F-35: Owner's pride, others' meme

Heard of the mitrailleuse machine gun? The world’s first rapid-fire gun developed in the 1860s, it was like Onida TV—owner’s pride and enemy's envy. The French owners kept it under such thick wraps that when the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 broke out, the guns were issued to front-line troops without operating manuals. By the time clearances were obtained and the manuals arrived, France had lost the war.

- R. PRASANNAN

Looks like that’s going to be the case with the F-35. The plane, billed at $100 million as a futuristic fifth-gen fighter, is being offered only to the US's closest pals. Don Trump had condescendingly offered it to us, but has come to think it as a case of casting pearls before a cow.

Now the plane is looking increasingly like the mitrailleuse gun. The Americans had given a few to their British buddies, who have since been flying it around like boys who got new toys. A few of the naval version came to our neighbourhood, and one of the birds ran out of fuel! The pilot found Thiruvananthapuram on his GPS, ensured Shashi Tharoor wasn’t around, and landed there.