US Air Force Grounds Most of Its F-35 Fighter Jets Over Ejection Seat Concerns (taskandpurpose.com) 102
The F-35 stealth-combat aircraft is the "crown jewel" of America's Air Force fight fleet, according to the defense news site Task & Purpose.
But Friday they were all grounded — "sidelined for an indeterminate amount of time as the service inspects most of its F-35 fighter jet ejection seats for faulty launch cartridges, service officials said..." The news marks the latest difficult headline for the beleaguered fighter, which U.S. military officials have placed at the forefront of their airpower strategy despite a long list of maintenance issues. Air Combat Command, the Air Force command which oversees the bulk of the service's fighter fleet, made the decision to ground its F-35s on Friday after other units of the Air Force and Navy grounded many of their aircraft due to concerns over faulty parts which could prevent the pilot ejection seat from launching out of the cockpit in an emergency. Air Combat Command spokesperson Alexi Worley said that the command started a 90-day inspection period of all cartridges on its F-35 ejection seats on July 19.
"Out of an abundance of caution, ACC units will execute a stand-down on July 29 to expedite the inspection process," Worley said. "Based on data gathered from those inspections, ACC will make a determination to resume operations."
Worley later added that the stand-down "will continue through the weekend, and a determination to safely resume normal operations is expected to be made early next week, pending analysis of the inspection data."
Many jet aircraft in the U.S. military are equipped with ejection seats made by the company Martin-Baker, which notified the Navy about potential defects earlier this month, according to Breaking Defense, which first reported the F-35 grounding story on Friday. The problem part is the cartridge actuated device, an explosive cartridge that helps launch the ejection seat out of an aircraft. Martin-Baker identified certain production lots of cartridge actuated devices as being defective and in need of replacement, the Air Force told Breaking Defense.
"While the aircraft are flyable, I don't think too many pilots would be willing to fly knowing they may not be able [to] eject," Michael Cisek, a senior associate at the aviation consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told Breaking Defense....
America's allies may also be affected by the issue. On Wednesday, Breaking Defense reported that the Navy had informed foreign military sales customers about the issue and was working with them to resolve it.
But Friday they were all grounded — "sidelined for an indeterminate amount of time as the service inspects most of its F-35 fighter jet ejection seats for faulty launch cartridges, service officials said..." The news marks the latest difficult headline for the beleaguered fighter, which U.S. military officials have placed at the forefront of their airpower strategy despite a long list of maintenance issues. Air Combat Command, the Air Force command which oversees the bulk of the service's fighter fleet, made the decision to ground its F-35s on Friday after other units of the Air Force and Navy grounded many of their aircraft due to concerns over faulty parts which could prevent the pilot ejection seat from launching out of the cockpit in an emergency. Air Combat Command spokesperson Alexi Worley said that the command started a 90-day inspection period of all cartridges on its F-35 ejection seats on July 19.
"Out of an abundance of caution, ACC units will execute a stand-down on July 29 to expedite the inspection process," Worley said. "Based on data gathered from those inspections, ACC will make a determination to resume operations."
Worley later added that the stand-down "will continue through the weekend, and a determination to safely resume normal operations is expected to be made early next week, pending analysis of the inspection data."
Many jet aircraft in the U.S. military are equipped with ejection seats made by the company Martin-Baker, which notified the Navy about potential defects earlier this month, according to Breaking Defense, which first reported the F-35 grounding story on Friday. The problem part is the cartridge actuated device, an explosive cartridge that helps launch the ejection seat out of an aircraft. Martin-Baker identified certain production lots of cartridge actuated devices as being defective and in need of replacement, the Air Force told Breaking Defense.
"While the aircraft are flyable, I don't think too many pilots would be willing to fly knowing they may not be able [to] eject," Michael Cisek, a senior associate at the aviation consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told Breaking Defense....
America's allies may also be affected by the issue. On Wednesday, Breaking Defense reported that the Navy had informed foreign military sales customers about the issue and was working with them to resolve it.
Gobble, gobble .... (Score:2, Insightful)
More like oink, oink (Score:3, Funny)
Can't make pork out of turkey.
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Turkey is the new healthy substitute
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Healthy, shmealthy, I want my pork barrel!
