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March 18, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:26
Running On Empty: 70% Of F-35s 'Not Combat Capable'?

A disturbing report from the Government Accountability Office shows that 70 percent - and maybe more - of the outrageously expensive, over-budget F-35 fighter jets are not capable of conducting combat. Yet Washington continues to rattle sabers at Russia and China. Also today: Pentagon not bothering to track weapons sent to Ukraine, and US considering MORE military aid to Israel as "incentive" for lower civilian casualties...

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Mission Capable F-35s 00:14:12
Hello, everybody.
Thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
New week, new week, new ideas.
No, we can't find any new rehash some of the old ones because we're going to start off with talking about an F-35.
That's a very, very fancy airplane.
Very, very costly.
And it has nothing to do with national defense.
It goes to do with spending a lot of money.
But we've talked about it for a long time.
And I think it was on the drawing boards maybe 24, 25 years ago at the beginning of the century.
And since then, some people have estimated that the $1.7 trillion is investment, a mere investment.
But don't worry, we have the auditors out there.
And they'll trace every single thing that's going on.
And no special interest there.
But this is more of the same, but it's so bad.
You wonder how long it's going to last because a lot of people have been doing that that have a little bit of common sense about arithmetic.
But you know, arithmetic hasn't been taught that well in school.
They can't add it up.
If you have no money in the bank, you can't spend a trillion dollars.
But if you tell the people this is real money and you don't have a right to use anything else, people keep using it until they quit using it.
So that's the problem.
But there's a new report.
The GAO came out and revealed some shocking statistics on just how unrady hundreds of billions of dollars worth of F-35s are to provide actual combat.
And for most of them, they probably don't really care.
You know, somebody might, one of them might crash and somebody will die or something.
But spending the money and pretending and keeping this machine going, so it's really amazing, amazing to me.
I look at this and think, well, it can't go on, and when something can't go on, it doesn't.
But we don't know how long this will last because we are a very powerful nation, have been very wealthy, and we're running on our laurels now because we aren't producers, but we're managers of a lot of assets, a lot of debt, a lot of military, and a lot of countries with borrowed money.
So that's why I don't think it's a radical assessment to say this is going to end badly.
And so this report now, the report is sort of devastating because even if they needed it, it's not likely that they'll take much risk with it.
I'd hate to think it's going to, well, we're going to quit.
We're into an airplane fight.
We have to have all these F-35s flying, and they're going to be all stationed in the United States, and they're going to protect us.
Not likely.
Yeah, not likely.
Well, I mean, I have to say, we've covered this for a long time.
I mean, I remember back working on the Hill, we were talking about this.
But, you know, I like going to air shows.
I like seeing planes.
I like jets.
I did see an F-30, a couple of F-35s last October when I went with my son.
They're very impressive to watch.
There's no question about it.
But the question is, looking nice, looking powerful, and being able to actually fight are two different things.
And so here, put this up.
Here is the article.
And it's essentially what this is, Dr. Paul, as you know, is they're moving the goalposts.
They're using terms like mission capable rather than can be in combat.
And so the GAO, as you talk about, as you mentioned, a few months ago, came out with a report saying that 70% or more of these F-35s may not be combat capable.
And so what that means is they can do a going to the next one actually.
So as I said, if you read a typical article in the media, you might believe that on average, some 55% of the F-35s are combat capable.
However, you'd be wrong.
You see, when the average person sees a report declaring that 55% of F-35s combat aircraft are mission capable, they assume mission capable equals combat capable, but in doing so, they are being deceived, as I underlined.
Mission capable means you can do one thing.
You know, you can do one thing.
Maybe it's delivering pizzas, right?
You can do that one thing.
It doesn't mean you can go into the battle and fight a battle.
So that 55% that are mission capable does not mean they are combat capable.
Yes, and yet people do like to tinker with these kind of things.
And there's a lot, there has to be a lot of interest.
There has to be a lot of politicians who have voted for this money over these last 20 years, you know, to keep this going.
