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. One notable trend is an increase in the percentage of the fleet that cannot fly while awaiting replacement parts – indicated by the Not Mission Capable due to Supply rate.
[...] Total acquisition costs for Lockheed Martin Corp.'s next-generation fighter may rise about 7 percent to $406.5 billion, according to figures in a document known as a Selected Acquisition Report. That's a reversal after several years of estimates that had declined to $379 billion recently from a previous high of $398.5 billion in early 2014.
FY17 DOD PROGRAMS: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)
Related: The F-35 Fighter Plane Is Even More of a Mess Than You Thought
The F-35: A Gold-Plated Turkey
Flawed and Potentially Deadly F-35 Fighters Won't be Ready Before 2019
Lockheed Martin Negotiating $37 Billion F-35 Deal
Does China's J-20 Rival Other Stealth Fighters?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:33AM
you clearly are uninterested in America
You aren't describing "defense".
You're describing AGGRESSION.
(If the Air Farce is about "defense", why weren't the airliners on 9/11 intercepted?)
You'd rather have Russia and China running the world unchallenged
What flavor is that kool aid you drank?
You'd have to add together what the next 11 countries spend on their militaries to equal what USA.gov spends on its.
Military procurement is all about further enriching the 1 Percent and that has a really lousy fiscal multiplier effect.
USA has 900 military bases in 130 foreign countries.
How do you feel about another nation having military bases in USA?
Again, what USA.mil does is AGGRESSION.
Dial back on that and THAT is how you get a safer world.
The reason militaries exist is to loot other countries.
ISIS
The countries where they are have national sovereignty.
USA breaching those borders to preemptively murder civilians there is counter to international law.
Again, think of some other country doing that to USA.
The standard practice for dealing with lawbreakers is extradition.
Using the military to do "law enforcement" is 11 kinds of wrong.
the invasion of Kuwait
You should learn a little history.
USA.gov gave Iraq permission to do that (having already supplied Saddam with weapons), then changed its mind.
Your gov't is made up of 2-faced sons of bitches.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]