Pentagon downplays prospects of cancelling F-35 fighter jet and stealth bomber

The US military on Thursday downplayed concerns it could cancel the F-35 fighter and a new stealth bomber, after leaked documents from a budget review suggested the programs might be eliminated as one way to deal with deep budget cuts.

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Wednesday that finding $500 billion in budget cuts required by law over the next decade, on top of $487 billion in cuts already being implemented, required tough trade-offs between the size of the military and high-end weapons programs.

Pentagon briefing slides shown to various groups mapped out those tradeoffs in stark terms, indicating that a decision to maintain a larger military could result in the cancellation of the $392 billion Lockheed Martin F-35 program and a new stealthy, long-range bomber, according to several people who saw the slides.

Defence officials later stressed there were no plans to kill either program, noting that dismantling the F-35 program in particular would have far-reaching consequences for the US military services and 10 foreign countries involved in the program, which is already in production.

“We have gone to great lengths to stress that this review identified, through a rigorous process of strategic modelling, possible decisions we might face, under scenarios we may or may not face in the future,” Pentagon Spokesman George Little told Reuters in an email when asked about the slides.