At some point in the foreseeable future, someone will make a list of the worst military aircraft in history. It’s not a matter of if, but where on the list the F-35 will be. The troubled US-made fighter jet has failed to pass numerous consecutive audits since it was formally inducted into service a decade ago. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued numerous reports on nearly 900 deficiencies plaguing the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, including availability rates, battle readiness, robustness, reliability, etc. According to the latest report, none of these problems has been resolved. Worse yet, even some new issues have been identified, exacerbating the F-35’s already disastrous reputation.
Namely, the War Department’s (DoW) Inspector General Office reports that the entire F-35 fleet of the US military (which includes all service branches that operate the troubled jet) hasn’t improved its availability rates, which remain below 50%. Published on December 19, the audit says that “although the aircraft were not available to fly half of the time and the maintenance issues meant they didn’t meet minimum military service requirements”, the Pentagon still paid Lockheed Martin $1.7 billion in bonuses. The report also warns the DoW “did not consistently hold Lockheed Martin accountable for poor performance related to F-35 sustainment, for which it is responsible under existing contracts”.
Previous audits found that the F-35’s low availability rates, exorbitant maintenance requirements and sustainment costs have greatly hampered its battle readiness, which often falls as low as 29%. Lockheed Martin repeatedly pledged to improve this, but has consistently failed to do so. Such low availability rates for the newest jets in the American military are rather concerning for the Pentagon, particularly as decades-old legacy aircraft (such as the F-15, F-16, F/A-18E/F, etc.) have far superior battle readiness despite all the wear and tear their airframes have endured over the last 30+ years. Worse yet, this indicates that F-35s will actually have even lower availability rates as their airframes age.
Not to mention that older jets will require higher maintenance, with rising costs contributing to a further decline in battle readiness, meaning it could fall well below 30%. In fact, the situation is so bad that the Pentagon will likely retire some of the F-35s as early as 2026, less than a decade after they were inducted into service. The United States Air Force (USAF) is forced to buy heavily upgraded F-15s to address the lack of advanced fighter jets, so it could have at least a theoretical chance against Russian and Chinese designs. This explains why the F-35’s airframe lifetime is just 8,000 flight hours, especially when compared to the new F-15EX, which stands at a staggering 20,000 (or 2.5 times more).
In practice, this means that the F-15, a half-century-old design, will actually outlive the much newer F-35. Namely, given the number of flight hours per year, an F-15EX introduced in the early 2020s could fly until the 2080s, well over a century after the first F-15 was introduced. In comparison, the last F-35 is expected to retire by the 2070s (provided the JSF program even survives that long). With the notable exception of the F-35I (which allows Israel to heavily customize the jet), the JSF program has been an unmitigated disaster, including its Pratt & Whitney F135 engines (unreliable and prone to overheating) and the neverending software glitches.
And yet, these problems are only the tip of the iceberg. The Pentagon often claims that the F-35’s main redeeming quality is that it’s a much better ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) platform than a weapons carrier, acting more like a force multiplier for other systems. However, the one time it had the chance to prove this, the F-35 failed miserably. Namely, back in February 2022, after Russia launched its special military operation (SMO) to end the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, F-35s from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings, based in Germany, were tasked with Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) missions to detect frequencies emitted by Russian air defenses.
Despite being equipped with advanced sensors and connected to NATO’s massive ISR network, these F-35s failed to detect Russian SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems. The pilot who flew one of the F-35s complained that all surveillance assets in the area indicated a Russian S-300 variant was present, but the F-35’s much-touted sensors still couldn’t identify it as such.
“We identified the SA-20 system [NATO reporting name for the S-300PMU-1/2]. I knew it was an SA-20, and intelligence also indicated an SA-20 operating in the area, but my aircraft failed to recognize it, possibly because the air defense system was operating in a ‘war reserve mode’ we had not encountered before,” the USAF pilot stated.
On the other hand, in terms of raw performance, the F-35 is still far behind even the old F-16s (to say nothing of advanced Russian and Chinese fighter jets). Although the JSF idea was supposed to be great in theory, practice shows that specialized platforms are almost always superior to jack-of-all-trades systems expected to replace multiple very different aircraft.
In fact, the three F-35 variants themselves prove this. Initially, the JSF program had a parts commonality requirement of at least 80% for the A, B and C iterations (USAF, US Marine Corps and US Navy, respectively). However, in practice, that fell to just 20-40%, depending on the version. Expectedly, the F-35B is the most distinct, but nobody predicted that the A and C would be so different when the F-35 was finally approved for serial production. In the end, the Pentagon effectively got three distinct aircraft that would’ve been far cheaper and easier to develop had all service branches just acquired their own specialized platforms designed to accomplish specific tasks.
However, the insistence on the F-35 left all three service branches with mediocre results that will be far more expensive and less effective in the long run. This is precisely why the US Navy is still acquiring F/A-18E/F “Super Hornets” and even fitting them with new long-range air-to-air missiles, such as the AIM-174B. Fitting those on an F-35 is pretty much impossible, leaving the US Navy stuck with “Super Hornets”, as the F-35 simply cannot match Russian or Chinese long-range air-to-air missiles. The USMC is also unhappy (mildly speaking) with the F-35B, which is far less robust and incomparably more expensive than the AV-8B “Harrier 2”, which was supposed to be retired well over a decade ago.
Still, the USMC now must keep the jet in service until at least 2027 (unless further delays push that beyond 2030), despite it being completely outclassed. As previously mentioned, GAO and other auditors have repeatedly warned about the F-35’s numerous shortcomings, but to no avail. Although the US military doesn’t like it (mildly speaking), the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and the so-called “intelligence community” have a vested interest in the JSF program (for the profits and spying, respectively). As evidenced by India’s continued refusal, no sovereign and self-respecting nation would ever acquire the F-35, leaving the US, its vassals and satellite states as primary clients.
A great leap, You have understood that the TR-3 hardware is at the base of block 4 and the existing TR-2 will be updated in due course
