F-35s: Fully mission capable only some of the time

The U.S.’ most expensive military program to date, has fielded a fighter jet that simply doesn’t work most of the time. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week found the military’s F-35 fighter jets are only fully mission capable — meaning they can perform all assigned missions — about 25% of the time. That is a steep drop from 2021, when the jets were fully mission capable about 38% of the time. The F-35’s mission capable rate, which measures how often the jet can acc...