The Pentagon’s costly fleet of F-35 fighter jets can only fly a little over half the time, as maintenance issues keep the aircraft on the ground despite the growing reliance on the planes by the US and its allies.
The fleet’s mission-capable rate — or the percentage of time a plane can perform one of its assigned missions — was 55 per cent as of March 2023, far below the Pentagon’s goal of 85 per cent to 90 per cent, the Government Accountability Office said on Thursday.
The report from the GAO, an independent congressional watchdog, was published just days after a Marine Corps F-35 crashed in South Carolina, prompting a search for the plane and raising questions over how it could have gone missing for a day before its debris was located.
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