But this was one piece of equipment that they have spread it out, spread out all the largest to all the states.
I think almost every state produces something that goes into this airplane.
So if they vote against it, you voted against jobs in our district.
So that's the kind of nonsense they play.
And it's serious stuff.
It's not so hard to make people excited.
I've watched ships brought into life and how they light up a ship.
It is very impressive and it's meant to be that way.
But I just wish the mission was as exciting as our weapons are.
And quite frankly, I think the weapons are very, very misleading.
But my biggest beef about the F-35 and other airplanes, and we have a lot of them, is that I've had a little bit of experience in the military.
I was in the military for five years.
I was in the Air Force.
But I came away with a different opinion than I had when I was drafted.
All of a sudden, and I was in the Air Force the whole time, and I was a flight surgeon.
But I came away after looking and reading and studying this that airplanes, per se, are probably pretty old-fashioned.
They can do a lot of damage if you're attacking a little country.
I guess you could take a country off this map.
But I think the need, if all of a sudden they said, well, we have to ban all F-35s, I'd say, well, we have some more money.
Maybe we'll guard our borders or something.
I wouldn't say, oh, we're going to be attacked.
But that's been around.
But I keep thinking that what we've have experienced, I remember when I first was drafted, NASA was just getting started.
And that was in 63.
And so since this time, we've had very, very advanced missiles.
We have satellite weapons.
We have drones.
And one weapon that I think is still viable that I liked in the old days were submarines because they were a little bit sneakier.
And it could be a good defensive weapon.
But since we're not in the defense business as much as we are in maintaining an empire, they look at it differently.
And to maintain the empire, we have to maintain our economic strength.
And that happens to be why we spend a lot of money fooling the people.
And just on this report we're talking about, it has deception in there.
Just one word makes a big difference.
And that's to get the people to roll over and say, well, we need it.
Yeah, I mean, it's essentially a commercial enterprise subsidized by the American people.
We socialize all the costs.
We pay all the costs for development.
And then the manufacturers benefit off the profits.
And we don't build it to protect the United States.
It's built as a commercial enterprise for other countries to buy.
And I'm sure by buying an F-35 from the U.S., you probably have either implied or real political advantages for doing so.
You know, that must be the case.
Well, here's a couple of other disturbing things.
Now, this original report was from the Epoch Times.
We picked it up off of Zero Hedge.
So we're talking about mission capable versus combat capable.
And this is what this article says.
Within the environs of the military industrial congressional complex, mission capable is a highly ambiguous term that allows for a whole lot of gaming of the accountability metrics.
It's worth noting that at 55% mission capable rate, the F-35 is still well below the program targets of 90%.
In other words, the F-35 fleet as a whole is nowhere near meeting its mission capability goal of being able to do anything at all.
But then when you talk about full mission capable, which means combat or whatever is asked of it, go to the next one.
It's an even worse story.
So even for someone who is an F-35 realist, the article continues, the results are shocking.
Not only is the F-35 fleet's full mission capable rate in the neighborhood of 30%, and it says see page 96 of the report, the full mission capable rate of the Marine Corps F-35B was a miserable 15.5% in March of 2023.
So 15% mission capable for the U.S. Marines.
That means if you get into a spot of bother, you're not going to be able to rely on these planes.
What are they going to do?
Build more planes, I guess.
But, you know, this is something that has to be addressed.
And we have the investigators there, the people who are supposed to watch things, and they're supposed to watch where does the money go?
Is it well spent?
And where is the equipment?
And all we have to do right now, there's been an enlightenment with the American people because they watched the evacuation of Afghanistan.
Rather messy.
But I think it was horrible because we went in.
But it was every bit as messy when they were leaving Vietnam.
It's all this big bold bragging about how we're going in there and save some country here.
It's for our national defense purposes.
And so that's how we get in with all the hype.
But Vietnam, what a tragedy.
The only thing we can say here is we've spent more money on what's going on currently, but less body bags are coming in, so they're not as visible.
Vietnam, foreign policy was measured by body bags, but still a lot of people die.
