the native civilians.

We used to be interested in the military because we all held a part in it. In World War II and the few years after, it wasn’t faceless strong heroes in the military. We thought of those people as fathers, as husbands, brothers, and sons. Now the men and women in uniform are as far from our thoughts as possible unless they are right in front of us or when our American duty calls for us to honor those we know nothing about. The military deserves respect but not the false celebrity treatment we give it. Its members deserve the respect and caring of a people who actually know them.

Brett Kimbrue is a senior at Petoskey High School. In June he will be entering boot camp at Fort Benning for the United States Army.