{"id":259832,"date":"2010-02-01T13:39:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T18:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=75394"},"modified":"2010-02-01T13:39:06","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T18:39:06","slug":"gates-fires-the-head-of-the-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/259832","title":{"rendered":"Gates Fires the Head of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>See this guy? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsf.mil\/leadership\/lead_heinz.htm\">Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Heinz<\/a>? He&#8217;s the program manager for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program plagued by cost overruns. Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, just fired him.<\/p>\n<p>One reporter called it a &#8220;bombshell&#8221; in a still-ongoing press briefing. But Gates canceled the Air Force&#8217;s F-22 fighter jet in favor of making the JSF the replacement jet, as, among other reasons, it&#8217;s operable across both the Navy and the Air Force. But defense reformers have pointed to the JSF&#8217;s ballooning costs as similarly problematic. Gates just said that the program&#8217;s coming under fiscal control. But he said he couldn&#8217;t put the program back in order &#8220;without people being held accountable.&#8221;<span id=\"more-75394\"><\/span> So says a defense secretary who two years ago fired the entire leadership of the Air Force over a nuclear weapons mishap. If there&#8217;s a theme to Gates&#8217; tenure at the Pentagon, he said, it&#8217;s that &#8220;when things go wrong, people will be held accountable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Unless I misunderstood Gates, Heinz&#8217;s deputy, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsf.mil\/leadership\/lead_moore.htm\">Air Force Maj. Gen. C.D. Moore<\/a>, will head up the F-35 program office for the time being.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update, 1:49 p.m.<\/em>: I think I did misunderstand Gates. Pressed on who takes over the program, Gates demurred, saying an announcement is forthcoming.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update 2, 1:55 p.m<\/em>.: Don&#8217;t miss <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/dangerroom\/2010\/02\/gates-sacks-stealth-jet-chief-blasts-troubling-record-of-crucial-plane\/\">Noah Shachtman&#8217;s detailed post on Gates&#8217; JSF bombshell<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>See this guy? Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Heinz? He&#8217;s the program manager for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program plagued by cost overruns. Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, just fired him. One reporter called it a &#8220;bombshell&#8221; in a still-ongoing press briefing. But Gates canceled the Air Force&#8217;s F-22 fighter jet in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}