The real sham (or is that shame?) is not in the final hours of the destruction of this expensive equipment that had little return on investment. The real problem was on the other end of the spending spectrum.
1) If these planes were such a problem why could those problems have not been ironed out before purchase?
2) Why are we spending 43 million dollars (or whatever the ridiculous figure was) on a handful of planes that end up not passing muster?
Lets face it, our government wastes billions and billions of dollars because of incompetence. This looks like another incompentent decision made years ago that cost way more money than it should have.
It was interesting to read the article posted by flyerjumper.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...0911-afpn05.htm
Officials talk about the cost to destroy this equipment and sell it as scrap as being the cheapest way out. That is not disputable. The real waste came years ago at the time of the original purchase.