Re:Gobble, gobble .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, it is easy to poke "big government programs" with a stick, Senator Proxmire made a career out of it
However, what we are seeing here is the public release of information related to a procurement problem. To be honest, the transparency is unexpected, and certainly better than some other super powers that field clearly defective equipment amid suspected theft and coverups.
Frankly, I will take transparent releases of information over a sea of lies as airmen are exposed to unnecessary risks
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As reported by a few other folks below, the problems with the ejection seats affect a lot more aircraft than just the F-35. The headline was mainly worded that way as clickbait.
The Navy said in a statement on Tuesday that the cartridge problem affected aircraft in its and the Marine Corps’ F/A-18B/C/D Hornets, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, E/A-18G Growlers, T-45 Goshawk and F-5 Tiger II training aircraft fleets. For the Air Force, the grounded aircraft also included 203 T-38 Talons and 76 T-6 Texan IIs, which represents about a third of the service’s total training fleet, Air Force Times reported.
The manufacturer of the Cartridge Actuated Device (CAD), Martin-Baker Aircraft Co. Ltd., issued a statement about the ejection seat problems. We believe the problem is unique to this particular CAD part number and unique to the F-35. Analysis of all affected aircraft is ongoing to verify this.
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As reported by a few other folks below, the problems with the ejection seats affect a lot more aircraft than just the F-35. The headline was mainly worded that way as clickbait.
The Navy said in a statement on Tuesday that the cartridge problem affected aircraft in its and the Marine Corps’ F/A-18B/C/D Hornets, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, E/A-18G Growlers, T-45 Goshawk and F-5 Tiger II training aircraft fleets. For the Air Force, the grounded aircraft also included 203 T-38 Talons and 76 T-6 Texan IIs, which represents about a third of the service’s total training fleet, Air Force Times reported.
The manufacturer of the Cartridge Actuated Device (CAD), Martin-Baker Aircraft Co. Ltd., issued a statement about the ejection seat problems. We believe the problem is unique to this particular CAD part number and unique to the F-35. Analysis of all affected aircraft is ongoing to verify this.
This is going to hurt MB's reputation. They were supposed to be the gold standard in eject seats. Way back in the dinosaur age when I served on aircraft carriers, the Tomcat's A model was notorious for it's lousy TF30 engine. The Tomcat pilots in the fleet had a joke: "If the engine says Pratt & Whitney, the seat had better say Martin Baker".
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A lot of what's wrong with Soviet equipment isn't simply lies, faked reports, corruption, theft, etc, although these sorts of things do play their role. It's the design philosophy. Bolts breaking under stress on a particular part? Just double the number of bolts and replace them every year - that sort of stuff. Hold the equipment together with patches. The problem is that this sort of philosophy degrades its capabilities from its original specs and makes upgrade paths more difficult.
Another problem is th
Re:Gobble, gobble .... (Score:4, Funny)
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It's actually the perfect counterpart to other countries' latest and greatest, the F-35 which doesn't work up against the SU-57 which doesn't exist and the Chengdu J-20 which only works at reduced performance. So if there's a conflict the US generals could argue that their aircraft could beat the Russian ones if they could get them to work, and the Russians could say that they'd beat those damn Americans if they could find an SU-57, and the Chinese could claim they'd beat them all once they figure out how to get their one to perform as specced. They're perfectly matched.
The big problem with the F35 is they tried to create "one jet to rule them all" that would meet the needs of the Air Force, Army and Marines as well as be attractive to overseas defence forces. The problem is, you're replacing at least 3 different jets, the F/A18, Harrier and F16, as well as various specialty aircraft like the A10 and EA-6B. Thus runs into the old axiom of "jack of all trades, master of none". This was all to, ostensibly, save money. However this was tried back in the 70's with terrible res
Re: Gobble, gobble .... (Score:2)
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Truly what it should be called.
F-35 Turkey (Sausage, all the cost of the pork barrel, with half the flavor and a crappy texture.)
One slight possible upside (Score:1, Offtopic)
At least in this case the defect was identified and corrective action will be taken. This is in deep contrast to Russia where corruption is so rampant, wooden blocks were substituted for explosives [youtube.com].
