经济学人下载:最后一代有人驾驶战斗机

The defence industry
国防工业

The last manned fighter
最后一代有人驾驶战斗机

It is the most expensive military project ever. It is plagued by delays and menaced by budget cuts. Will the F-35 survive?
作为有史以来造价最高的军事项目，一再被推迟并饱受预算削减威胁的F-35战机会有一线生机吗？

Jul 14th 2011 | from the print edition

LEON PANETTA is under no illusions about what Barack Obama moved him from the CIA to the Pentagon to do. The wily Mr Panetta, who took over from Robert Gates as defence secretary at the beginning of the month, is everyone’s idea of a safe pair of hands. But his greatest claim to fame (other than presiding over the plan to kill Osama bin Laden) is as the director of the Office of Management and Budget who paved the way to the balanced budget of 1998. Mr Panetta has inherited from his predecessor the outlines of a plan to reduce military spending by $400 billion by 2023. But America’s fiscal crisis (and the lack of any political consensus about how tackle it) makes it almost certain that Mr Panetta will have to cut further and faster than Mr Gates would have wished.

对于奥巴马将自己从中情局调往五角大楼的意图，莱昂??帕内塔可谓心知肚明。月初刚刚接替罗伯特??盖茨成为国防部长的帕内塔为人老练，是个公认的值得信赖之人。帕内塔最露脸的一次（竟然不是主导刺杀本拉登的那次行动）是在担任管理和预算办公室主任期间领导有方，实现了1998年度财政收支平衡。帕内塔将继续实施其前任的计划，即到2023年削减4000亿美元的军费开支，但由于美国当前的财政危机（以及缺乏如何解决该危机的政治共识），帕内塔几乎肯定会用比盖茨原计划更有过之而无不及的力度和速度来削减军费。

That could be bad news for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive military-industrial programme in history, and its lead contractor, Lockheed Martin. The plane is expected to come into service six years late (in 2016) and wildly over-budget. The Pentagon still plans to buy 2,443 F-35s over the next 25 years, at a cost of $382 billion. But in a parting shot, Mr Gates gave warning that although he did not think the F-35 faced cancellation, “the size of the buy” might have to be cut.

这对于F-35联合作战战斗机及其首席承包商Lockheed Martin来说可是个坏消息，F-35是历史上耗资最多的军工项目。F-35开始服役的时间预计比原计划推迟6年之久（到2016年），且已经严重超出预算。五角大楼仍准备在未来25年内购买2443架F-35战机，总价达到3820亿美元。然而盖茨在离任时警告说，虽然他认为购买F-35一事虽不至于彻底没戏，但“采购规模”也许不得不缩小。