[b112]

Parent is very mistaken. The F-35 is famous for taking a long time to turn around, for long repair times, and being non-mission capable frequently.

It's also absurdly expensive to maintain. it requires special hangers and maintenance bays, all up to US requirements.

Even the US military has to use Lockheed to do all the work.

The F-35 is a pork trough, designed to provide employment and jobs more than defense.

And anyone buying it is locked into wonderous maintenance costs, all benefitting US employees.

One telling sign of this is that Gripens are designed to be maintained anywhere. You know, like when you're in a thing called a "war", and your bases have been blown up?

You can turn around some Gripens in 30 minutes with them landing on a highway.

Try that with a princess like the F-35.

I prefer to have planes which are designed to be in the air, instead of to provide jobs.

[GolfPopper]

The latest report on the F-35 by the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation [1] (typically referenced as DOT&E) describes an aircraft that struggles to meet its operational goals, with under 50% of the fleet fully mission capable at any given time. In short, the F-35, while a very capable military aircraft when fully operational, is also a "hangar queen".

1. https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2024/dod/2...

[b112]

Or even better:

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/f-35-the-part-time-fighter-jet

"The F-35 fleet can only perform the full range of its combat roles 30% of the time. This unreliability renders the entire program ineffective."

"The services consider an aircraft as mission capable if it can perform at least one of the program’s assigned missions. Such a threshold may be appropriate for a program like the C-17 transport, which has essentially a single mission. For a multi-role program like the F-35, however, a different standard should be used. Because the F-35 is designed to perform many missions, from delivering nuclear weapons to supporting troops on the ground, program officials aren’t even using the right yardstick to measure the aircraft’s performance.

Fortunately, such a yardstick does exist. It is the full mission capable rate, or the percentage of aircraft available to perform all the assigned missions. The testing director said the full mission capable rate standard is “a better evaluation of combat readiness” for the F-35 program. When this higher standard is applied to the F-35 fleet, the magnitude of the program’s failure becomes clear: DOT&E reports the full mission capable rate for the F-35 fleet was 30% in 2023."

Essentially, if a plane they approach cannot perform the role, they don't mark it as bad and move on until they find a plane capable, as long as the F-35 can perform a role.

Not very helpful if you need all planes for combat, or troop support immediately. Not very helpful if, unlike the US, you only have 70 planes spread across 5 bases.