F-35 Can’t Be Fixed Without Private Contractors
September 26th, 2023The F-35 is probably the biggest single scam in U.S. Military history.
Mission accomplished.
Via: Vice:
Like Apple’s new iPhone, America’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is expensive and hard to repair without intervention from the original manufacturer. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a bipartisan watchdog group in D.C., F-35s are only available for missions about half the time. A whole lot of these expensive jets are sitting in storage because they’re waiting on repair parts.
The F-35 is a troubled aircraft that’s been on the GAO’s radar for years. Its new report on the jet, “DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy,” drilled down into why the aircraft spent so much time on the tarmac and not in the skies. “The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals,” the GAO said. “The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired.”
Right now, the care and upkeep of F-35s has been contracted out to third parties. If something breaks on an F-35, it’s usually fixed by a defense contractor and not military engineers. This is part of why the jet is so expensive. “DOD has estimated overall costs for the program at more than $1.7 trillion over its life cycle, with the majority of the costs, about $1.3 trillion, associated with sustaining the aircraft,” the GAO said.
China makes the parts, Russia laughs and laughs.