mr. o'hanlon. this committee has been handed the baton on one of the last legs of the race on the f-35, and the question, obviously, looking back at the earlier stages of the race, how could we have done this better? been further ahead? less cost? going back to the beginning, mr. sullivan, looking at what we were trying to achieve 12 years ago, anticipating a threat, anticipating technology changes, how did we miss it by so much where the unit cost of the airplane is almost double what we thought it would be, and what could we have done differently to be in a better place today? >> first of all, i would say that this program is not unique in many ways. a lot of the major acquisitions go down this exact same road. and i think it's very complex why programs get off to this kind of start. but if you look at the mechanics of a program, just the best way to set a business case, i think where this program went wrong is when it set requirements, and it didn't do enough due diligence up front before it had

mr. o'hanlon was renting was not so much an idea as it was a fantasy.here's no chance that the congress would vote to send american soldiers over there and make that kind of financial commitment so he can have a theoretical situation about what it would, quote, take. remember in iraq, the cabinet testimony was that that would cost -- we'd make money on the war. that was bottom line more or less what we were told in the begin. so americans have heard this song before and know it doesn't work. they know there's a lot of expense, a lot of loss of life and know we can't micromanage these outcomes. this is a civil war. it's tragic for syria. but at the end of the day, there's going to have to be some syrian leadership that will ultimately takes responsibility for that country. our country and russian with this discussion with putin, let's hope that we can be constructive and help bring people to their senses. but the idea that we can micromanage and turn this into an americanized civil war that we control the outcome i think is a real stress. >> let's hope t