Forget the $500 hammer.Latest report A study by the Government Accountability Office pegs the cost of America’s ailing Lightning II F-35 Joint Strike Fighter at an estimated $2 trillion.
Did all these zeroes buy American taxpayers an invincible flying machine?
No, the program is so crippled by cost overruns and delays that it seems likely that Snoopy and his doghouse will get off the ground.
You might think that the Pentagon’s largest acquisition program is also the best bet. Instead, the Lightning II, also known as the F-35, remains one of the Pentagon’s biggest embarrassments.
Last week, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida pressed the Air Force on mission readiness for its newest and most capable attack fighter. (Related: Air Force Secretary Confirms to Matt Gaetz that Lockheed Martin Essentially Controls the F-35 Fighter Plan)
Gates’ series of questions revealed that the F-35’s complete mission capability ranged from a low of 14.9% to a similar failure rate of 36.4%. At best, only 229 of America’s 630 F-35s will be fully combat-ready tonight.
Sadly, Gaetz follows a long series of bipartisan bombshells from The Hill regarding the program’s cost overruns and delays.
In 2014, Frank Kendall, then the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition and now secretary of the Air Force, called the Joint Strike Fighter program “procurement fraud.”
In 2016, then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain called it “a scandal and a tragedy.” In 2021, my former boss, then-Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, called the F-35 “ [excrement]” That same year, then-House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith called the plan a “pyramid scheme.”
how did we get here?
Problem with drawing board to runway
Conceived in the 1990s, the F-35 “Joint Strike Fighter” was intended to be an affordable platform that could be shared among various services and NATO allies. “Joint” means there are different types for the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy.
The program officially started in 2001, so you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a long time ago when we bought the 2,500 birds Uncle Sam wanted to put in his aviary. But more than 20 years later, there are only 630 Lightning IIs in the United States.
Problems with early airplanes ranged from cracks in the metal to fuel tanks that were susceptible to lightning strikes (no, this is not a myth).
Lightning II wasn’t amazingly fast to market. In fact, it took so long to reach technological maturity that the 5th generation aircraft required a modernization program to update what should have been a modernized warbird.
Currently, the modernization program itself behind schedule and over budget. Block 4 is estimated to cost $10.6 billion and will be completed in 2026. Last May, the Government Accountability Office revealed that the cost of Block 4 had ballooned to $16.5 billion and completion would be in 2029.
Delays in F-35 procurement are one reason the US Navy is still buying F/A-18s, The first 4th generation fighter jet to fly at a time when commercial aircraft were still equipped with ashtrays.
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it…
What could be worse than the F-35’s purchase history? Suction cup operation and maintenance.
When media reports in 2018 revealed that the Air Force might cut its order by a third (590 fighters), the program director simply said: Because if you can’t afford to own and operate it, it’s not much good. ”
Things haven’t gotten much better since he said those words. Maintenance costs have increased by 44% since 2018. The Pentagon estimates the Air Force will pay $6.6 million annually to operate and maintain each F-35. The original goal was $4.1 million.
To keep costs down, the Pentagon has taken another scary idea: reducing flight hours. Since 2020, the F-35 fighter jet’s estimated flight hours have decreased by 21 percent, from 382,376 hours to 300,524 hours. This cost reduction comes directly at the expense of pilot training and readiness, a critical trade-off if the United States does have to use fifth-generation strike fighters in future wars.
Major reforms needed
Sadly, the F-35 program is not the only time the Pentagon has failed in acquisition and sustainment (military parlance for “buying and maintaining”). Major reforms are needed as the United States begins to compete with China.
If Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2025, one of his military and civil leadership’s first acts should be an overhaul of the acquisition process at the Pentagon. We can start by working with Congress or by issuing an executive order to redefine roles and responsibilities, push oversight authority as far down the chain of command as possible, and extend the terms of those in key oversight roles. That would be a good start.
Morgan Murphy is a former Pentagon spokesperson, U.S. Senate National Security Advisor, and Afghanistan veteran.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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