The severe defense spending cuts triggered by the failure of the deficit-reduction supercommittee have U.S. allies worried about the fallout.
And nowhere is this more evident than in Canada, where the future of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter had become a hot political issue even before the supercommittee announced just before Thanksgiving that it was giving up on attempts to craft a plan to save at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years/…/
[M]ammoth acquisition programs such as the F-35 are the quickest and easiest way to meet the savings triggered by the supercommittee’s failure, and so, they’re the most likely early targets, explained Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
“The Joint Strike Fighter obviously stands out. It is the largest program in the DoD portfolio, and I think size matters here,” Harrison said. “When you are going down the list of programs, and you are looking to free up billions of dollars, you’re going to start by looking at the big programs.”