U.S. Air Force, Navy plan to boost F-35 fleet after record budget

The Air Force and Navy proposed stepping up purchases of of Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 fighter jet over the next five years, a show of confidence for a plane that Elon Musk and other critics argue is becoming obsolete.

Planned purchases of the Air Force model would increase from 38 jets next year to 42 in fiscal 2028, 46 in 2029 and 48 in both 2030 and 2031, according to projections released Friday. 

Navy and Marine Corps purchases would see an increase to 47 jets next year from this year’s 23. The Navy and Marine Corps plan to purchase 43 in 2028 and 38 or fewer each year from 2029 to 2031.

The increased quantities are no sure thing. They’re part of the administration’s request to Congress to increase the defense budget by more than 40% to $1.5 trillion. That’s a proposal faces pushbackfrom both fiscal conservatives and Democrats.

But the forecasts are a vote of confidence for the warplane, which has flown missions over Iran during the US-Israel campaign in recent weeks. The costliest US weapons program ever has been repeatedly singled out by Musk, the Tesla Inc. chief executive who left his White House role last year but remains an influential voice. 

In 2024, he called the F-35 “an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none.” 

“Success was never in the set of possible outcomes,” he wrote on X at the time. “And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”

The planned F-35 purchases would be good news for Lockheed, the No. 1 US defense contractor, with the total number of F-35s requested up to 85 jets from the 47 Congress approved for this year. 

That comes even though the Government Accountability Office has said that the warplane’s readiness rate — the amount of time it is seen as usable for missions —  is below standard. Efforts to upgrade the jets’ software have also stalled.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com