The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released new testimony of interest to the life cycle logistics and product support community entitled “GAO-22-105995 F-35 Sustainment: DOD Faces Several Uncertainties and Has Not Met Key Objectives”. According to the GAO, “F-35 aircraft comprise a growing portion of DOD's aviation fleet. DOD currently has 450 F-35s, and plans to procure about 2,500 in total. However, we testified that the F-35 fleet's average mission capable rate—the percentage of time during which the F-35s can fly and perform at least one mission—declined between FY 2020 and FY 2021. One major reason is that an increasing number of F-35s have not been able to fly because they don't have a working engine. We have ongoing work exploring this issue.”

For those interested in viewing a video of the hearing, the subcommittee chairman’s opening statement, or reading through the witness statements, all are accessible directly from the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Subcommittee on Readiness Hearing on FY35 Sustainment.