re: #20 calochortus

Because shooting down our own passenger plane won’t be a singularly spectacular terror attack?

Ah. Budgets. That’s probably painfully close to the truth. That and National Defense Theater.

Not the Air Force’s biggest recent use of Contingency funds it get a little something extra, to be sure. The biggest recent Air Force Contingency item was an F-35A to replace an F-16 that crashed during operations in Afghanistan.

And that’s nothing: The Marines used the loss of 6 AV-8B Harriers to the Taliban attack on Camp Bastion to place 6 F-35Bs on the Contingency budget.