The US Air Force developed the F-35 in the late 1990s and early 2000s as an affordable replacement for the service’s thousands of older F-16 fighters and A-10 attack jets. The plan, all along, has been the US Air Force to buy more than 1,700 F-35s. The F-35 is classified as fifth- generation like the Raptor: it should be more capable than all but a handful of today’s Chinese and Russian aircraft.
But deliveries of the $80-million F-35s to USAF squadrons stalled last year as the US Air Force and Lockheed Martin struggled to complete testing of the type’s latest software. Today there are scores of complete USAF F-35s sitting in storage, awaiting software. That’s billions of dollars worth of fighters that aren’t even available to front-line squadrons.
The cost and timeline for testing the software, installing it and finally delivering those stored keep extending. And while deliveries may resume this summer, it could take another year for Lockheed to hand over the last stored jet.
It’s not for no reason that aviation expert Bill Sweetman refers to the F-35 as a “trillion-dollar trainwreck.” The fighter is eating the US Air Force’s budget – and forcing the service to rethink its next fighter.
Poster Comment:
DOD currently estimates the Air Force will pay $6.6 million annually to operate and sustain an individual aircraft.
Russian and Iranian radar can detect F-35 aircraft so they are not really stealthy.