Whataboutism (Score:1)
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At least in this case the defect was identified and corrective action will be taken. This is in deep contrast to Russia where corruption is so rampant, wooden blocks were substituted for explosives
Whatever happened in Russia doesn't excuse this mistake. Not that such things aren't inevitable on such a complex aircraft. We perceive corruption in the military-industrial complex and try to stop it with red tape. But red tape won't help when the real corruption is above it, in the form of a revolving door between Congress and industry, where favors are traded before the agreement is ever signed. That said the f-35 is still a fine aircraft and will be essential if America decides to enter a peer war.
Russian corruption: Remove the explosives, replace them with wood and sell them on the black market for $50 and a bottle of snow globe vodka.
American corruption: Charge the airforce $74,165 for the aluminium ladder you needed to get into the aircraft to install a $659 ashtray with a $214 flashlight and a $285 screwdriver.
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America definitely has Russia beat when it comes to making bloated hardware with shoddy software that ends up running vastly over-cost.
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Odds are the screwdriver actually works.
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Odds are the screwdriver actually works.
So go buy one, just remember that those are 1986 dollars and 1986 corruption. The defence industry has raised prices and become more corrupt since then.
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Odds are the screwdriver actually works.
Of course it does, Russians don’t even bother with the orange juice.
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Also Russian corruption: sell the alcohol used in the A/C systems of the TU-22.
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Russian corruption: Remove the explosives, replace them with wood and sell them on the black market for $50 and a bottle of snow globe vodka. American corruption: Charge the airforce $74,165 for the aluminium ladder you needed to get into the aircraft to install a $659 ashtray with a $214 flashlight and a $285 screwdriver.
Still cheaper than not having the correct ashtray and losing the 100 million dollar jet to a smoking incident.
Re: Whataboutism (Score:1)
Not Just the F-35 (Score:5, Informative)
Kind of a clickbait headline highlighting the F-35. Lots of other aircraft affected.
From the linked article, "The Navy said in a statement on Tuesday that the cartridge problem affected aircraft in its and the Marine Corps’ F/A-18B/C/D Hornets, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, E/A-18G Growlers, T-45 Goshawk and F-5 Tiger II training aircraft fleets, but the service did not share exact numbers due to operational security concerns." and for the Air Force, "The grounded aircraft included 203 T-38 Talons and 76 T-6 Texan IIs, which represents about a third of the service’s total training fleet, Air Force Times reported."
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Guys, guys. Trump lost the election. Time to accept that fact and move on with your sensitive little snowflake lives.
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Are you saying she / her husband are not engaged in insider trading?
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Are you saying that Congressional spouses are in any way prevented from participating in the stock market?
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She is so advanced, she will leapfrog WWIII entirely.
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>Everybody knows, though some won't admit it, that the F35 is a giant boondoggle, barely able to fly at all
And yet more and more countries are choosing F-35... It is almost like quite many air forces around the world disagree with that assessment...
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>Everybody knows, though some won't admit it, that the F35 is a giant boondoggle, barely able to fly at all
And yet more and more countries are choosing F-35... It is almost like quite many air forces around the world disagree with that assessment...
>Everybody knows, though some won't admit it, that the F35 is a giant boondoggle, barely able to fly at all
And yet more and more countries are choosing F-35... It is almost like quite many air forces around the world disagree with that assessment...
Much of the world's air forces, outside of Russia, simply ape whatever American forces are doing. Because they assume that the "world's greatest superpower" knows what it's doing... right? I mean, come on, the mighty US Air Force wouldn't choose a flawed platform... would it?
Note that quite a few of the world's air forces AREN'T choosing the F-35, and instead are going for much cheaper and proven platforms like new-build F-16's, and SAAB's Gripens.
Re:Not Just the F-35 (Score:5, Insightful)
Also lots of people here have not even bothered to read the summary, much less the article. This is not some design defect in the F-35, or any plane, but a manufacturing problem that has been reported in one part, and that -- there being no wars on right now -- they grounded the potentially affected planes until the part could be checked, and replaced if defective. This is what a competent military does.
Re:Not Just the F-35 (Score:5, Funny)
Excuse me, Sir, but you have made a few errors in your reply.
1) this is Slashdot, why would anyone read the article or even the summary?
2) you presented facts that conflict with the narrative. Major faux pas!
3) you were reasonable and not offensive. Ranting irrationally is the preferred style.
4) you praised the US military for doing something right, definitely bad form
Please avoid these social missteps going forward.
