The Pentagon's Rock-bottom Readiness Rates

The Department of Defense (DOD) has a mission-capable problem.

This means that the percentage of time that a given aircraft can perform at least one mission is failing to meet the standards that are set by the DOD. An October 21, 2024, Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noted that, "None of the 15 tactical aircraft variants met their mission capable goals in fiscal year 2023. Only two - the F-15C and the F-16C met their annual goals in at least half of the years since fiscal year 2018." Ten of the Pentagon's aircraft programs have missed DOD mission-capable goals for six straight years, and five more programs fell short on readiness between three and five of the past six years.

The worst laggards include the Pentagon's newest aircraft, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), manufactured by Lockheed Martin. The three variants of the JSF have missed mission-capable rates in each of the past six years.

The plane's availability has been so abysmal that in September 2023, the DOD F-35 Joint Program Office announced a "War on Readiness," intended to increase the aircraft's mission-capable rating by 10 percent by the conclusion of March 2024. It managed an increase of 2.6 percent in that timeframe, ending with a mission-capable rating of 55.7 percent.

This was the Pentagon's second such push in recent years to increase mission-capable rates. The previous "war on readiness" began with former DOD Secretary Jim Mattis's September 2018 memo, which directed the Air Force and Navy to increase mission-capable rates of four aircraft (including the JSF) to at least 80 percent by the close of 2019. The initiative did not win the battles to fix the readiness shortcomings and was abandoned by the Air Force in May 2020.

Poor mission-capable rates are symptomatic of the larger failings of the JSF program. In continuous development since the initial contract was awarded in 2001, total acquisition costs exceed $428 billion, or 84 percent greater than the initial estimate of $233 billion. Much of the blame should be directed toward the contractor and the DOD, which made the catastrophic financial decision to begin purchasing the JSF prior to the end of its development phase. According to an April 15, 2024, GAO report, total lifetime costs of the program will exceed $2 trillion, or 17.7 percent more than the previous $1.7 trillion estimate in September 2023.

Lockheed Martin is also struggling to deliver JSFs with improvements to displays, computers, and processing power known as Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3), which was meant to be ready in April 2023, and is set to run $1 billion over budget. The Pentagon began to refuse acceptance of new JSFs in July 2023 because of shortcomings in TR-3. After the contractor released a "truncated" version of TR-3, which enabled the aircraft's use in training, but not combat, the government accepted deliveries again beginning in July 2024. However, the DOD is withholding payment of approximately $5 million for each aircraft until TR-3 is completed.

The dire state of JSF readiness has mostly failed to draw a rebuke from members of Congress, the only body capable of holding the DOD and contractor accountable. Unfortunately, legislators have historically rewarded poor performance with additional funding for the program beyond that requested by the Pentagon in the form or earmarks, including $282,353,000 in fiscal year (FY) 2024. Since FY 2001, legislators have added 39 earmarks for the JSF program, costing $12.4 billion.

More oversight is needed to increase the mission-capable rates of both the JSF and the DOD's entire fleet of tactical aircraft. There are fewer obvious defects in national security than failing to keep enough planes in the air enough of the time they are supposed to fly.