The script accompanying the Reuters video ran like this:
“Lockheed Martin released video of the F-35 joint striker fighter jet successfully performing a weapons test with a guided bomb. The video shows the aircraft releasing Guided Bomb Unit-32, or GBU-32, from its internal weapons bay at 25,000 feet above a military range in California’s Mojave Desert on December 6. The GBU-2 hit its intended target of eight stacked cargo containers.”Maybe the wrong video was used, because after the smoke had cleared, the eight 40-footers are still intact. Then again, the pilot could have been aiming at something else. It happens.
“There, at an army firing range (in the sultanate of Brunei), the much-touted Singapore-made weapons were being demonstrated for accuracy, reliability and versatility, at some stage of which both the father(LKY) and son(LHL) participated. Peter Lim reported the prime minister had scored direct hits with the weapons whereas his soldier-son had “wash-outs.” The embarrassed general disputed the report claiming that he had tried for a more difficult target behind the target in question.”
(“The Media Enthralled, Singapore Revisited”, Francis Seow, page 117)
So we have a brigadier general who can’t shoot straight. We also have a guy who professed a “more open-minded interpretation of the Koran” as Minister for Muslim Affairs. But why is a medical doctor – once a surgical oncologist in private practice at Mount Elizabeth Hospital from 1997 to 2001 – making the decision to buy a US$161 fighter jet? Winslow Wheeler, from the Project on Government Oversight and a longtime U.S. Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.) official, is saying, “The true cost of the airplane — when you cast aside all the bullshit — is US$219 million or more a copy, and that number is likely to go up.”Sure, Ng had with him the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) chief Major-General Hoo Cher Mou at the show and tell in Arizona. Hoo also happens to be the first non-pilot to be appointed as Chief of Air Force. Maybe both Ng and Hoo had extensive experience assembling Airfix plastic kits of model aeroplanes.Like a kid unboxing presents on Christmas Day, Ng tried on the F-35B’s pilot helmet, with the heads up displays and iPad type controls, and mounted a ladder to smell the new leather in the cockpit. Ng concluded, “The F-15s will serve us but we are evaluating the F-35s seriously.” Seriously, that has to be the Brompton bike sickness all over again: why be satisfied with a US$31 million F-15 (flyaway cost, 1998) when you can splurge US$161 million on a F-35 with no government oversight committee to bother with?
Tattler
* The writer blogs at http://singaporedesk.blogspot.com