Analyzing Message in "How DOD’s $1.5 Trillion F-35 Broke the Air Force"

The author of the article actually makes the message quite explicit. While the title describes the more explicit message, there is also an underlying expansion of the same idea.

Denker, Patrick "Important Message" 04/26/2011 via Flickr CC BY 2.0

The author essentially uses direct quotes and cost data to assert that the F-35 program is a costly failure that has ruined everything in the DOD. The second paragraph of the article is a single sentence that reads, "Now, the Air Force has taken steps to make sure that the unmitigated disaster that the F-35 has become does not happen again." Here and repeatedly throughout the article the author makes his overt message clear.

Elsewhere, the author uses quotes from the report "America's Air Force: A Call to the Future" to develop the idea that government defense spending is inefficient because spending money on large-scale programs does not work. He uses the F-35 as a symbol for everything that he believes to be wrong with the current defense spending strategy. In addition to the DOD and the Pentagon receiving criticism in this article, Lockheed Martin gets a passing blow when it is referred to as an "unaccountable manufacturer".