Hopefully you ' re right then it will come back up later ! I was able to apply for myself but we weren ' t able to start my wife ' s app in time . <| sep |> More like photo bunned <| sep |> I know . It sickened my soul when I discovered it . That was weeks ago . Reading Wikileaks and digging around . But the election was far too BIG . But we can ' t look away . Innocent children depend on us . <| sep |> What makes your head itch WadeyHead lice Gary . <| sep |> The lunch line is pretty good . <| sep |> Sure , it ' s his job . But since it ' s his job then it ' d also be prudent to consider that his reports are written assuming the most pessimistic outcomes he thinks is possible , and to read them in that light . After all , that ' s his job . And also consider that since his office doesn ' t actually produce anything , its relevance and budget depends heavily on to what extent he can convince politicians that military programs need more testing and oversight . which his office just so happens to fulfill . Thus it ' s stupid for people to for example just link to his report and say see this is the current progress of the F 35 program . No , it ' s the worst possible progress of the F 35 program , and the truth of the program ' s progress is going to be somewhere in between Gilmore ' s memos and Lockheed Martin ' s press releases , which similarly always talks about the best possible aspects of the program . As a side note , this also means that the potential issues which Gilmore doesn ' t bring up are thus almost certainly going well . For example , I don ' t recall him complaining about the F 35 ' s stealth . This leads me to believe that its stealth is almost certainly better than what the requirements call for . You mention repeatedly that the program should be held up to a certain standard . Whose standard ? Gilmore doesn ' t actually have to pay for any of the testing , he just signs off on them . Thus he is always free to call for more testing and say that the current testing is insufficient . But it ' s the military that has to actually budget for the testing , and trade that off against the cost of maintaining current aircraft with their more limited capabilities , procuring new aircraft , and ultimately put its lives on the line . Hence why it ' s a critical distinction that the DOTE doesn ' t actually budget for the tests that it always calls for . The military already conducts testing sufficiently traded off against its other obligations within its budget , whereas Gilmore never has to worry about the practicality and the costs of the tests that he calls for . The rebaselining of the F 35 program simply put it back on track to the pace of modern fighter development . The original plan of ~ 10 years is simply overoptimistic . Yet almost all programs of the modern era F 22 , Rafale , Typhoon , etc . , including the F 35 , have originally planned for a 10 year development schedule from prime contractor selection , only to see it slip to 15 years . The F 35 is no different . In other words Modern fighter programs take around 15 years to go from development to IOC . Having a plan saying that it should only take 10 years is not going to budge that reality . The rebaselining of the F 35 program was simply to bring the extant plans to that reality .