Sometimes they're at our hands, and sometimes it's done and hidden because they're on the receiving end of these bombs, and we don't generally count all the civilians that die from this.
Yeah, and I was on an interview last week, and someone asked me, well, when do you think the American middle class is going to wake up to all of this spending?
And I said, you know, the military stuff.
They're going to realize it's a ripoff.
It's not patriotic.
You're being ripped off.
And this is the F-35 is a great example.
And the other one is our next story, which is the Ukraine fiasco, is another example of the American people just being ripped off.
The government has no appropriate custodial view of the money that they take from us or print from us.
Put on, skip one R, go to the next one, the Real Clear Investigations.
The Government Accountability Office says it is unclear if the Pentagon tracking reports are tracking reports of misused aid in Ukraine.
And I'm just going to do the opening paragraph from this, if we can put the next one on.
So the GAO looked into it, and they have no idea whether the Pentagon's tracking the weapons were sending to Ukraine.
So while the Pentagon has assured Congress that no U.S. military equipment sent to Ukraine has been diverted, stolen, or otherwise misappropriated, they assured them, a new report from the Government Accountability Office could not determine if the Department of Defense was tracking the allegations of misuse two years into the conflict.
And here's a quote.
If you never look, you will never find it.
A source familiar with how the report was compiled said of the worst case possibility that aid was being misappropriated.
Instead of there saying, we have no record of the aid being misappropriated.
Well, are you checking it?
Well, no.
You don't record that.
But sir, you know, the Pentagon, you know, they probably are lying through their teeth, but the GAO is probably half true.
They don't know, but you had the answer.
Why don't they know?
Well, we don't look at that kind of thing.
So that's why there's nothing wrong with the Federal Reserve because we've checked the records.
Yeah, we checked the records like fun.
You don't check the records.
So you can't say, where did some of this money go and how is this operated?
Who did it benefit?
So this whole idea that it's open government is a bit of a farce.
But that is one thing that I think if we could get more of a unity on, on demanding that, it would be better.
I remember when I was working on Audit the Fed, we had a significant amount of Democrats come over to endorse the principle, and they liked the idea of openness and knowing what's going on, and they supported it.
But usually there will be some patriotic explanation of why you can't do that.
Secrets are very important.
That's one thing that I would do.
If anybody asked me, I would suggest all this stuff about papers taking papers home from your office, from the presidential office.
Why don't we, I'll bet you you could reclassify or eliminate all that activity or reclassify a bunch of it and make it not so interesting for that to happen.
I don't know whatever comes of all those records.
When you saw Biden's garage, it looks like they might just sit in a garage and rot away.
Secrets and Allies 00:07:01
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Next, it was Corvette.
Well, the thing is, I mean, I almost start wondering whether this whole thing is by design.
Because if you look at this next clip, this is from the article on Real Clear Investigations.
The sheer tonnage of supplies and speed of its shipment, according to the GAO report, has left the Pentagon without the quality data to assess its delivery.
So if you read about that and think about it, what they're saying is basically they were in so much of a rush to provide anything and everything to the Ukrainians, they couldn't be bothered to stop and track and think about, is this something good?
Is it going to fall into the wrong hands?
And it's just essentially, you know, all of this, it just follows the policy of racing into this war without thinking twice.
But the policy is GAO, they have audits and they'll maintain it and they assure the people that it will be looked after.
But the one thing that I came away from Washington with is that when they do audits or they have a commission set up, no matter what commission it is, 9-11, Kennedy Commission, all these things, they set up to seek the truth.
Well, the audits are inept and maybe they're inept on purpose and they get away with it, but the commissions are set up to, if somebody is guilty, to protect the guilty or make sure that the truth doesn't come out.
It's exactly the opposite.
So it's, you know, right now we live in an age where a lot of people are telling who's telling the truth.
It's pretty hard, but it's almost safer to assume that everybody, everything you see here out of Washington is probably a lie until proven otherwise.
