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Pentagon Agrees to Fix the F-35's Many Problems Before Full Production

The high-tech fighter has 966 “open deficiencies"—otherwise known as defects.

By Kyle Mizokami

Jun 6, 2018

The Pentagon has agreed to fix a litany of problems with the F-35 before moving to full production of the controversial jet.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, nicknamed “Panther” by pilots, is on the verge of going into full production. Yet even now the jet has nearly a thousand “deficiencies.” In response to a General Accounting Office report, the Pentagon has promised to fix the most critical deficiencies plaguing the plane.

In its report on the F-35, the GAO warned, “In its rush to cross the finish line, the (F-35 Joint Program Office) has made some decisions that are likely to affect aircraft performance and reliability and maintainability for years to come.” As Bloomberg explains:

“The GAO report broke down the shortfalls into two categories: Category 1 deficiencies are defined as ‘those that could jeopardize safety, security, or another critical requirement,’ while Category 2 deficiencies ‘are those that could impede or constrain successful mission accomplishment.’ The report cited 111 Category 1 and 855 Category 2 deficiencies.”

One of the “Category 1” deficiencies is the pilot’s helmet-mounted display, which emits a dim green hue and can “decrease the pilot’s ability to detect visual cues.” A fix is in development, but until then pilots landing on ships at night are placed under safety restrictions. The GAO believes that problems like these must be fixed before the F-35 is declared fully operational and goes into full production. However, the U.S. and its international partners are anxious to declare the plane fully operational and reap the cost savings of ordering the F-35 in larger numbers.

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The F-35 program is the most expensive Department of Defense procurement program ever, with a total lifetime price tag of approximately $1.5 trillion. The enormously complicated airplane, which is produced in three variants, took more than a decade to develop. To speed things along, the Pentagon adopted a procurement process known as concurrency, in which airplanes would be built before the design was finalized. Earlier F-35s would be returned to the manufacturer once the final version was in production, eventually bringing all planes up to the latest standard.

If such an approach sounds complicated and risky, that's because it is. The F-35 is constantly being improved, and the F-35 program office must keep track of each plane and when it was produced just to know what fixes it will need later on. The justification was that it was better to get planes in the air sooner rather than later. Right now, more than 200 F-35s are flying worldwide with air forces around the world. If not for the concurrency strategy, the production line wouldn’t start until 2019 at the earliest.

Currently, the U.S. military and foreign allies are buying F-35s at a rate of about 70 a month. Once the plane is declared operational however the number of planes will shoot up to more than 100 a month. The GAO worries that, unless the Category 1 and 2 deficiencies are resolved before full rate production the number of planes that will need fixes will skyrocket, as will the costs and complexity of fixing them.