The Air Force’s budget enemies have finished beating up on the F-22 now that the aircraft is in the field and working beautifully, and the buy has been truncated to 183 airplanes, says Gen. Ron Keys, head of Air Combat Command. So that means they’ve moved on to the F-35, hoping to delay it long enough so that the price goes up and becomes unaffordable, asserted Keys, adding, “There are always termites out there looking for something to feed on.”
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