Shit Planes (Score:1)
Yet more evidence of a bad design. These things will nickle and dime [insert country that buys them] to death if the initial price for buying doesn't kill them outright. Shit planes. Even the US has decided to not buy as many, and are starting a process to build something new that is better. And stealth isn't that stealthy. Even the Serbs 23 years ago shot down an F117. Radar has improved since then; especially long wave radar. Multiple radar stations working in concert, and radar where the transmitter and
Re: Shit Planes (Score:3)
Some stealth is better than no stealth at all since you can get closer before you're noticed. Anyway, this is how military technology advances. Someone invents weapon A then eventually someone invents B to circumvent A. Then C is invented to overcome B. Rinse and repeat over the centuries.
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Only if it the aircraft can actually fly. The F-35 has had so many fundamental issues, I don't expect to ever see them in actual missions, and the billions spent on their design could have been used for far simpler, more reliable aircraft.
Re: Shit Planes (Score:1)
The Israeli Air Force would beg to differ. On a number of occasions they have publicly announced that they have flown missions over Syria and other parts of the Middle East. The IAF is not known for bogus claims.
As for this ejection seat issue, the IAF has also grounded its jets until proven safe to fly.
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Can you point to the specific claims? I see the claims for their use on May 22, at https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]. I would not call shooting down drones combat.
To be honest, have you met any Israelis involved in intelligence, whether military or corporate intelligence? _Of course_ they would lie about a program with $100 million/aircraft already invested.
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Actually ALL aircraft design programs have had huge issues. Of course the F-35 with it's "three different models, I mean one model" approach was just begging for extra trouble and the early versions were.. questionable in capability.
But you should note that quite many air forces have chosen F-35, so professionals in quite many countries seem to think it brings some useful capability.
On "far simpler, more reliable aircraft.":
-Early F-16s were known as "widdowmakers" due to the high number of crashes they had
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Buying expensive tools lauded by the USA as the future of stealth and combat is not proof of effectiveness or quality. I've recently had just such discussions with a partner about very expensive, high security network and system security tools for which they had no way to handle all the logging and all the false positives, except to grant everything exceptions and not examine the exceptions until next year's bureauchratic and budgetary meetings. The result is that even basic vulnerabilities and security pra
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The Navy said in a statement on Tuesday that the cartridge problem affected aircraft in its and the Marine Corps’ F/A-18B/C/D Hornets, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, E/A-18G Growlers, T-45 Goshawk and F-5 Tiger II training aircraft fleets
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The F-35 has had so many fundamental issues, I don't expect to ever see them in actual missions,
Too late for that, they've been used in actual missions. https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
Worth mentioning that although it took a long time, most of the problems have been solved, including costs [forbes.com].
the billions spent on their design could have been used for far simpler, more reliable aircraft.
Possibly, but we did that too and it's a beast [lockheedmartin.com]. So now we have both.
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The F-35 has had so many fundamental issues, I don't expect to ever see them in actual missions,
Too late for that, they've been used in actual missions. https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
Worth mentioning that although it took a long time, most of the problems have been solved, including costs [forbes.com].
The entire premise of that article is that the F-35 is cost-effective because it takes far fewer F-35s to accomplish the same objectives as previous generations of aircraft.
But that's an embarrassingly low bar to cross since the F-35 is a next generation fighter almost by default it should win a competition against previous generation fighters. The proper question is whether it would be cost effective compared other 5th generation fighters that could have been developed.
Of course, the lower cost per-plane d
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The entire premise of that article is that the F-35 is cost-effective because it takes far fewer F-35s to accomplish the same objectives as previous generations of aircraft.
You know what that feeling is? It's the cognitive bias hitting you and distorting your understanding. That's not the entire premise of the article at all.
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The entire premise of that article is that the F-35 is cost-effective because it takes far fewer F-35s to accomplish the same objectives as previous generations of aircraft.
You know what that feeling is? It's the cognitive bias hitting you and distorting your understanding. That's not the entire premise of the article at all.
You sure? The first direct mention of cost calculation is in P3: That is why older design types still in production, like the F-15EX, F-16, and F/A-18E/F are fundamentally not viable for the long term. Even though they retain relevancy for lower-scale conflicts and homeland defense, to put it bluntly, against high-end threats they represent an expensive way of having a high probability of getting shot down.
