Senior serving officers in any country's armed forces tend to shun public controversy. But Admiral Jonathan Greenert, America's chief of naval operations, has stoked it in the latest issue of a specialist journal. His article appeared to question the value of the stealth technologies that underpin the biggest weapons project in history, the vast and costly F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme/.../
Mark Gunzinger, an authority on air power at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a think-tank based in Washington, thinks the admiral was not so much aiming a broadside at the F-35 than making the case for having the right mix of aircraft for future carriers. An advocate of both the long-range Next Generation Bomber and the navy's Unmanned Combat Air System, he points out that both should feature the stealthy designs that are needed to survive in hostile environments, and that forecasts of the death of stealth are very premature.