Rep. Matt Gaetz continued to demand that the Biden administration upgrade the F-35 fighter jet fleet, of which fewer than one-third are now mission-capable.
The Fort Walton Beach Republican, whose district includes Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola, complained in an interview Tuesday about the Pentagon’s handling of the F-35 fleet.
According to WEAR, the Government Accountability Office recently released a report noting that “sustainment” costs for the current F-35 inventory would run north of $1.5 trillion before the Defense Department opts for the next generation of fighter jets.
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Air & Space Forces magazine reported last week that the cost is attributed to the Pentagon’s intention to fly the F-35 through 2088, 11 years after the original retirement date.
As the Tampa Free Press reported last month, however, Gaetz got the Air Force’s top brass to admit during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Pentagon’s budget that just 29% of America’s F-35 fighter jets are “fully mission capable.”
Gaetz followed that up at another hearing last week, arguing that the F-35 program is a failure and that America is stuck with a fleet of “$100 million paperweights.”
Gaetz has complained that the Pentagon and taxpayers are stuck because Lockheed Martin, the plane manufacturer, is the only contractor that can maintain and fix them.
On Tuesday, Gaetz noted that stripping Lockheed Martin of the fleet’s maintenance contract and giving that to another vendor through a competitive bid would reduce those costs and improve reliability.
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“We have to fix the airframe we currently have before giving Lockheed Martin an incentive with a whole lot more orders. That’s just common sense,” Gaetz told WEAR.
“We have people training in northwest Florida right now who know exactly what I’m talking about because at Eglin Air Force Base, last time I checked, only 40% of the F-35s could fly a particular mission on a given day.”
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