{"id":179316,"date":"2018-03-23T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/03\/23\/oops-5\/"},"modified":"2018-03-23T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T23:30:00","slug":"oops-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/03\/23\/oops-5\/","title":{"rendered":"OOPS!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Belgium is planning to acquire a replacement for its F-16 fleet, and the leader in this contest is the F-35 mistake jet.<\/p>\n<p>It now turns out that <a href=\"http:\/\/aviationweek.com\/defense\/belgian-f-16-replacement-program-turmoil?NL=AW-05&amp;Issue=AW-05_20180323_AW-05_118\">the government concealed options from the lawmakers to get the procurement approved<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Belgium\u2019s future fighter program has been thrown into turmoil after it emerged that cheaper options to extend the life of the country\u2019s F-16 Fighting Falcons had been deliberately hidden from ministers.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The scandal, which has already resulted in the suspension of several military officers and civil servants, came to light after the leaking of a Lockheed Martin assessment dated April 2016 to several Belgian news outlets on March 20. The documents suggested the country\u2019s F-16s could be upgraded and given another six years of operational life, making a new fighter purchase less urgent than government officials had previously contended.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Defense Minister Steven Vandeput told the country\u2019s Parliament that he had not been made aware of the report about the potential life extension option.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIf this report actually exists, if its content is accurate, and if the defense [ministry] has decided not to share it, there is a problem,\u201d Vandeput told a Belgian radio station.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, it is a problem.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the military-industrial complex, Belgium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Belgium is planning to acquire a replacement for its F-16 fleet, and the leader in this contest is the F-35 mistake jet. It now turns out that the government concealed options from the lawmakers to get the procurement approved: Belgium\u2019s future fighter program has been thrown into turmoil after it emerged that cheaper options to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[384,368,381,371],"class_list":["post-179316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-aviation","tag-corruption","tag-defense-procurement","tag-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}