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.
Part of the challenges stem from a heavy reliance on contractors for maintenance that limits the Pentagon’s ability to control depot maintenance decisions. Delays also arise from spare parts shortages, inadequate maintenance training, insufficient support equipment, and a lack of technical data needed to make repairs.
Because of the Pentagon’s inane IP laws, maintenance on these planes is a bureaucratic nightmare: defense contractors are able to limit maintenance of these things to only those they contract because of IP restrictions and are not required to teach the military jack shit. Meanwhile, they’re essentially a paperweight half the time because they’re not getting proper maintenance.
How are we supposed to patrol the Arctic with a plane that needs an American private subcontractor to perform essential maintenance on it?
Read this guy’s post history, it’s hilarious to see a genuine angry Canadian nationalist.
Go ahead and develop your own jets then.
Yawn. Call me when you have actual planes and real problems to whine about. Guy is whining about product not even in service.
Hating on the F-35 is a popular pastime, but do yall know high much work high performance planes require?
Honestly these are the terms for every American-made weapon system. If you seek to use U.S. weapons, you will buy the relevant parts and service from American contractors or contractors solely approved by the U.S. Department of Defense. Article is a nothingburger.
Our other options included no such terms, and, frankly, the F-35’s stealth capability is much more important in offensive theatres than defensive ones where multiple overlapping radar frequencies are both feasible and already exist and active countermeasures can be freely used without fear of detection.
Canada’s military is defensive in nature and it’s primarily focused on patrolling the Arctic. For that purpose, the F-35’s range and payload make it rather… unideal.
Didn’t they just lose one, for several days, within the continental US?
When the pilot ejected is guaranteed that the plane is a total loss. The ejection system triggers a number of things other that the ejection mechanism. All of the secure communication equipment erases itself to prevent it or is key material from falling into unauthorized hands. The plane doesn’t squak its position so that it is harder for someone you don’t want to have access to the plane to find it. Had the plane been lost in territory that the US doesn’t control or that is controlled by an unfriendly country the US wants it to be hard for them to know that the jet is down and where it is so that the US has a better chance of getting there first. The probably can’t be disabled to prevent an, “Oops, I forgot to turn it on” mistake in unfriendly territory and to reduce the risk of it not working.
Canada under Trudeau has been a magnet of international friction - first with China and Hong Kong with that Huawei thing, then India with the Sikhs. Maybe Canada should focus more on prevention instead of punishment?
