"We have to seriously consider whether we can go ahead with this," Representative Steny Hoyer (Democratic-Maryland) told AIR International. "The Pentagon is putting lipstick on a pig," said analyst Winslow Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information. Because the JSF programme is so colossal, some in the US capital believe only President Barack Obama could kill it. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was expected to wield a budget- cutting axe when he took office, is actually arguing privately to keep the programme and reminding friends that his predecessor, Dick Cheney, terminated the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor programme in 1990, only to have Congress, industry and even the Pentagon bureaucracy ignore him.
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