22 February 2013 Last updated at 17:50 ET
F-35 fighter jet fleet grounded by Pentagon

The US has grounded its entire fleet of 51 F-35 fighter jets after the discovery of a cracked engine blade.

The fault was detected during a routine inspection of an air force version of the jet (F-35A) at Edwards Air Force Base in California, said the Pentagon.

Different versions are flown by the navy and the marine corps. All have been grounded.

The F-35 is the Pentagon's most expensive weapons programme. with a cost of nearly $400bn (£260bn).

The Pentagon said flight operations would remain suspended until the root cause is established.

Friday's order was the second time in two months planes from the F-35 range have been grounded.

The marine corps variant (F-35B), a short take-off and vertical landing variant (SOVL), was grounded for nearly a month after a manufacturing defect caused a fuel line to detach just before a training flight in January.

The air force version takes off from, and lands on, conventional runways while the SOVL version takes off from shorter runways and lands like a helicopter.

The UK is buying the SOVL variant for its future aircraft carriers.

It is replacing the scrapped Harrier jet which had a range of 300 nautical miles, compared with the F-35's 450 nautical miles.

With a top speed of 1,200mph (1,930km/h), the F-35 can fly almost twice as fast as the Harrier, while it also has radar transparency and stealth capabilities - the Harrier had neither.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21554331#

Well, in this case forget about the military cut part of the sequester.
We need now more money than ever to fix that, even if it means new jets.
The communists are coming!

Fidel's gettin' pretty long in the tooth.

You must remember that the cons think the bible is a history book and that "Red Dawn" is a documentary. Even so, the cons are so determined to cut the budget that they are willing to let the "defense" budget suffer. They will, of course, try to blame it on the democrats.

Already doing just that, Thack ~ if you haven't made it to page 2 yet, take a look at our GOP/TP revisionist sequestration history REDUX thread ~

Sooz