The Lockheed Martin F-35Lightning II is not expected to meet the Pentagon’s goal of an 80% mission-capable rate by the end of the fiscal year due to supply shortages.
Transparency canopy shortages are the main obstacle in achieving the goal. The military is seeking additional sources to fix unserviceable canopies, Army Secretary Mark Esper, President Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, wrote on July 16 in response to previously prepared policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to get mission capable rates above 80% by the end of fiscal 2019.
The F-35 is not the only aircraft that will not meet this target. The Bell Boeing MV-22Osprey also will miss the mark.
“The readiness rates are not what we want,” Col. Matthew Kelly, V-22 program manager, said in May. “What I will tell you is that they are improving and things like the V-22 readiness program are going to be a key of that.”
The Marine Corps anticipates first delivery of a V-22 from its common configuration reliability and maintainability program this summer. The service has over 70 different configurations of the V-22. This readiness program should lift the burden on maintainers so there are only a handful of configurations.
In January, the government signed a performance-based logistics and engineering deal with Bell Boeing to align incentives with industry and the fleet, Kelly said.
“We’ve seen about a 40% reduction in long-term down aircraft since the start of this year,” he said.
Over fiscal 2017-18 there was an increase of 7% and in fiscal 2018-19 the government saw another increase of 5% in the V-22’s readiness rate, he said.
“We’ve seen some good things,” Kelly said. “We’re not where we want to be, but we think we’ve got the right incentives, contracts and tools in place to get those numbers up where they need to be.”