Born in Nice, France, and raised in New York, Sprey as a young man knew Paul D. Wolfowitz, whose mathematician father, then teaching at Cornell University, was the best teacher Sprey recalls ever having. Brought to the Pentagon in 1966 as one of Robert S. McNamara's "wiz kids," Sprey became heavily involved in the design of two key Air Force warplanes -- the F-16 fighter and the A-10 ground attack jet.

While working on the F-X, Boyd met Pierre Sprey, a weapons system analyst on the OASD/SA staff, whose background was similar to Enthovenís but much less distinguished. By his own account, Sprey was a dilettante with an engineering degree but no military experience. After graduation from Yale, Sprey became a research analyst at the Grumman Aircraft Corporation for space and commercial transportation projects. He came to OSD/SA in 1966, where he declared himself an expert on military fighter aircraft, despite his lack of experience. Sprey admitted being a gadfly, a nuisance, and an automatic opponent of any program he was not a part of.45 He was opposed to many Navy
80
and Air Force tactical air systems, especially the Navyís Grumman F-14, because of its size and complexity.46
Somehow, Sprey concluded that numbers were critically important in air combat, and he and Boyd ñ both glib, iconoclastic, ambitious, self-aggrandizing, and excluded from the decision-making process -- found a common cause in opposing larger, complex fighters.47 Boyd had read theories of combat that proposed to be based on ìmaneuverî warfare rather than ìattritionî warfare, and he decided that large, complex, and expensive fighters with advanced avionics and weapons were less effective in air-to-air combat than
48
small, simple, more maneuverable ones that could be bought in large numbers.
were to give themselves the grand name of ìReformers,î but time would show they were actually ìCritics.î One scholar, Timothy Lefler, defines ìcriticsî as members of a group that have support neither for their proposals nor an interest in succeeding by conciliation and cooperation. Lefler continues that to become a ìreformerî one must bridge the gap between criticism and successful reform by recognizing the obstacles to change, and then gaining the support of state authority and the cooperation of the active participants. 49 The next decade would show Boyd, Sprey and the rest of a group they gathered around themselves were never interested in bridging the gap and becoming reformers; they preferred to remain critics.
Boyd and Sprey said the increasing cost of high-technology American fighters like the ìBlue Birdî would make it impossible for the United States to maintain near numerical parity with the Soviet Union, which they felt was necessary. It logically followed America needed smaller, less expensive fighters to get the numbers they felt the
Air Force needed. Buried in this proposition was the fact that Boyd and Sprey were going beyond proposing a new aircraft. They were proposing the United States try to match the Soviets in numbers, which was an entirely new way of thinking about American defense and a change in basic American military doctrine that had been in place since the[/b] beginning of the Cold War.

The company says in a statement that the increase in production this marks, “enables us to reduce costs by taking advantage of economies of scale and production efficiencies.”

«Вчера была достигнута замечательная сделка с Lockheed Martin по покупке новой партии F-35 в количестве 90 самолетов. 55 уже закуплены для военных США», — заявил Спайсер.
Он добавил, что на самолеты была предоставлена скидка в размере 7,5% от предыдущей цены. Благодаря этому общая стоимость самолетов составила 455 миллионов долларов, что сэкономит американским налогоплательщикам 728 миллионов долларов от всей закупки. По заявлению Спайсера, это большая победа для американских налогоплательщиков, которой добился президент США Дональд Трамп.

Мэттис распорядился пересмотреть ее (программу выпуска F-35), чтобы снизить затраты, а также проверить, нельзя ли заменить ее усовершенствованным производством истребителей F/A-18E/F Super Hornet (Boeing).