It's not exactly news. The air force also used to own a lot of aircraft factories [1]. They still have the famous plant four, from building B-24 Liberators to

It's not exactly news. The air force also used to own a lot of aircraft factories [1]. They still have the famous plant four, from building B-24 Liberators to now building the F-35. Private contractors do the operations. Does it make sense to pretend to be all private if you have (mostly) one customer. I guess the contractor who won the competition for the new program could always buy the factory from the previous one's manufacturer, but does it make sense? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Air_Force_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Air_Forc...