All this being said, and as angry as we taxpayers and Citizens should be...
in the end of it all...
Who will be held accountable? What is the answer?
The Contractors who submitted crap? The same-said contractors who have committed what amounts to fraud?
The DOD brass who have ALLOWED all of this to happen with a wink and a nod?
Former Administrations who pawned this off (Bush and Obama)?
Congress for not stepping in and holding someone accountable before now?
This entire program from inception, has been a money pit that has NOT paid off or given a tangible return on investment. MANY have grown incredibly rich (or exponentially richer) off the taxpayer dollars spent on this - and we still don’t have a fully-operational airframe in service (and we are now 10 years post-deadline).
The system is broken - but yall be honest - what hope is there of EVER holding ANYONE accountable for $billions in literally stolen/waisted taxpayer dollars?
ZERO...
And don’t hold your breath for any tangible changes to prevent such waste and fraud in the future. WAY too many on BOTH sides of the political isle have had not only campaigns enriched, but their own pocketbooks inflated directly and indirectly from defense contractors.
So - pontificate all you want. Bloviate till you are blue in the face - but be intellectually honest - it just doesn’t matter. Our system is every bit as corrupt as Venezuela or any of the despotic hellholes around the world we wring our hands about. We just vote for the crooks...
You won’t get much of an argument from me on who will be held accountable because ZERO is correct.
One disagreement is contractors vs government. I don’t blame the contractors so much, they’re just taking advantage of how the government works which is completely ass backwards with no supervision. The government is 99% to blame. They swap Program Managers every ~18 - 30 months and every damn one of them wants their “Look What I Did” on it, so they change requirements constantly and every change cost $$ and time and the contractors just say sure. I’ve been on both ends of Defense Acquisition and it’s a mindset that’s damn near impossible to change and has so many rules and regulations thanks to the 535 asshats in DC you can’t get anything done reasonably... then the DoD PMs become contractor PMs, COOs or CEOs.
If you ask for a 12” X 12” box (the original requirement) and you get that box but the new PM decides he wants a 12” X 6” instead so that cost $$ and delays, you get that back the new PM says great but I need it to fit a 8” sphere without touching any sides so production stops and folks are trying to figure out what to do, new PM comes in and says no he meant four 2” squares... and this is how defense acquisition works.
When construction contractors work on base they get paid union wages (company does.. not the workers) event if they aren’t union and things like a $25k 40’ X 60’ metal building that could be completed in a couple weeks ends up costing $765k and takes a year...
I could go on...