:

Pentagon

F-35 Still Struggling With Readiness Woes, DoD Tester Says

By Marc Selinger

Thursday, January 25th, 2018

SHARE:

F-35 Still Struggling With Readiness Woes, DoD Tester Says

The Air Force's F-35A conventional variant. Photo: Air Force.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s new fleet of F-35 Lightning IIs is making little progress in overcoming its readiness problems, according to a new report by the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester.“Reliability growth has stagnated,“ Robert Behler, DoD’s director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E), wrote in his fiscal year 2017 annual report. “Overall fleet-wide monthly availability rates remain around 50 percent, a condition that has existed with no significant improvement since October 2014, despite the increasing number of new aircraft.” A…

Budget

Hegseth Pushes For Reconciliation With At Least $350 Billion For Defense ‘Regardless’ Of Midterms Outcome

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday the Trump administration plans to continue its push for at least $350 billion in defense funds via the reconciliation process “regardless of what happens […]

Congress

Bipartisan Push in Senate to Hasten Export of 155 mm, GMLRS, HIMARS for Ukraine

A small, bipartisan group of senators is backing the Fast Tracking European Investment in Ukraine’s Defense Act, S. 5175, to hasten the export of allied buys of U.S. munitions for […]

Congress

Rep. Himes Signals Increased Contractor Oversight, if Democrats Win House

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, plans to increase the committee’s contractor oversight if the Democrats win control of the House […]

Congress

CBO Estimates Loss of One-Half to Two-Thirds of U.S. Missile Interceptors Since June Last Year

A new Congressional Budget Office report estimates the cost of the Iran war through Aug. 1 as $38 billion and says that the U.S. has likely depleted between one-half and […]