I Believe the First Hit Piece Against the LRS-B Has Been Written

It looks like the 'Faux Reform' crowd has begun the long campaign with a 'retrospective'-themed hit piece on he B-2 as part of the wind-up.

It's typical 'Bloomberg' garbage. With a title like: "Almost Nobody Believes the U.S. Air Force Can Build an Affordable Bomber" * , how could it not be? I notice that those non-believers visited in the article have zilch long-range strike credentials. You don't often see the 'bandwagon' fallacious argument brazenly (stupidly?) combined with a fallacious appeal to authority right up front in the title, but there it is... 

*Note, 1 June 15: Craptastic Bloomberg site changed the links and memory-holed the comments since post was put up. Link changed to go to the Bloomberg piece again...for now. 

There's only a few non-misleading bits, such as... 

“There’s already the usual suspects out there telling us that we don’t need this or it won’t work,” Major General Garrett Harencak, assistant chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, said at an Air Force Association breakfast in January. The new bomber “will be affordable and it’s desperately needed,” he said.

...buried at random amid the otherwise unrelenting drivel oozing from old and new "usual suspects",

Here's the 'B-2 history' graphic found at the link with corrections to make it 'true', or at least a hell of a lot truer than the 'B.S.' concocted by the article's 'author' David Lerman.

The Bloomberg 'piece' is "Punk Journalism" at it's finest.

And of course, it's all part of the plan:

Lerman's new enough to the game that I would probably categorize him as a "Grubber". If he wakes up to how he's been 'played' and resists from here on out, then he can be seen as a 'Former Pawn'. Otherwise we could be seeing an emerging Loyal Babbler.

The One DOT&E, er DoD SAR Quote You Probably Won't See Anywhere Else

Now with Don Bacon! 
(As in Corrected, Updated and Bumped with Hat Tip to Same)

Don't expect the Punk Journalists, Loyal Babblers, or Faux Reformers (abetted by Punk Journalists) to bother with putting proper perspective around all their little doomsday accounts of what is going on inside the F-35 program. Remember, its all about either trying to kill a program and/or coming up with enough rent money. "P.A.C.E." is the vehicle that they'd drive off the cliff before they'd ever move away from it.

So there is one DOT&E DoD Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) quote out of all the reports and testimonies that comes out of the unexpurgated December 2014 (for 2015) DOT&E Report DoD SAR that I don't see anyone pushing out to the uneducated masses anytime soon. It is the final paragraph of the report's Executive Summary, Page 10:

In summary, the F-35 program is showing steady progress in all areas – including development, flight test, production, maintenance, and stand-up of the global sustainment enterprise. The program is currently on the right track and will continue to deliver on the commitments that have been made to the F-35 Enterprise. As with any big, complex development program, there will be challenges and obstacles. However, we have the ability to overcome any current and future issues, and the superb capabilities of the F-35 are well within reach for all of us. 

Everything else in the media that surrounds the F-35/DOT&E, DoD SAR, GAO, blah ,blah, blah, reportage is about either rallying the mouth-breathers or herding the sheep.

About the Update: I had meant to identify the report I linked to as the SAR, but let myself get in a hurry and used the incorrect reference at the link that originally led me to the document instead. My 'bad', but it doesn't change the essence of the post or the point either. This update exists because I loathe inaccuracies, even mine and no matter how they are identified.
If anything, the quote is more relevant to my point coming from the SecDef Office SAR than the DOT&E annual report: