Title: F-35 Costs More and Maybe Used Less 

Description: The F-35 Lightning II aircraft is the military's most advanced stealth fighter. It's the Department of Defense's most ambitious and costly weapons system. The military currently has about 600 of these jets with plans to buy nearly 2000 more. But as costs for these aircraft continue to rise, their use by the military has declined. We'll learn more about what's going on with the F-35 from GAO’s Diana Maurer.

Related Work: GAO-24-106703, F-35 Sustainment: Costs Continue to Rise While Planned Use and Availability Has Decreased

Released: April 2024

{Music}

[Diana Maurer:] The F-35 matters because it's not just the present of fighter aircraft, it's the future as well.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report. Your source for fact-based, nonpartisan news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm your host, Holly Hobbs. The F-35 Lightning II aircraft is the military's most advanced stealth fighter. It's also the Department of Defense's most ambitious and costly weapons system. The military currently has about 600 of these jets with plans to buy nearly 2000 more. But as costs for these aircraft continue to rise, their use by the military has declined. We'll learn more about what's going on with the F-35 from GAO’s Diana Maurer, who led work on a new report that's out today. Thanks for joining us.

[Diana Maurer:] Thank you. It's good to be here.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Diana, the military has plans to buy many more F-35s. But now the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines say they'll be using the F-35 less. What happened?

[Diana Maurer:] So they're trying to balance some pretty powerful forces. On the one hand, the F-35 has some truly cutting-edge capabilities. It's stealthy aircraft. Pilots tell us how they can see potential adversaries before adversaries can see them, which gives them an advantage. The system is able to collect a lot of information and share it with other aircraft and other systems. So it's a force multiplier from that perspective. These are all great capabilities. However, it's very expensive to fly and operate. And in a report that we issued three years ago, we found that the three services who fly the F-35 were staring at these mammoth affordability gaps, the cost to operate the aircraft and the cost of what they said they could afford to spend. That was going to be billions of dollars per year. One of the ways to help reduce or close those affordability gaps is to decide to fly the aircraft less often. Which is what they have done.

[Holly Hobbs:] When we say the costs for sustaining the F-35 have increased, what does that look like?

[Diana Maurer:] We've been tracking the growth and sustainment costs for the F-35 over the course of many years. In our most recent report, we saw that those lifetime sustainment costs have increased 44% just in the last 5 years, so from 2018 to 2023, now currently pegged at nearly $1.6 trillion over the lifecycle of the system. That's a lot of money. Some of those increases are because the services plan to fly the aircraft even longer than they had initially planned—so well into the 2080s. So for 60 more years. But bigger picture, we're very concerned about the continuing increase in sustainment costs.

[Holly Hobbs:] So what is the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines or even DOD doing about these costs?

[Diana Maurer:] So to close that affordability gap between the cost to operate and what they say they can afford to spend, there are three different things they could do. One is to make it less expensive to fly. Second is to fly it less often. And the third is to decide to spend more money. And it turns out that there's not much that they've been able to accomplish to reduce the overall cost to operate the system. They've been making great strides. A lot of initiatives, but they haven't really moved the needle on that very much. What they have done is to reduce the number of hours they plan to fly the aircraft. So, for example, over the course of the last couple of years, the Air Force has reduced the amount of hours it says it plans to fly the F-35As that they use by 19%. And the Navy has reduced their flying hours, projected flying hours by 45%. Those are significant reductions, but they've also yielded significant potential savings. So the Navy is now planning to spend 41% less, and the Air Force is now planning to spend about 15% less.

[Holly Hobbs:] So I'm trying to understand how the F-35 fits into maybe what the military's trying to do. The Air Force, the Navy, they have other fighter jets. What's the bigger picture here? Why does the F-35 matter?

[Diana Maurer:] The F-35 matters because right now the services are using about 600 of them. They plan to purchase nearly 2000 more. It's not just the present of fighter aircraft, it's the future as well. They're using other systems like the F/A-18 and the F-16, among others. Those systems, many of those are aging. So it's important for the services to make the F-35 not just affordable, but to also ensure that it's able to fly as often as they need to perform their military missions. F-35 is also a force multiplier. The different capabilities it has allows the other systems that are used in concert with the F-35 to operate better and more effectively. Final point on that—the F-35 is an international program, so it's not just the U.S. that's using them. There are 16 other nations that currently use or plan to use the F-35 in the future. So it's critically important for the Defense Department to get better control of the cost to operate the system, as well as improve the overall sustainment of the system to make sure that there are enough spare parts, there are enough repair facilities and so on to make sure that the U.S. and other countries can use the F-35 as much as they would like.

{MUSIC}

[Holly Hobbs:] Diana just told us that the F-35 is an important weapon system not just now, but for the future of military defense. Which is why it’s so important that it be affordable to fly and operate. So, Diana, we've reported on the F-35 sustainment and cost issues for a decade. And we've made dozens of recommendations for the DOD. Why haven't they taken more action?

[Diana Maurer:] So over the years, we've made 43 recommendations to help improve F-35 sustainment and help the Department of Defense address this cost growth and sustainment costs. Thirty of those recommendations are still open. Most of those recommendations are things that the Defense Department has agreed to do. Part of the reason they haven't done them yet is in part because we've asked them to do things that are vitally important, critical to the success of the program, but they're not easy to do. So, for example, enhance the overall approach to ensuring that the parts and everything that's necessary to sustain the F-35 fleet globally is optimized. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done there. Reassessing the division of responsibility between what the contractor is responsible for and what the government is willing to take on. There's some fundamental changes that many think are necessary. That's not an easy thing to do. Reassessing the approach to intellectual property. A lot of the cutting-edge capabilities of the F-35 reside in software. And so 10 years ago, we made a recommendation that DOD take a look at what intellectual property the government has or should have and what the approach should be to getting what the government needs and making decisions about what the contractor was going to have a control over. They still don't have that strategy. So taking action to implement our recommendations will help DOD and the different partner countries that operate the systems better sustain the aircraft, ensure it flies more frequently, and help reduce overall sustainment costs.

[Holly Hobbs:] Last question—what's the bottom line of this report?

[Diana Maurer:] So the bottom line of our most recent report, which is focused on F-35 sustainment costs, is that those costs have continued to increase even though the services plan to use the aircraft less and availability has decreased. The services have taken action to address these massive affordability gaps. But they've done so by deciding to fly the aircraft less and in some instances to spend more. This is also happening while the overall availability of the F-35 has been declining. That is a disturbing trend, and we hope that DOD continues to take actions to implement all of our open recommendations to enhance F-35 sustainment.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Diana Maurer talking about our new report on F-35 sustainment. Thanks for your time, Diana.

[Diana Maurer:] Thank you.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and make sure to leave a rating and review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at GAO.Gov.