Posted on 09/23/2023 4:29:24 AM PDT by FarCenter
The reason a US Marine Corps pilot ejected from his F-35B stealth fighter jet last weekend remains unknown, but a government agency report on the dismal state of the F-35 fleet's maintenance provides a few clues.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which coincidentally released its report the same week the search for the now-recovered crashed F-35 was happening, found that the DoD's fleet of the fighter craft "face costly maintenance issues" that have led to an average of just 55 percent of them being ready for action at any given time.
For reference, the DoD's goals for the F-35A is a mission capable rate of 90 percent, while it wants the B and C variants of the F-35, with their more complicated short takeoff and landing and carrier launch configurations, to have an 85 percent rate.
The F-35 fleet, with its variants fielded by the US Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, have been suffering from poor readiness rates due to maintenance challenges at the depot and organizational levels, leading to a backlog of more than 10,000 F-35 components waiting to be repaired.
"In October 2017, we reported that DOD did not have enough capacity to repair F-35 aircraft parts because it was 6 years behind schedule standing up those capabilities," the GAO said in its most recent report. Years on from that earlier report, the GAO added, the DoD is now "nearly 12 years behind schedule standing up those depots."
While facilities have continued to open over the years, F-35 component repair time at depos is still well above the DoD's top-end goal of 60 days: As of February 2023, component repair time was averaging 141 days.
"The primary impediment to improving repair times was a lack of repair material for newly activated workloads," the GAO noted, and while repair leaders expected an increase in material allotments, "officials also told us that they were still years away from achieving the program's goal." The GAO said full depot capabilities aren't expected until 2027.
At the organizational level – we're talking military units doing repairs on the line – mission readiness is being affected by the inability to carry out maintenance tasks for several reasons, primarily a lack of parts, lack of training, lack of technical data and a lack of support equipment available on the flight line.
To put it another way, maintenance units are being hamstrung "as a result of being reliant on the contractor," said the GAO.
911 call from pilot who ejected from mysterious F-35 fighter jet over South Carolina released
https://rumble.com/v3jwcxp-911-call-from-pilot-who-ejected-from-mysterious-f-35-fighter-jet-over-south.html?mref=2tltvw&mrefc=8
What about the Chinese version? Are they having as much trouble as we are?
The F-35 was asked to do everything and can do very little as a result. It is a garbage, overpriced jet, inferior to the F-22 in almost EVERY combat respect. It is unreliable and dangerous to its pilots.
Building it makes tons of profit for the manufacturer and politicians getting kickbacks. It wins, hands-down in the pig-trough, money department.
It loses quickly in any engagement with the enemy.
His dress keeps getting int he way of the stick shift
The F-35 has been an overpriced POS since it’s inception. It failed miserably in developmental testing through operational testing, was forced on the military and the governments answer was throw more money at it.
The whole program is an example of how not to run a program.
Last night on a radio show I heard the F-35 has been a substantial political state boondoggle. Every state in the union except four has huge DoD contracts for parts or pieces of this aircraft. On a separate matter, If the plane can’t fly in bad weather, why were these guys fooling around flying in it, when they could have shot up, through, over the clouds in seconds?
F-35 was doomed the very moment it was announced as a Tri-Service aircraft with JPO in Crystal City. Directors alternated between USAF & NAVY every 2-3 years.
Who the hell thought ANY OF THIS was a good idea? Designed to fail from Day One!!!
The Airframe/Powerplant and Avionics techs were sent to Diversity classes...forced to learn correct pronouns... instead of technical update class.
When I was in the Air Force in the late 1970s, I worked on the F-111A which at the time was around 10 years old.
If we had a 25% mission-capable rate on any given day, we were doing very well.
The F-35 does one thing that the F-22 never could do - It can be sold to our allies.
The repair depots seem to be run by “contractors”. Given DoD procurement rules, these are undoubtedly women and minority owned businesses.
From the article —
The DoD originally designed the F-35 program with management of sustainment operations placed squarely in the hands of contractors. “However, in recent years, DOD has expressed a desire to have more governmental control over sustainment activities,” the GAO noted, with F-35 sustainment being considered for a move in-house due to high costs.
But despite the DoD’s desire to move F-35 repairs in-house, and an apparent faster repair speed by military service depots as compared to OEMs, the DoD continues to dither on making key decisions, the GAO said.
The key to military aircraft design is how many Congressional Districts the bits and pieces can be procured from.
I hope this wasn’t one of those tests where we let aircraft drive themselves like a bunch of Teslas.
I imagine there are a ton of well-qualified ex-military techs that would appreciate a job with these companies or the DOD...but fall in the wrong diversity category. Sigh...
There’s a 3rd-party contractor in our neighborhood, right now, laying Google fiber cable. They’re literally destroying our streets with their poor work. (They’re using Ditchwitch equipment to grind foot-deep slots in the asphalt along the curb, refilling with some sort of nasty grout that tracks everywhere across the streets.) The crews include a lot of “diversity hires”, plus what I would term some “trailer trash”. I think it’s just a sign of the times...with companies under pressure to fill empty slots with “diversity” and whoever else they can find.
...this is a snippet from an older article (not that much older...) but it gives some idea of what is going on with this giant failure, the F-35.....
.....”One reason why the project has become such a boondoggle is that many states and countries are significantly invested in the plane, relying on its production for income and jobs.
“Every U.S. state but Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska, and Wyoming has economic ties to the F-35, with 18 states counting on the project for $100 million or more in economic activity, according to primary contractor Lockheed Martin. All told, the project is supposedly responsible for 32,500 jobs in the U.S. Globally, another nine countries have major ties to the F-35.........”
I had friends who supported the B-1 back in the late 1990s that had a similar situation. Once the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started their TMC rates went way up.
When someone really needs your airframe to support their missions, all the parts, equipment, and staffing levels are suddenly approved.
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