Where is our best hope for achieving savings?

The first and best idea would be to do what businesses, state, and local governments often do which is simply tell the managers that they need to cut their spending by X percent within a certain time frame and force them to identify and get rid of what is not necessary. Announce to the military that the Pentagon budget will be reduced by 50% in the next 4 years and have the Generals come up with what should be cut. That would take us back to a pre 9/11 level of insane and obscene military spending.

Some specific items that could be cut?

End the war in Iraq as soon as possible. No residual force left in country at all.

Cancel every star wars and star wars related program. Completely abandon the idea of a missile shield and start getting serious about eliminating nuclear weapons, getting nuclear proliferation under control and securing supplies of all the materials required to build nukes around the world.

Cancel every weapons and R & D program that is not immediately necessary for defending the United States.

Stop the practice of "improving" every existing weapons system to the point it becomes nothing but a gold plated boondoggle.

Completely abandon the idea of American empire and focus our military efforts on defending the United States instead of our imperial interests.

These ideas are just for starters, but the goal should be a mimimum 50% reduction in the existing military budget in a relatively brief period of time. There is no threat on this planet that justifies anything remotely close to the wasteful and obscene amounts of money being given to the military to spend on destroying society through war. It's absolutely nuts.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) will soon make manned aircraft obsolete.

Pilots are now coming out of undergraduate pilot training to assignments as UAV pilots. The number of UAV pilots will skyrocket by 2012, outnumbered only by F-16 pilots, according to the Air Force Times.

The MQ-9 Reaper UAV has a 950-shaft-horsepower turboprop engine, and with two 1,000 pound (450 kilogram) external fuel tanks and a thousand pounds of munitions has an endurance of 42 hours. Try that with a pilot, who is also sensitive to G-loads that don't affect the Reaper.

In 2008 the New York Air National Guard 174th Fighter Wing began to transition from F-16 piloted planes to MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are capable of remote controlled or autonomous flight, becoming the first all-robot attack squadron.

Retired U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General T. Michael Moseley said, "We've moved from using UAVs primarily in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles before Operation Iraqi Freedom, to a true hunter-killer role with the Reaper.

The Reaper costs about $6m, a fraction of the cost of manned aircraft.--Wiki

But the Pentagon corporate welfare program must be sustained. Congress-critters depend on the money flow for profits, contributions and employment in their districts.

The following is from MarketWatch Week-end, on F-22/Raptor crashes:

"It's too early to determine if the crash will have an impact on production or the government's decision to purchase more of the high-tech planes, said Paul Nisbet, an analyst with JSA Research. A redesign is possible if the investigation concludes there were systemic problems with the aircraft as opposed to pilot error."

It appears that even though the plane came into service in December 2007, Lockeed continued to charge the Defense Department for R & D. Perhaps they are aware that there is a design flaw, and "a redesign is possible."

I remember during MACH ONE testing, they discovered that at a certain velocity, the air passing over the wings and the air passing under the wings intersected right over the flaps and ailerons, a happenstance that froze the controls, hence, causing the pilot to lose the plane. That "design flaw" was rectified in that the wings were redesigned to allow the above-wing and below-wing airflow intersections to occur beyond the wing control surfaces, which solved the problem. And MACH ONE was achieved thereafter.

This is from F-22Fighter.com"

"The "fins" of the aircraft are divided into two types: the horizontal (which control vertical movement) and the vertical (which control the horizontal movement). The horizontal fins (located at the rear of the aircraft) not only provide the plane with extra maneuverability etc... , but also act as a heat shield for the exhaust of the engines, so the thermal trace of the F22 is at a minimum. The vert. fins are angled in the similar fashion of the F-22's body, to help reduce its radar signal. These also contain many internal antennas inside the body of the fin itself, as a way to conceal them and help maintain the stealth abilities of the aircraft."

It is possible that there is a design flaw in the tail embodiment where "the angled vertical fins" are too thin to sustain draft and resistance to airflow vortices being created in the tail end of the aircraft. Perhaps these vertical fins ought to be at 90 degree angle rather than being "angled in the similar fashion of he F-22's body."

I keep remembering the initial problem with MACH ONE test flights and wonder whether an analogous problem might exist with the F-22-Raptor, at the tail end embodiment.

The website continues:

"The F22 Raptor’s airframe is comprised mainly of four (4) large “chunks”, or pieces that are produced by separate companies (see illustration below for part and manufacturer)." Those four companies are Pratt & Whitney, Boeing, Lockheed-Marietta, Lockheed, Fortworth. Could it be that these four different companies needed to coordinate their design blueprints or drawings in order to finetune aerodynamic specifications for exactness, precision and performance in the finished products?

Indeed, if these crashes are not due to human error, then perhaps they are due to engineering and design flaws, such as aerodynamics and materials integration.