Quando não se tem coragem de assumir custos afundados?

Julgo que foi o Paulo Vaz que em tempos me falou do barrete chamado F-35. Uma coisa é certa, quem me falou nele coincidiu no diagnóstico:

"For over two decades, the F-35 has been the symbol of everything that's wrong with mammoth defense contracts: behind schedule, over budget, and initially, over-sold.
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The development of the F-35 has been a mess by any measurement. There are numerous reasons, but they all come back to what F-35 critics would call the jet's original sin: the Pentagon's attempt to make a one-size-fits-all warplane, a Joint Strike Fighter.
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Still, we could have seen this coming, and not just because of the technical complexity involved in making a warplane for so many constituents. Long before the delays and overruns that riddles the F-35 program, history was littered with illustrations of multi-mission aircraft that never quite measured up."

Será que isto é o que acontece quando alguém não tem a coragem de assumir os custos afundados?
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Trechos retirados de "WTF-35: How the Joint Strike Fighter Got to Be Such a Mess"