
Chiding lawmakers’ focus on incremental increases to the defense spending topline, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on Friday criticized the ‘painful’ F-35 program and said the Air Force should look to find a cost-effective mix of fighter attack aircraft. “The failure we wind up tolerating is failure on a massive frickin’ scale, think F-35,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said during a Brookings Institution discussion. “For what we have spent, in terms of what we’ve gotten back, it’s…