The Navy's "Operational" F-35C Is Fully Mission Capable Less Than Five Percent Of The Time - The Navy's 'Operational' F-35C.jpg

more at
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ercent-of-time

A stunning deficiency in readiness rates for Navy and Marine F-35s calls into
question whether the stealth jets can fight a prolonged conflict.

By Joseph TrevithickMarch 20, 2019

Newly available data shows that less than 15 percent of the U.S. Marine Corps
F-35B Joint Strike Fighters and around just two percent of the U.S. Navy's
F-35Cs were fully mission capable at any given time, on average, for more than
two years at least. The details come as the readiness rates for aviation fleets
across both services have plummeted in recent years. It is also a clear
indication that they will have a difficult time meeting the target of 80 percent
mission capability rates for both aircraft by the end of the 2019 Fiscal Year
that former Secretary of Defense James Mattis had mandated last year.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) first revealed the chronically
abysmal mission capable rates for the F-35B and C models on Mar. 19, 2019, after
obtaining official Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) data spanning from October
2016 to December 2018. The Navy only declared initial operational capability
(IOC) with the F-35C, meant to reflect the service's establishment of its first
operational unit, at the end of February 2019. However, the Marines had
announced they had reached IOC with the F-35B back in July 2015. F-35Bs from the
Marine Fighter Attack Squadron Two One One (VMFA-211) also recently wrapped up a
deployment to the Horn of Africa and the Middle East that involved the first
ever combat missions by American F-35s, with the planes eventually striking
targets in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria.

"In response to POGO’s questions about the Navy’s fully mission capable rates,
the Joint Program Office highlighted the entire F-35 fleet’s higher “mission
capable” rate," Dan Grazier, the Jack Shanahan Military Fellow at the Center for
Defense Information at POGO, wrote in a detailed status update on the F-35
program as a whole on the organization's website. This is "a less rigorous – and
less useful – measure showing how often the aircraft can perform at least one of
its assigned tasks. The office also identified the lack of spare parts as the
biggest factor impacting availability."

The data that POGO obtained on full mission capable F-35Bs and Cs, also commonly
known as "Code One" aircraft, is truly striking. The average number of fully
mission capable Marine F-35Bs, aircraft with all of their systems functional and
capable of meeting all mission requirements, never rose above 25 percent in more
than two years. In October 2017, it dipped to 12.9 percent and by the end of
2018 it was hovering somewhere around 12 to 13 percent.

------

A host of factors since the end of the Cold War are responsible for this overall
decline. The Budget Control Act of 2011, which triggered automatic defense
spending cuts in 2013, known as sequestration, only exacerbated the issue,
forcing the services to make hard choices about what to scale back to meet the
budgetary constraints. Poor decision making throughout the U.S. military
compounded the problems as various services, with new procurement repeatedly
taking precedence over training, maintenance, logistics, and overall readiness.

In recent years, the impacts have risen to crisis levels amid a spate of often
fatal accidents. It's also what prompted then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis
to demand in a memo he circulated in September 2018 that the Navy, Marines, and
Air Force all ensure that certain "critical aviation platforms," including all
three models of the F-35, had mission capable rates at or above 80 percent by
the end of the 2019 Fiscal Year.

It will take a nearly miracle-like improvement in performance for any of the
F-35 fleets to meet this target by the Sept. 30, 2019 deadline, even using the
less robust mission capable rate rather than the full mission capable rate.
Ongoing sustainment problems and troubles with ALIS raise the possibility that
it might actually get worse.

None of this addresses the overall costs involved with flying and maintaining
the F-35, either. The operational and logistical demands of the stealthy Joint
Strike Fighters are significant greater than previous fourth generation aircraft
in general, which has long raised concerns about the potential difficulties in
operating large fleets of the stealth fighters in the future. These fears have
been particularly pronounced with regards to the Marine Corps, which is
transitioning to a force where the F-35B will eventually be its only jet combat
aircraft. The data POGO obtained, coupled with the information from other
available sources, would seem to bear this out, at least for the foreseeable
future.

It also only lends more weight to plans the Navy, and now the Air Force, are
pursuing to operate a mix of fifth and advanced fourth generation aircraft going
forward. To this end, the Navy has been continuing to purchase increasingly more
capable sub-variants of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet to serve alongside its
F-35Cs. At the suggestion of Pentagon cost analysts, the Air Force is now
looking to buy improved F-15X Advanced Eagle jets to supplement its F-35As.

It also puts into question the viability of the F-35 fleets in their present
state to adequately perform during a protracted conflict. If the Marines need
seven jets just to ensure that one is full mission capable, it only drives up
the total number of aircraft the service would need to deploy and sustain to
generate the required sorties during any sort of high-end, high-tempo operation.
On top of that, the F-35 is all about "fusing" its deeply integrated systems
capabilities together for a synergistic effect. When the aircraft only has some
of its systems operational at any given time, the advantage of this deep
integration degrades steeply.

If nothing else, the dismal full mission capable rates for the F-35B and C call
into question the actual combat utility of either aircraft broadly, despite the
former's recent operational outing and the latter's recent IOC milestone. The
new data only adds to the long-standing questions about the exact capabilities
of all three Joint Strike Fighter variants as they stand now.

But it hardly matters what their capabilities are on paper if just a tiny
fraction of them are actually fully mission capable at any given time.


more at
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ercent-of-time



*