Posted on 09/22/2023 4:26:36 AM PDT by Fish Speaker
WASHINGTON — Just 55% of the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet was mission capable as of March 2023, a disappointing statistic driven by factors like a lack of depot capacity, insufficient supply of spare parts and overreliance on contractors, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
The watchdog’s assessment — published days after a Marine Corps F-35B went missing for over 24 hours in South Carolina — highlights a complaint frequently aired by government officials: prime contractor Lockheed Martin, along with its countless subcontractors, were given too much control over sustaining the stealth fighter, a situation officials told GAO is untenable for the program’s future.
“According to DOD officials, over the last several years program officials realized that contractor-led sustainment for the F-35 program was unsustainable due to high costs. Several DOD officials we spoke to during the course of our review expressed significant concern over the costs of contractor labor in the F-35 program,” GAO wrote in its expansive 96-page report [PDF] on sustaining the Joint Strike Fighter.
The fleet’s average mission capable (MC) rate of 55%, defined as when the aircraft can perform one of its tasks, is well below targets of 90% for the F-35A and 85% for the fighter’s B and C variants. Newer aircraft tend to have much better MC rates, but even they are well below the Pentagon’s targets and average closer to 60% for the fleet, according to figures compiled by GAO.
(Excerpt) Read more at breakingdefense.com ...
Agree--Congress sets the strength numbers for military and civilians--not that the military can even meet the current numbers and civil service has a difficult time competing against industry for highly skilled technical talent.
What other interesting problems can we broadcast to the world?
prime contractor Lockheed Martin, along with its countless subcontractors, were given too much control over sustaining the stealth fighter, a situation officials told GAO is untenable for the program’s future.
This. Just this. It’s laziness or graft by the senior level of the military and too many having the ear of those with the purse strings. Eisenhower’s prediction was spot on.
Colonel, USAF JAGC (Ret)
Stories like this are becoming the norm (collision of navy ships, billions of dollars in accounting errors and on and on). I have serious concerns about the competency of our senior military leaders. Think about it, could they successfully lead our nation through a major war??
“...were given too much control over sustaining the stealth fighter...”
As you know, sir, the list of services and products in the military has stopped being military controlled. This change has been picked up and expanded by each new congress and president for over a century to reach this point. And with each of the changes, the road to knowing what is really important to the mission becomes further separated from the top and bottom of the system.
You and I lived in an atmosphere different from what the rest of the country sustains daily. I, and I’m sure you, can venture on to an installation and with observation can tell when something is up just by the logistics and property being tended. But if you take the powers that be in congress or the POTUS and walk them through the same scenario far more than half would be oblivious to their surroundings. That’s not their “job.” Their job is being in charge, not doing it. And with that lack of attention they display their inability to properly determine the needs of the forces and the mission other than salute it, paint it, or blow it up. That’s what they actually know. Not much, huh?
They placed the contractors and supplied the funds to do the work while they determined what the work was and how the contractor was going to accomplish it. So when the mission failed, those “leaders” had an out to blame for it’s lack of success and blamed the contractors. But they always found something in the outcome to say they were right in what they did whether it means anything or not. They just sell it.
And that has been the job of our leaders for many generations. Not to do the work, but how to place the blame for it’s failures. And that’s what the public is not getting because they’re ideal of success is participation rather than win/lose. Everyone gets a happy thought and someone else is wrong. So it must be okay because on the surface, it didn’t hurt them. Nirvana.
wy69
Depends on the weather.
Congressional Republicans are stuck on stupid. There are only five Republicans that expect the promises made by McCarthy to become Speaker should be kept. The most important promise was to do appropriations using regular order. That requires all appropriations bills to be summed so the total spend is known and spending can be adjusted to meet goals. But McCarthy and his pussy RINO, assistant Democrats want a CR and an omnibus that continues the programs and spending of Biden and Pelosi. These pussies don’t even attempt to make an argument.
While five Republicans defeated the rule on the defense appropriations bill yesterday, there had been no public debate on defense spending other than the major distraction and total waste of money on Ukraine.
Our defense problems are greater than the F-35 and B-2 programs. Those just the tip of the problem. How about a discussion on a corrupt and woke Pentagon that loses endless wars while killing and maiming our sons?
We have 47 four star generals and admirals for approximately 1.5 service members. At the height of WWII we had 11+ million troops and only seven four star generals/admirals. We won that war.
There are hundreds of woke generals and admirals under the 47 four stars. Each has his own budget for his pet projects and all of that waste is uncoordinated. We have a military full of faggots, gender deniers and drag queen freaks. Recruiting and retention is at an all time low.
We have over 300 bases around the world, but do we ever talk about actually defending our homeland? We train and fight for the wrong things. We pay to protect the world but don’t protect ourselves. Why aren’t there spending priorities in the defense budget for actual American defense?
We have operated on a lie ever since WWII. That lie is we need to fight “them” there so we don’t fight “them” here. How did that turn out with Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and dozens of other places? Christ, the Biden Administration was just over in Vietnam begging the commies for trade. Eventually we’ll be begging every nation that has defeated us.
