Stealthy Lockheed F-35 Breaks Down Too Often, Pentagon Says
- Weapon tester’s review comes after deal for 478 more F-35s
- Warplane is the U.S. Defense Department’s costliest program
This article is for subscribers only.
The Pentagon’s chief weapons tester said the next-generation F-35 jet continues to fall short of full combat readiness targets and, despite some progress on reliability issues, all three versions of the fighter are breaking down “more often than planned.”
None of the Air Force, Marines and Navy variants of the Lockheed Martin Corp. fighter are meeting their five key “reliability or maintainability metrics,” Robert Behler, the Pentagon’s director of operational testing, said in Wednesday before two House Armed Services Committee panels.