Ie, not cost-effective because they're obsolete.
Emphasized in P4: The most important assessment tool
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I'd not seen that article. Given the plane's history, and the history of eager military developers to cook up fake tests, I'l be very curious if the _pilot_ has a report on its behavio, one that we can see. Given that the picture of the aircraft is upside down, I also hope that they eventually managed to land it without flying all the way to Australia so the wheels point towards the ground.
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There are a bunch of first-hand pilot reviews of the plane. Here are a couple, if you search you can find more:
https://warriormaven.com/air/f... [warriormaven.com]
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/a... [sandboxx.us]
This quote seems to catch the trajectory:
"When the F-35 debuted, it was inferior to the F-16 and other 4th generation aircraft. However, its potential has been steadily unlocked by the engineers, and several years ago, it surpassed the F-16’s capability. As the F-35 continues to mature, the difference will continue to grow "
Canopy down landings are something only the best pilots can perform, and it takes many years of practice to do it right. I suspect the pilot in that picture is not experienced enough, and thus landed with his wheels down. Maybe in a few more years he'll have enough experience to do it successf
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I'd like to see a review from the Israeli pilots who used it. I'll remain skeptical of the commanding officer approved, glowing interviews until we see more evidence that they don't remain prone to catastrophic failures and shortfalls, such as the tires failing on every landing and the very poor visibility for pilots. I also see that the Israelis considered the US stealth electronics, one of the prides of the project, to be unfit for purpose and immediately replaced the package with their own.
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I'd like to see a review from the Israeli pilots who used it.
OK, do a search for that lol
All reports are that it's now a pretty good plane, so you're going against the current here.
Re: Shit Planes (Score:2)
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Then there's the larger bomber drones, like we saw against the Moskva, and in the near future, drone swarms for air superiority.
Expensive, manned, stealth aircraft would be wasted against much cheaper, smaller, more numerous, drones that have the advantage of not needing to drag a pilot around.
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Except that the drones have become a lot less useful in Ukraine as defenses have gotten better.
Basically in the early parts of the war Russians seemed very unorganized with their air defenses, but the war the progressed to a point where everyone and their aunt seems to have some sort of manpad hanging around and neither side seems to be able to operate drones that well..
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The Bayraktar drones are easy to shoot down, with rifles. Though presumably it's a question of who fires first. Russia may also be able to jam the signal.
The advantagesof drones are that you can pull vastly higher G and you're not risking a pilot.
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Then there's the larger bomber drones, like we saw against the Moskva
Just to be clear, the Bayraktar [wikipedia.org] drones might carry some munitions but they are insufficient to take out anything big. I do not believe they have taken out a single Russian tank - at least not directly. They are typically used for targets with minimal armour - so fuel trucks and some personal carriers. When it comes to tanks, they are used as spotters and it is artillery that actually kills the tanks.
So when people talk about America providing drones to Ukraine, they are referring to drones that can ac
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Just to be clear, the Bayraktar [wikipedia.org] drones might carry some munitions but they are insufficient to take out anything big.
Ah yes, of course. 4 hours of sleep over 2 days is not good for the memory.
Re:Shit Planes (Score:5, Informative)
Also, stealth is not a magic invisibility cloak, but it's not a scam either like some people claim. Yes, stealth aircraft can be traced with low-frequency radars but cannot be locked at, because low-frequency radar has laughable accuracy and cannot provide a "weapons grade" lock. Basically, low-frequency radar tells you that "there is an aircraft somewhere in this box which measures half a cubic mile, good luck finding where exactly". BTW the incident with the F-117 happened because the F-117 opened its bomb bays (thus nullifying stealth cover) while flying low in a vulnerable situation, and that's how the Serbians got a lock. That's the only "countermeasure" for stealth: Keep your radars mobile and shut off most of the time in the hope that the operator of the stealth aircraft will be stupid enough to be lulled into a false sense of security and voluntarily gives up stealth when not appropriate. Not much of a countermeasure if you ask me.
tl;dr: I know that the Russians are inviting Pierre Sprey over to RT to say how stealth is allegedly a scam, but if it was actually a scam, they wouldn't be spending millions trying to field their own stealth aircraft. Neither would the Chinese be trying to copy the F-35 as best as they can.
