identify the targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire, and too short-legged to loiter usefully over embattled US ground units for sustained periods.  It is a giant step backward from the current A-10.

It is time to start fixing this mess.  Needless to say, the complexities of Pentagon procurement regulations and especially the circle-the-wagons mentality of the Pentagon and Congress present serious hurdles to be overcome, most of them ethical.

First is the need is to accept the facts as they exist, rather than as Lockheed and self-interested bureaucrats in the Pentagon would prefer them to be.  That will mean accepting the JET recommendations as currently written – not watering them down to make them palatable, or ignoring them as they were in 2008 under Gates' first term as SecDef. 

Let's watch closely and see if the original JET findings are watered down by Deputy Secretary Lynn or others who helped to father the Joint Strike Fighter in the Clinton Administration, or others, such as Acquisition Czar Ashton Cater, who will have to re-jigger the Air Force's entire long range budget to accommodate more F-35 cost.  His having been forthright about underhanded Air Force behavior on the F-22, perhaps we can hope that Gates will insist on ethical behavior on the F-35.  We shall see.

Comparing the original JET findings with whatever comes out the other end should be easy.  The details of the study were reported by Jason Sherman at InsideDefense.com; other outsiders are familiar with just what is in the JET analysis, and quick reaction professionals like Colin Clark at DODBuzz will surely have a field day if top Pentagon management tries to fudge what's in the JET study.  The glare of public understanding is always a good way to appeal to the patriotism of top Pentagon management.

In addition to listening to the facts, we will need to exercise the professed spirit of the new Weapon System Acquisition Act, signed into law by President Obama last May.  While the fine print of the new law is hopelessly riddled with loopholes to protect business as usual, the bill purports to control costs and inspire competition, especially the "fly-before-buy" competitive approach that has worked so marvelously well the few times it's been tried. 

This is the same vision that President Obama expressed to the VFW in Phoenix last August when he said he wanted to stop "the special interests and their exotic projects that are years behind schedule and billions over budget."  Clearly, no one has told the President that the F-35 is a leading poster child for those evils. 

Finally, the biggest step, would be to suspend further F-35 production until the test aircraft, all of them now funded, can complete a revised, much more thorough flight test schedule.  Once we know the F-35's realistically demonstrated performance and problems, and the full extent of its costs, we can make an informed decision whether to put it into full production. To do that, the upside down F-35 acquisition plan -- which buys 500 aircraft before the "definitive" test report (the one that only flight tests 17 percent of F-35 characteristics) is on Gates' desk -- needs to be radically recast into real fly-before-buy plan.  Just the kind of plan the new Acquisition Reform Act pretends to advocate.

In the almost certain event that the F-35 is found by uncompromised, realistic testing to be an unaffordable loser, there are viable alternatives.  If an active consensus develops to reverse the current aging and shrinking of the existing tactical aviation inventory (as opposed to today's silent conspiracy encouraging those trends to worsen), a short term, affordable fix to restore combat adequacy is needed: Extend the life of existing F-16 and A-10 airframes for the Air Force and continue purchasing F-18E/F aircraft for the Navy and Marine Corps. For the part of the inventory that most urgently needs immediate expansion, the A-10 and the close support mission, hundreds of airframes now sitting in the "boneyard" can and should be refurbished – something that can be done at extraordinarily modest cost.

Just a life-extension program will not address long term needs.  Accordingly, competitive prototype fly off programs should be immediately initiated to develop and select new fighters to build a larger force that is far more combat-effective than existing the F-16s, F-18s, and A-10s.  Just such programs -- that lead to an astonishing 10,000 plane Air Force within current budget levels -- are described in detail in "Reversing the Decay in American Air Power," a chapter in the anthology America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress (Stamford University Press).

You can almost literally hear the howls of protest right now. The F-35 is too big to fail.  Gates himself seems trapped by that logic; he said "My view is we cannot afford as a nation not to have this airplane."  We take the opposite view. The F-35's bloat -- in cost, leaden weight, and mindless complexity -- guarantees failure. It will shrink our air forces at increased cost, rot their ability to prevail in the air and support our ground forces, and will needlessly spill the blood of far too many of our pilots. 

We have to take the first steps to better understand the extent of the F-35 disaster and to reverse the continuing decay in our air forces.

(Pierre Sprey contributed to this op-ed.)