UK Ministry of Defense photo
The GAO said that “none of the 15 tactical aircraft variants met their mission capable goals in fiscal year 2023.”
The watchdog report said that for the F-35, $7.46 billion for the Air Force, $2.75 billion for the Marine Corps, and $1.87 billion for the Navy was spent on operations and maintenance, with yearly spending in this area growing substantially between 2018 and 2023 and services in some cases using more money than was initially requested.
In response to the GAO report, Lt. Gen. Mike Schmidt, director and program executive officer of the F-35 Joint Program Office, told Business Insider that “the F-35 is proven in combat and performing for 14 military services around the world today.”
“As the cornerstone of the future fighter fleet,” he said, “the F-35 enables the warfighter to dominate the skies in the most challenging combat environments against the world’s most capable adversaries.”
Schmidt said that his office is working with the Pentagon and industry partners to improve the mission-capable rates, noting that when spare parts and repair materials are available, rates tend to be higher.
“With this in mind, I am not satisfied with our readiness today — and our team is doing everything in its power to drive availability to levels our users expect,” he said.
Air Force Master Sgt. Andrew Sinclair
The F-35 was built as a low-observable joint strike fighter able to engage in ground-attack, maritime-strike, and air-combat missions and also coordinate American firepower as a high-end networked sensor. Coming in three variants, there is the F-35A with a cannon, the short takeoff/vertical landing F-35B, and carrier-based F-35C. A number of US allies and partners operate variants of the jet.
But the jet has been mired with ballooning costs and readiness problems for years, with a GAO report earlier this year revealing that the availability of the aircraft has dropped as the full life-cycle of the F-35 has grown, topping $2 trillion.