And that wouldn't be that difficult because the job of finding the people that always tell the truth, that's an easier job because there's not enough of them.
Well, this next clip is an example of just how incompetent they are, just how unacceptable their behavior is.
Go to the next.
And the Department of Defense officials, however, maintain that they and their Ukrainian allies are, go to the next one, I think.
No, before, go back one.
Yeah, there you go.
So DOD officials, however, maintain that they and their Ukrainian allies are up to the challenge.
Now listen to this quote, Dr. Paul.
We think the Ukrainians are using properly what they've been given, said Colin Call, formerly Pentagon's top official, told Congress a year ago, we are laser-focused on the issue.
Really?
Okay, if you're laser-focused, then you should be doing more than thinking you should know.
And the article goes on to talk about the history of corruption in Ukraine, and it's just foolish to think that that's not still the case because we've seen so many times, I mean, Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, fired all of its military recruits because they said they were all corrupt.
You know, how many defense ministers has he fired because they're corrupt?
So it's all out there, but the Pentagon just doesn't want to know about it.
No, and they're going to continue to do that.
And there are some people who are made very happy.
And you suggested maybe this can't be just an accident.
Maybe some of this stuff is deliberate.
I think almost all of this stuff is deliberate.
It gets out of control and maybe gets worse, but it never gets better by the whistleblowers.
Just think how the whistleblowers suffer.
If you happen to be a whistleblower, not even in the GAO or wherever, and saying, look, this is what's going on, but there's not a good response.
And even Congress feels they're either participant or they're overwhelmed with it.
But a lot of them are very loud in their participation in all this kind of stuff.
They'll fight and they'll always use the patriot card.
He's unpatriotic.
You're un-American.
I remember a few of those things.
Yeah, they do throw them out.
They certainly do.
Especially if you don't support the latest war.
Well, the last one we want to cover today, I think, is one of the craziest things.
It just shows how hapless and captured the White House is.
And that is this tragedy in Gaza, you know, the destruction of the entire place, slaughter of thousands and thousands.
Well, Biden is in a bind.
He knows this.
I saw a report.
I didn't clip it, but I saw a report earlier that he's taken to wandering around the White House cursing and screaming whenever everyone tells him, your numbers are down because you can't control this problem.
You can't tell Israel to back off.
Well, this is from anti-war.com and Dave DeCamp.
It's even worse than that.
U.S. is considering giving Israel more military aid as leverage.
So, as you saw probably, Dr. Paul, on Friday, Netanyahu greenlighted the attack into Rafah camp.
That's where everyone's, you know, they kicked him out of everyone else and they ended up there and they said, we're going to attack that place too.
Well, instead of saying to Israel, hey, we don't want you to kill these couple million people sitting in Rafah.
If you start misbehaving with this, no more money.
You're cut off.
Instead of saying that, and put that back up if you can, this is just the craziest thing I've read all day.
Recent media reports have said there are discussions within the Biden administration to condition military aid to Israel if it invades Rafah as a way to reduce civilian casualties.
As cited a report by ABC News, suggested they may actually do the opposite.
The report cited U.S. officials who said the U.S. hasn't made a decision on leverage military aid, but it's possible additional aid, not less, would be offered as an incentive to reduce civilian casualties.
So literally, the White House is going to go to Israel and say, we're going to give you extra bombs to convince you to stop killing so many people, rather than saying, we're going to stop giving you bombs because you're killing too many civilians.
But the battle out there within the Democratic Party is becoming more evident all the time because it's never been like this that I remember, where the split is so clear-cut.
And that has to do with the so-called progressives who aren't very progressive anymore, and they're defending the Palestinian and the Israeli allies.
And they've come about to continue with their support.
But it is more radicalized before, because I think that what Israel is doing now is maybe they've overstepped their routine.
And I think it's getting easier to say something challenging Israel and supporting Hamas.
But that is shifting.
So I think the end is coming closer to some major changes being, rather than the stability of a war every six years between Israel and the Palestinians.
Major Changes Loom 00:04:24
But what it's going to be is up for anybody to choose.
