The US Government Is HIDING the TRUTH About the F-35
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The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) is responsible for auditing the US government to avoid wasting money. However, the Pentagon just refused GAO inspectors and blocked public release of their latest F-35 report, probably because they look so bad. Here’s what the numbers that have been released earlier already show:

F-35 readiness rates are disastrous:

  • Mission capable F-35s (can fly any mission, even a beginner familiarization hop): 67% in 2021 → 44% in 2025
  • FULL mission capable (can do all combat missions): 38% → 25%[1]
  • Even the old F-16C built in the 1980s sits at 64%, much higher than the F-35

F-35 fleet is split into castes:

~1,057 F-35s have been built, spread across the US and its allies. Of these, the US operates ~800 of them.

“TR” (Technical Refresh) is the jet’s built-in electronics hardware, “Block” is the software it runs. Old hardware can’t run new software, so TR-3/Block 4 is the only fully modern configuration:

  • 238 global jets / ~180 US jets (~23%) built before TR-2/Block 3F will never be fully operational, and are not upgradeable. These can only be used for testing, training, or scrapped.
  • 524 global jets / ~400 US jets (~50%) stuck at old TR-2/Block 3F standard, no plans to upgrade them.[1:1] Combat capable, but frozen at 2015-era capability.
  • 295 global jets / ~220 US jets (~28%) are the only ones on the modern TR-3/Block 4 path. Except these are good for training only:[2] they’re delivered without their delayed radar, and the engine core upgrade needed to fully power and cool the Block 4 electronics will only be installed in 2031

Zero F-35s are both combat-ready and on the modernization path. The mid-generation jets are the only ones actually doing any fighting, even though the aircraft was bought for the capabilities Block 4 promises.

The US only has ~800 × 25% full-mission-capable = ~200 combat-ready F-35s,[2:1] all frozen at 2015-era capability.

Meanwhile, China has produced ~500 J-20s at ~120/year, projected ~1,000 by 2030.[3] This means China probably already has more modern, combat-ready 5th-gen jets than the USA (at even a bad ~50% readiness rate (~500 J-20s × 50% = ~250 combat-ready J-20s versus ~200 combat-ready US F-35s).

Lockheed profits from every failure:

Lockheed’s own 2025 study found their suppliers can’t make 48 critical components for the F-35 on time. The Pentagon now wants to give Lockheed another $13.7B just to get to 65% full-mission-capable by 2030.[1:2] Of course, the Pentagon will also need to replace the ~580 unupgradeable or frozen US jets, all of which become future orders for Lockheed.

Other References

  1. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108113 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/gao-one-in-four-f-35s-can-fly-all-missions-readiness/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. https://www.twz.com/air/how-many-j-20-stealth-fighters-does-china-actually-have ↩︎

  • livestreamedcollapse@lemmy.ml
    0·
    23 hours ago

    Cant recommend Millennium7* enough, despite the capeshit vibes & AI usage it’s one of the most neutral and critical aviation news channels around

  • ArcticFoxSmiles@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    2 days ago

    They are going to complain about how China is stealing blueprint for this one, but then get extra mad when the Chinese ones work.

    • SU-34@lemmygrad.ml
      0·
      22 hours ago

      Nah, what’s now the J-35 (almost makes you wonder if the numbering was intentional shade) has been in development for over a decade at this point, and the west is terrified of it.

  • DjangoFett@lemmy.zip
    0·
    2 days ago

    Meanwhile, the A-10 built in the 70s is still doing the job this one was supposed to be better at.

    (Two things can be true; I can be an aviation nerd and really loathe imperialism. They aren’t mutually exclusive.)

    • SU-34@lemmygrad.ml
      0·
      22 hours ago

      I remember talking to a comrade on Twitter about how most post-cold-war weapons are over-designed shite. According to Cockburn, who I quoted in a different comment on this post, these types of weapons systems are the most profitable for the MIC, regardless of how they actually perform on the battlefield (not very well). You can tell NATO inherited a lot of its doctrine from the Hitlerites who initially staffed it with the way they expect their awesome hi-tech Wunderwaffen to win impossible wars for them.

  • SU-34@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    2 days ago

    Andrew Cockburn talks about this POS in The Spoils of War:

    There is little public appreciation of the extent of the disaster. The F-35 first saw combat last year [2020], seventeen years after the program began. The Marines sent just six of them on their first deployment to the Middle East, and over several months only managed to fly, on average, one combat sortie per plane every three days. According to the Pentagon’s former chief testing official, had there been opposition, these “fighters” could not have survived without protection from other planes. The most expensive weapons program in history at a projected lifetime cost of $1.5 trillion, the F-35 initially carried a radar whose frequent freezing required the pilot to regularly switch it on and off.