The Pentagon’s flagship F-35 fighter jet program has been below mission-capable standards for six years, a government watchdog agency said Monday.
The F-35 often costs close to $100 million apiece, and the Pentagon expects to spend about $2 trillion on the F-35. program For decades to come. But despite being one of the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons, all variants of the fighter jet have failed to meet mission-capable speed targets since fiscal year 2018, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). . report It was released on Monday. (Related: ‘A serious problem’: America’s most advanced weapons rely on Chinese technology, experts warn)
According to the GAO report, mission performance objectives are defined as “the percentage of the total time that an aircraft can fly and perform at least one mission,” and are used to assess the readiness of various military assets. Although the F-35’s lackluster performance is due to a variety of factors, many of which have been publicly reported, the Department of Defense continues to fail to take the appropriate steps needed to address the problem.
“In September 2023, we reported that several maintenance challenges negatively impacted the F-35’s readiness and the aircraft’s ability to achieve mission-capable objectives,” the report said.
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. (Photo by Thomas Lones/Getty Images)
Part of the problem is due to a lack of needed parts, a long maintenance backlog and “warehousing and organizational maintenance challenges,” the report said. The Pentagon also relies heavily on defense contractors for the F-35 program, but has not taken steps to regain control of the program, even if it doesn’t want to.
The problem extends beyond the F-35. According to the report, one Air Force fighter jet, three Navy jets, and two Marine Corps jets have all failed to meet their annual mission capability targets over the past six years. Many of the Air Force’s other fighter variants only achieved their goals in one of those years.
According to the report, none of the military’s various fighter jet programs achieved mission-capable goals throughout the six-year period.
Problems include “lack of spare parts, unexpected part replacements and repairs, limited access to aircraft technical data, and lack of trained maintenance personnel,” the report said. There is.
The cost of the F-35 program has ballooned since its inception. The Defense Department was scheduled to spend just over $1 trillion on the program in 2018, but that projection has jumped to about $1.5 trillion in 2023 and $2 trillion in 2024, according to GAO.
These cost increases are due to the Pentagon’s failure to plan the program, officials told Congress in late 2023.
“Once you get to the root cause, some of the challenges that emerge are: [DOD] There were no requirements [in place]” John Ludwigson, GAO’s Director of Contracts and National Security Acquisitions, told Congress in December.
The Department of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
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