Maybe, just maybe if we focused on America first, defended America first, and left the rest of the world take care of their own, then we would actually have a strong military at half the price and have true security at home. That would also mean saving trillions.
Back to regular order for appropriations bills … actually having a discussion on national defense and that leading to changes in the defense bill requires changes to other appropriations bills. Likewise, changes in other appropriations bills will necessitate changes in defense appropriations. Defense policy does not live in its own self-contained black box. Changes in foreign policy, homeland security policy and even domestic policies all affect one another. They do not independently exist in their own vacuums. But McCarthy doesn’t want a discussion on any of these. He wants to continue Biden and Pelosi’s incoherent policies that are destroying America and making us weak. Just pass the CR and just pass the omnibus in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. Yes, that’s real leadership./s
Four F35-B visited the Coeur d’Alene airport one day this summer. Three left after a few hours. One broke down sitting on the apron and stayed overnight.
“The fact that the military has to rely so heavily on contractors to support mission readiness is a bad sign.”
There are many on this site who foolishly want to get rid of the entire Federal civilian workforce. At that point everything will be 100% contractor.
We all know there is a lot of dead wood in FEDGOV but the absolutists here will never admit that there are many highly skilled, competent and hard working people in the government. In the military, it is Federal civilian engineers, logisticians, contracting personnel, depot technicians, supply managers, transportation specialist ect ect who support the greatest military in the world.
Contractors are great but they come with many contractual restrictions that Federal civilians do not have.
The 35 is a child of the OUTSOURCING and Service Partner days. Of pushing tasks down to contractors “better suited” to do the jobs and expecting them to provide more for less. It was and still is a stupid idea. It opens the door to being raped by the contractors.
And even fewer when the weather turns to thunderstorms, apparently.
I've been in the DoD contracting world for the last 32 years. I've hired staff, shepherded them through security clearances, trained them in the fine details of building and enhancing a product. Having delivered a top quality product to the customer, I discovered the contracting side of the house has dropped the ball. The money to pay the staff has dried up. The junior employees have no PTO reserve to keep the bills paid, so they leave for another company. Ten months later, the customer signs the contract. Cool. I have no employees to do the work. The servers are half dead, so nobody can work anyway. It takes me 3 weeks to get the computing infrastructure back to the point when the contract lapsed. The recruiting and training process resumes. I was able to get the staff producing good code for the customer again. I left the contract to be home with my wife as she faced breast cancer. Sept 2014.
The customer did it again. Let the contract lapse. This time I wasn't present to rescue the process. The company lost a contract they had supported for 28 years. I can't feel sorry for the customer. Handing a code base of 4 million lines of code in Ada, C, C++, FORTRAN, Java, PL/SQL and other languages to a new contractor with zero experience is a recipe for disaster. The breadth of languages is only the starting point. The skills sets to support the algorithms are PhD level stuff.
Not mentioned in this discussion is the F-35 is inferior to the F-22 in almost every category.
The F-35 is garbage. It is an abomination making its builders rich but undermining America’s fighting capability.
The F-35 is invisible to radar but should be made to literally disappear from the military completely.
This dog of a jet is a terrible waste of taxpayer money.
Our adversaries are laughing at us for this self-inflicted, military failure.
About 1/3 of any air force or naval fleet should always be in for maintenance.
If anyone claimed that 100% of any such force was ready to go they’d either be lying or negligent.
It has been some years since I've been involved in this and reporting may have changed, but there are 3 categories describing Mission Capability Rates. Rates are updated daily at local levels and reported to higher headquarters via report. They are a major indicator of unit operational health and ability and the unit's ability to perform assigned missions and be deployed for war.
FMC (Fully Mission Capable) - no restrictions to aircraft capability or use. Fully flyable and capable of performing all primary and secondary mission requirements.
PMC (Partially Mission Capable) - certain restrictions to capability or use, usually due to maintenance needs or lack of system parts. Partially or fully flyable but with limits on mission effectiveness and use.
NMC (Not Mission Capable) - not flyable or effective for unit mission(s).
It would appear the "55% Mission Capable" cited in the article consists of the first two categories (FMC and PMC). That is deceptive reporting in itself. The remaining 45% aircraft would basically be grounded (NMC) and not useable for wartime operations or possibly even safe flight.
At least, that is how I would interpret the information in the article.
Undoubtedly a percentage of the "55% Mission Capable" would be restricted from performing certain missions but would likely be at least flyable, perhaps with some additional available maintenance. So, that "55% Mission Capable" figure is a terrible statistic. Most units require a much higher FMC (Fully Mission Capable) rate (75-85%?) for the unit to be considered able to deploy to perform the assigned wartime mission(s). NMC aircraft are unable to be deployed until upgraded to at least PMC and even then may require more upgrades or maintenance for actual wartime deployment and use.
"Terrible" is an accurate word here for what is going on with this aircraft and its usefulness for wartime.
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