When it comes to Pentagon spending, the F-35 Lightning II epitomizes the tension between military aspiration and fiscal and functional failures. The fallout of that tension was on display last month, when an F-35B, the Marine Corps variant, went missing. Initial reports suggested that the pilot ejected over South Carolina while the plane was on autopilot, so it just kept on flying. The Pentagon, unable to immediately locate the jet, actually asked for the public’s help finding it. More than 24 hours later, the military found a debris field where the jet had crashed, 60 miles from where the pilot had ejected.

Adding cold hard facts to an already-damning news cycle, on September 21 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report exposing an underbelly of inefficiency and unanswered questions that should concern even the staunchest Pentagon spending boosters.

One of the most glaring revelations is the aircraft’s dismal mission-capable rate, which falls far short of what military strategy requires. According to the GAO report, the aircraft’s fleet mission-capable rate languishes at a mere 55%, well below the desired operational levels of 85 to 90%. In scholastic terms, the goal is “B” or “B+” but the result is an “F.”

GAO points out that maintenance remains a thorny issue, particularly at the depot and organizational levels. Depot-level maintenance (D-level) refers to material maintenance or repair that requires major overhaul, upgrading, or rebuilding of parts, while organizational-level maintenance (O-level) is performed on-site at the organizational unit level, such as by a single maintenance squadron as part of an aircraft wing. The Defense Department’s tardiness in establishing adequate depot maintenance has created a significant bottleneck, resulting in a backlog of more than 10,000 components awaiting repair.

The DOD has delegated significant portions of F-35 sustainment (support, training, supplies, etc.) to contractors but has managed the oversight responsibilities poorly. This raises important questions about program governance, particularly given that the military plans to assume sustainment responsibilities by 2027.

Organizational-level maintenance finds itself hamstrung by a dearth of technical data and training resources. This scarcity affects everything from repair effectiveness to fleet readiness—critical parameters for any military hardware.

Beyond the GAO’s findings, our own report on alternatives to the acquisition of nearly 2,500 F-35s strikes at the heart of a more ominous problem—the staggering life cycle cost of over $1.7 trillion. This makes the F-35 the most expensive weapon system ever developed by the DOD, a figure that warrants its own moment of reckoning.

Our 2014 report, “The Unaffordable F-35: Budget History and Alternatives,” delves into feasible alternatives to the F-35. Upgraded versions of legacy aircraft such as the F-16, F/A-18, and F-15 offer considerable tactical advantages at a fraction of the cost. While a lot of production has occurred since our report, it’s never too late to step back and reexamine an acquisition that has stumbled at every turn.

Both the GAO and TCS have offered similar recommendations. It is crucial to reassess F-35 sustainment strategies and clarify the roles of the government and contractors. Moreover, the DOD and Congress need to weigh the merits of alternative aircraft options before doubling down on a program riddled with inefficiencies and astronomical costs.

Speaking of doubling down, a decade-old battle between two arms manufacturers competing over who would build the F-35’s engine has risen from the dead, just in time for Halloween. Concerns over engines for the F-35 led to competing engine development, but eventually the government backed one, and requested the other be cancelled in 2006. Lawmakers balked. After years of opposition from TCS and others, plans to develop an alternate engine for the F-35 were cancelled in 2011. But General Electric, the company behind the alternate engine, hasn’t given up. It got a different innocuous sounding name, the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), but it is the same wasteful program.

Claiming essentially that their engine is better that Pratt & Whitney’s, the company that produces the current engine, GE has been lobbying once again for funding to build an alternate engine, which would cost $6 billion in procurement, and $40 billion when you factor in maintenance costs. Pratt & Whitney on the other hand argues that upgrading the current engine would cost just $2.5 billion.

That sounds like the better option to us, and we said as much in a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in March 2023, calling on the Pentagon to abandon plans for the alternate engine, which it did by omitting funding for it in the FY 2024 budget request. But then Congress stepped in.

The House-passed version of the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorized $588 million in research, development, testing and evaluation for AETP, the design program that includes the alternate engine. Subsequently, House appropriators included $150 million for the program in their FY24 Defense spending bill. The committee states that the funding isn’t meant to incentivize the creation of an alternative engine program for the F-35; rather, it is supporting a robust industrial base as the Pentagon moves toward fielding a 6th Generation Fighter in the coming decade. But no matter how you slice it, spending $150 million on engine research the Pentagon didn’t ask for is not fiscally responsible.

Our military servicemembers deserve functional aircraft and a program to sustain them. They—and all taxpayers—deserve transparency, accountability, and most importantly, common sense in taxpayer-funded initiatives. As the military will take over F-35 sustainment by October 2027, the window for making course corrections is narrowing.

In the annals of excessive Pentagon spending, the F-35 serves as a cautionary tale—a monument to what happens when ambition outpaces pragmatism. It offers a stark reminder that the gulf between military needs and fiscal reality cannot be bridged by sheer enthusiasm alone.