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>And you don't understand that most airforces have already backed out of the idea of replacing their entire fleets of 4.5th gen and 4.75th gen aircraft with F-35s
What air forces had plans to do that replacement and no longer have such plans? I have mostly heard lately of air forces picking F-35 to replace older aircraft.
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>Yet more evidence of a bad design
Yes, a lots of aircraft were clearly badly designed..
Grounded aircraft include:
Marine corpsâ(TM) F/A-18B/C/D Hornets, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, E/A-18G Growlers, T-45 Goshawk and F-5 Tiger II training aircraft
Air Force T-38 Talons and T-6 Texan IIs, and F-35
Of course you could have read the source instead and noticed that it was actually faulty ejection seats for faulty launch cartridges and not anything to do with design..
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Lol, welcome to Slashdot where solid easily proven facts are modded down because (-1, don't like you) is a thing.
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Radar has improved since then; especially long wave radar. Multiple radar stations working in concert, and radar where the transmitter and receiver are separated over a distance and work in multiple pairs gives the ability to locate and precisely locate 'stealth' aircraft, so that missiles controlled by those systems can shoot them down.
The first thing these aircraft do in event of a war is SEAD [wikipedia.org] destroying those radar stations. If the radars work as well as claimed, then it becomes of game of skill, and the US air-force has teams that practice this all the time. That is the only purpose of these teams. If you're shooting at me, and I'm shooting at you, who will win? The one with the better skill.
Of course, if the radars don't work as well as claimed, then it's gameover, the stealth airforce wins.
What happened to the billions (Score:2)
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Did no one hire a group of engineers to properly design build and test an ejection seat?
Sure, but the guy who ground-tested the ejection seat didn't have much to say ... :-)
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ground-tested
There is a thing called a zero-zero [wikipedia.org] ejection seat. But I'd guess that most seat testing is done with dummies, zero or otherwise. And the dummies ain't talking.
cartridge actuated device (Score:2)
F-35 Edsel. (Score:2)
Intentional? (Score:1, Troll)
It seems like something the Trump administration would have deliberately done. If you extrapolate their mean spiritedness and fascist philosophy it will state that not being able to eject kinda forces you to do your job. Remember Trump said he likes people who do not eject.
Trump needs this fixed by 2024... (Score:2, Informative)
...so he can send them to help Russia invade Ukraine.
Takata (Score:2)
and the odds of them being replaced (Score:2)
Cash Siphon (Score:2)
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Except that the unit cost of a f.-35 has been going down a lot and it is actually now competitive with other new western fighters in price.
From indications it seems to likely be cheaper than Eurofighter and possibly Rafaele and closing in on things like Super Hornets and Gripens. Of course pricing of such is.. variable and unclear.
Hopefully they fix this. (Score:1)
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The real event it was based on was not a faulty seat. The seat worked perfectly. It was because the canopy didn't clear the ejection pathway because the plane was in a irl flat spin and the canopy just stuck around for a second too long. Canopy timing problem, not seat.
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>I think every year a quota of pilots should be randomly selected for random ejection from expensive perfectly working planes just to make sure the ejection seats work as intended. An automated system can land the aircraft so that it is not a total loss.
Except that in real life most people using an ejection seat get injured, some very badly injured. The process of ejecting is a violent one as it has to get the pilot out NOW!, not after a while as the plane might be just about to hit the ground or explode
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I think every year a quota of pilots should be randomly selected for random ejection from expensive perfectly working planes just to make sure the ejection seats work as intended. An automated system can land the aircraft so that it is not a total loss.
Ejection can cause spinal injuries.
If the plane can land automatically, why not make it take off automatically too? - with an instrumented crash test dummy in the pilot seat.
Actually a good thing. (Score:3)
Irrelevant (Score:2)
The F-35 costs far too much to risk flying it.
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Probably made in China (Score:2)
After all, have to squeeze every last cent out of those defense contracts...
Crown Turd (Score:2)
I am wondering how many of the pilots in crashed F-35 that were labeled pilot error for things such as "Failing to eject when the oxygen systems failed." Had in fact succeeded with their own procedures, only to suffer a double systems failure.
The F-35 is the absolute worst military expenditure in global history. It costs more, and does less. Heck, we would have been far better off if we just kept making and improving the F-22.
Honestly, at this point, they need to start looking at replacements. I mean, sho