Here’s something quick with a chart and a Vermont connection.

In an editorial Monday titled: A Better not Fatter Defense Budget the NYTimes.com suggested the time has come to take a look at throttling back US military spending. And one of the most expensive aircraft ever, the F-35 (scheduled to be based in Burlington VT 2019)caught their eye.

The Pentagon can do with far fewer than the 1,700 F-35s it plans on buying.

[…]For nearly a decade after 9/11, the Pentagon had a virtual blank check; the base defense budget rose, in adjusted dollars, from $378 billion in 1998 to $600 billion in 2010. As the military fought Al Qaeda and the Taliban, billions of dollars were squandered on unnecessary items, including new weapons that ran late and over budget like the troubled F-35 jet fighter.