The thing I never understand about defense budgets....

OK, so we gotta set priorities, and they are cutting budgets. The F/A-XX is the code name for the next gent carrier-based fighter that is supposed to replace the F-18.

So the budget for the program was 453+ million dollars to begin design phase, and it was cut to 53 million dollars. What does this mean? It means that not much is getting done and most contractors will be sitting around getting paid to do very little.