Because what I can't understand is if they were going to have division, so if you don't support Israel, we're racist, you know, that sort of thing.
But if they do do this now, you don't support the Palestinians, then of course you're racist too.
So that is a shame.
But generally speaking, what I see there, which is a long time ago, now I guess it's getting close to 100 years, around World War I time and World War I and the conclusion, is when outside sources decided they knew what was best for the Middle East.
And they used the sympathies of one over the other.
And it was not a very good settlement.
There has been, and we've mentioned it before, when there was a lot less foreign interference in the Middle East.
There was a lot more peace among the various factions.
And I believe that to be true.
I believe that the power and the authoritarianism and There's a seat of governments that they can't control themselves, and that is the problem.
So, does that make you an anarchist?
Well, in a way, it makes me one that would like to get rid of a lot of power of those governments and let more people locally solve these problems.
Because look how many foreign governments have been, how many foreign governments are involved in Ukraine?
Yeah.
You know, and we were leading the charge.
I mean, I think NATO had something to do with that invasion.
Yeah, no kidding.
Sort of that thing.
It's too bad.
Yeah, well, there is more criticism of Israel's actions now, and a lot of it's coming from Jewish Americans.
So it's a lot of great people and people that we know as well.
So it's definitely not limited.
I just want to do a couple things from this article still.
Because first of all, is they're complaining even though we have supplied all of these weapons that have slaughtered all these civilians, the Israeli officials are mad because we're not doing it fast enough.
Let's put this next one on.
This is from Dave's article.
The U.S. officials made the comments in response to a senior Israeli official complaining that U.S. weapon shipments weren't coming fast enough.
The official said in the wake of the October 7th that U.S. arms were coming very fast, but now we're finding that it's very slow.
Probably because we gave them everything we don't have any left between them and Ukraine.
But in Dave DeCamp ends the article this way, and if you put the next one up, Gaza's health ministry said Sunday that the death toll in Gaza since Israel unleashed its onslaught stands at 31,645 Palestinians.
About 70% of the casualties are women and children.
The health ministry's numbers are considered a low estimate since they don't account for the thousands who are missing and presumed to be dead under the rubble.
So no matter what you feel like what may have happened on October 7th, when you look at almost 32,000 deaths, vast majority women and children, I don't think there's any way of talking about proportionality in this.
No, there sure isn't.
And so it's hard to say what should be done tomorrow and how it can be stopped because, you know, there are some that won't, we don't even want to have a cup of coffee.
We don't even want to stop for five minutes.
That would ruin our whole plan.
And it is to get rid of the Palestinians.
And the hatred is on both sides.
There's no doubt about it.
But sorting that out, I just don't believe American politics is a good place.
I don't think the United Nations is a good place or the old League of Nations or whatever it is to come and say this is a mess here.
But the people in that area lived for a thousand years and survived.
They did fight, but it hasn't grown to such strength because right now the weapons are so big and there's so much money involved.
That's where it is.
So all I can see is seek the truth and speak out and let the people know because if people were honest about a natural law that you should not use violence to try to mold the world, things would be different.
But there's too many people that are nihilists.
Oh, you want to talk about that, a higher law, natural law?
Well, you can't do that.
As long as they take that position, it is going to be pretty hard talking to anybody.
Pro-American Solution 00:01:29
Yeah, I mean, the best solution is sometimes the simplest.
You know, we're not pro-Israel, we're not pro-Palestinians.
We're pro-American, which means stop getting involved.
No more weapons, no more money.
You're on your own.
Solve your own problems.
Leave us out of it.
You know, that's the simple.
But, Daniel, the one thing I tell myself all the time is that position didn't fare badly when I was campaigning on liberal college campuses and conservative college campuses because the words themselves, they have a trouble attacking that because that sounded pro-American to me.
Exactly.
Really so.
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Over you, Dr. Carl.
Very good, Daniel.
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Not pretending we are the final answer, that we know what the truth is, but to sincerely seek the truth.
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