Show us the receipts for the F-35 production decision

Back in 2001, the Pentagon and its defense industry partners successfully pitched the F-35 fighter jet to Congress. It was billed as a jack-of-all-trades jet that would save the government money. Instead, the Pentagon has racked up a hefty bill as it’s worked to address a bevy of serious flaws. 

Finally, after more than two decades of development, the F-35 fighter jet has been greenlighted for full-rate production.

But don’t let the Pentagon’s rubber stamp fool you — if you read between the lines in its press release, it’s clear that the jet has not fully overcome the litany of issues that have faced the program since its inception.

Pentagon officials need to be transparent with the American people about this fighter jet’s effectiveness and readiness. The only way they can restore people’s confidence in the most expensive weapon program in history is to release the latest report on the F-35’s performance in operational testing.

After years of delays and a staggering price tag of $438 billion, you’d expect the Pentagon’s full-rate production announcement to tout the F-35 as the best fighter jet of all time. Instead, the press release from Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, was quite lackluster. 

He said the program has demonstrated “acceptable performance and reliability” and the press release stated that “all statutory and regulatory requirements have been appropriately addressed.” That’s hardly a ringing endorsement.

The dry press release also suggests a lack of enthusiasm. A little over a year ago, the Air Force staged an elaborate unveiling ceremony of the B-21 strategic bomber with flowery speeches and an artfully lighted backdrop at the Northrup Grumman plant in Palmdale, Calif.

And deeper into the press release, the language suggests that the aircraft performed poorly in the latest round of testing. Operational testing is done to prove a weapons program delivers an item that is effective in combat and suitable for use with the troops. Nowhere in the official release does it say the F-35 is effective or suitable. Rather, Raymond O’Toole, the acting director of operational test and evaluation, says the program is, “working to address DOT&E’s findings and recommendations contained in the report.”

This begs the question: Did the Pentagon’s acquisition office sign off on a deeply flawed aircraft?

The American people will only know if the Pentagon makes the results of that testing public. The entire report on the F-35 has been stamped classified, which is a departure from traditional practice. Hiding bad information about the F-35 (and other weapons programs) has become a pattern in recent years. It has become almost standard practice within the Pentagon now to stamp nearly every document with some level of classification to prevent the public from knowing how taxpayer money is being spent. 

This report should tell us how well the F-35 actually performed during realistic combat scenarios, whether service members can actually operate it in the field and how much design work is left to make the F-35 fully functional.

The little evidence we have on the F-35's performance doesn’t look good.

Just weeks ago, the testing office released its annual report that gives a broad overview of all programs currently in the testing phase, which said the entire F-35 fleet has a full mission-capable rate of only 30 percent. This means less than a third of all F-35s can perform their full range of missions at any given time. The same report noted that the fleet of Air Force F-35As experienced critical failures that rendered an aircraft unsafe to fly; this happened nearly twice as often as anticipated.

The Government Accountability Office released a report in September showing the availability rates for operational F-35s assigned to combat squadrons. The F-35s in these units receive the most support and should be expected to have high states of readiness. Those have a full mission-capable rate of 48 percent. So if the president orders the military into action tonight, more than half of the airplanes just approved for full-rate production would likely remain idle because they don’t work.

How is that an acceptable level of reliability for the most expensive weapon in history?

Because of all the well-documented problems with the program, the American people deserve to see the receipts for the F-35. If the Pentagon wants the American people to believe they have gotten their money’s worth, it should immediately declassify the latest testing report and release it publicly.

After years of lofty promises about how the F-35 program would revolutionize warfare forever, it has barely limped across the full-rate production finish line.

Americans deserve better from those who are supposed to safeguard their tax dollars and ensure that our service members get the tools they need.

Dan Grazier is a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight.