Yet another element in the aerospace industry's insidious lobbying campaign

Everyone knows scare tactics are a favored approach of the defense-industrial lobby. "One day the Chinese will be able to defeat us in the air/at sea/from afar/in space/in cyberspace!", they say. "The Russians are looking feisty these days, ain't they?", they might hint. "You know, I understand you guys spending money on language training and tea-drinking and whatnot, but is the Taliban really an existential threat to America?"

Well, today they're supplementing all that with a novel approach: keep cutting back, and our gear might stop working. The Onion reports:

Boeing Lays Off Only Guy Who Knows How To Keep Wings On Plane

CHICAGO—With the airline industry continuing to suffer under the ongoing recession, the Boeing Company was forced Monday to lay off Al Freedman, the only guy left at the corporation who knows how to keep wings from falling off planes. "We used to have a whole team of engineers who knew how to make the wings stay on, but those days are long gone," Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr. said. "We'll make it work, though. The wings are not necessarily the most important part of the plane, anyway." McNerney added that at least they were able to save the job of the guy who knows how to prevent jet engines from exploding.

Oh wait, it's just the Onion.

(But you'd believe it if it were real, wouldn't you?)