F-35 Availability “Generally Does Not Meet Service Goals,” says US GAO
October 28, 2024
On 21 October, 2024, the US Government Accountability Office published a report into US Tactical Aircraft availability and funding, and found that operation and maintenance spending varied by system, and that availability generally did not meet service goals, despite the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps spending some US $57.2 billion to operate and sustain these aircraft from FY 2018-2023..
Mission capable rates (the percentage of total time when aircraft can fly and perform at least one mission) were the metric used to assess fleet readiness. The GAO found that the military services generally haven’t met mission capable rate goals for tactical aircraft for several years. This was attributed to numerous factors, including maintenance challenges and ageing aircraft fleets.
Within a dismal overall picture, there were some encouraging signs. Mission capable rates for Navy and Marine Corps tactical aircraft (the AV-8B, EA-18G, F/A-18/A-D, F/A-18E/F, F-35B, and F-35C) increased over the period, but rates for Air Force tactical aircraft (A-10, F-15/C-E, F-16C/D, F-22, and F-35A) decreased. Only the F-15C and the F16C met their annual mission capable readiness goals in at least half of the years since fiscal year 2018, and the F-15D, F-16D and A-10C managed to meet their goals in only one of the six years.
F-35 sustainment was a particular black spot, and the USAF had to spend 7.3% more than it had requested on sustaining the type over the period, while the USN and USMC spent 3.2% less.
The GAO reported that the DOD relies heavily on its contractor to lead and manage F-35 sustainment. As a result the F-35 sustainment programme is a hybrid Global Support Solution that leverages both US government capabilities and commercial prime contractor support. Lockheed Martin manages the depot maintenance planning for US F-35 aircraft, but most of the major depot-level repair and overhaul for the aircraft and engine are performed by the military service depots. Military service personnel generally conduct the organizational maintenance.
But this organisational structure is not working, and all variants of the F-35 failed to achieve the minimum readiness targets for the six years studied, from 1 October 2017 through to 30 September 2023. This was despite the DoD spending US $12 billion on F-35 sustainment, equivalent to about 21% of the US $57.2 billion spent on tactical aircraft sustainment over the period.
The new report does not detail specific current readiness targets, which the DoD now deems ‘sensitive’, but previous a previous GAO report (from March 2023) gave an objective of 90% for the US Air Force F-35A and of 85% for the Marine Corps F-35B and the Navy F-35C. A GAO report in September 2023 found that the F-35 fleet’s mission capable rate in March of that year had been around 55%. The F-35 programme manager, Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Schmidt, initiated a ‘War On Readiness’ last year to improve the F-35’s mission capable rate, but this is not believed to have had much effect, as yet.
The GAO judged that: “The F-35’s poor mission capable rates were due partly to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance.”
In April 2024, the GAO reported that the DoD’s projected costs to sustain the F-35 had grown from an estimated $1.1 trillion in fiscal year 2018 to $1.58 trillion in fiscal year 2023. It recommended that the DoD should reassess F-35 sustainment, determining government and contractor responsibility, and make final decisions on changes to F-35 sustainment to address performance and affordability. The DoD is working to implement these recommendations and plans to transfer all functions relating to the management, planning, and execution of sustainment activities for the F-35 from the F-35 Joint Program Office to the Secretaries of the Air Force and Navy. The Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act requires this transfer to occur by 1 October 2027.