The Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is being built in larger numbers than any other military aircraft today. It has won every export sales battle that it has engaged in.

Hundreds are in service with the U. S.

Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, and with U. S.

allies worthwhile. This book argues that it has been a failure.

The last of more than 1,700 F-35s that the Air Force needs to replace Cold War-era F-16s and F-15s will be 25 years late, according to the schedule set in 2001. The older jets are beginning to wear out, beyond economic repair, with no airplanes to replace them.

Entire squadrons are being withdrawn from the forces needed to support operations worldwide and deter China and Russia. And as this report appears, no F-35s are being delivered.

Brand-new airplanes costing $100-$150 million each are rolling off the production line into a secret storage location because of faulty electronics. They won't be combat-ready until late 2025.

How did this happen?In a penetrating, meticulously researched report for the professional reader, veteran investigative journalist and industry executive Bill Sweetman explains how the project was launched in the 1990s with complex, conflicting goals and an unsound strategy. When things inevitably went wrong, as the airplane gained weight, proved almost impossible to build and susceptible to overheating, and as the 1990s-technology electronics proved unequal to what was demands of them, program leaders refused to slow down.

They set unrealistic schedules and budgets for fixing problems. Every failed fix made matters worse.

Both the government program office - nominally working for us - and prime contractor Lockheed Martin pumped out rosy promises about getting the program back on track, publishing fanciful schedules, minimizing problems and attacking critics. Senior defense leaders, Congress and media, preoccupied with war, paid too little attention.

And now the Air Force is falling apart, its fleet "geriatric" in the words of a senior retired officer, or to quote one of D. C.

's leading defense budget wonks, "in a death spiral". In conclusion, Sweetman outlines some radical changes to eliminate perverse incentives from defense procurement.

"It is excellent" - former Deputy Defense Secretary"Just started reading, and already hooked!" - defense analyst and advisor to British House of Commons. .