For generations, the U.S. military has acted as a bulwark against hostile foreign actors threatening the American homeland. But what happens when the military hardware required to project that deterrence doesn’t work, is outdated, or decrepit?
On Wednesday, the House Armed Service Committee held hearings analyzing the 2025 fiscal year budget requests for the Air Force and Navy. Throughout their testimony, military officials and specialists answered questions about current problems facing the force and how to address these issues moving forward.
At one point during the committee’s Air Force hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., probed officials about the F-35. That’s a class of fighter jet produced by Lockheed Martin that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently described as the Pentagon’s “most ambitious and costly weapon system and its most advanced fighter aircraft.”
Gaetz asked Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III what percentage of F-35s are “fully mission-capable.” For Americans concerned about U.S. military readiness, the answer was less than reassuring.
After consultation with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, Kendall told Gaetz that only 55 percent of F-35s are deemed operationally available, a figure the secretary said is “not a good number.” This prompted Gaetz to question the veracity of those figures, citing March 2023 testimony from Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the head of the F-35 program, who said that, as of February 2023, the “full mission capable rate” of these jets is less than 30 percent.
Allvin clarified there is a
