A new GAO report

The Government Accountability Office or GAO is a U.S. federal agency whose objectives are to audit, evaluate and investigate the various public accounts of the federal budget.

The agency released on November 10 a report on 49 types of aircraft in service with the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy or U.S. Marine Corps. The F-35 fighter jet is among the aircraft audited, and many problems have (once again) been reported. This is not the first time the GAO has followed the F-35 very closely, as it is one of the aeronautical programs accumulating a huge budget within the various branches of the Department of Defense (DoD). The report in question therefore links to other previous reports (the Nov. 10 report focused on the F-35 and other reports are available at the end of this article and sourced directly in the paragraphs).

Generally speaking, the F-35 is also the bête noire of technicians in light of its engine problems: the number of F-35s without operational engines has risen from 2 aircraft in January 2020 to 36 in February 2022, and the trend is stagnating between 30 and 40 aircraft between July 2021 and February 2022 (GAO-22-105995, p. 14).

The DoD officially calls for a maximum of 6% of F-35s grounded for engine reasons, but this limit has already been exceeded since April 2021 with about 20 aircraft on the ground (GAO-22-105995, p. 14). The causes are technical but not only: the logistics chain does not seem to be adequate, with too little repair and/or maintenance capacity. Worse yet, some spare parts are unreliable. It should be noted that the slow pace of engine maintenance and repair very quickly led to a lack of operable spares (GAO-22-105995, pp. 17-18).

The GAO notes, however, that DoD has formally acknowledged these various problems and is seeking solutions. There has, in fact, been a slight improvement in maintenance time (at the depot level, i.e., heavy maintenance) on the F-35: 188 days on average in November 2018 to 131 days in September 2021...but that is still far from the maximum 30 days requested by the DoD (GAO-22-105995, p. 9).

A cost per flight hour that is not significantly improving

In fiscal year 2020 (FY2020), the flight hour for an F-35 (all versions) is $41,986 (GAO-23-106217, p. 205) or about €39,500 at current prices. While this is a 2.3% decrease from FY2019, the cost is still too high and unsustainable over the long term. Indeed, the arrival of the F-35 was originally intended to retire the F-16s in the USAF, yet the flight hour for the aging F-16 fleet has indeed increased by 16.3% over FY2019, but it is "only" $26,927 (GAO-23-106217, p. 232) or ~€25,400 current. From a financial perspective, therefore, it is unthinkable to replace the entire F-16 fleet with F-35s, as the cost of operating the F-35 was originally intended to be equal to the F-16.

External consequences

The GAO obviously takes into account the increase in some line items regarding the U.S. F-35s as a result of the increase in the number of aircraft in service. It also notes that this increase did not have a negative effect on aircraft grounded due to faulty engines: between June 2021 and June 2022, the F-35 fleet increased by 20 percent while the number of grounded aircraft decreased by 2 percent (GAO-23-106217, p. 207). On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic also had a negative impact on the entire supply chain (GAO-22-105128, p. 17).

The GAO also identifies indirect consequences of the F-35 on other aircraft:

• the Marine Corps' slowed F-35B fielding has forced its air component to take steps to keep its AV-8B Harrier II fighters operational (re-engining, removing aircraft requiring too many maintenance hours,..)
• the lack of technical personnel within the various forces may have a negative effect on the other aircraft following the F-35: technical personnel are trained on the complex systems of the F-35 and this requires time. Now, as a result of the increased lack of personnel, some aircraft are forced to stay longer in maintenance periods (this is particularly the case for the AV-8B). For now, these problems are being buffered by greater use of private contractors (GAO-23-106217, p. 212).

A report on other aircraft

The GAO has clearly identified the F-35 as a particular focus on its investigations and reports, but the report released Nov. 10 also covers 48 other aircraft:

• increased costs for the B-52 Stratofortress due to corrosion
• an unexpected rate of repairs on P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and creating a shortage of spare parts
• hard-to-get spare parts for B-2A Spirit bombers, requesting the implementation of a cannibalization, considered totally ineffective
• in general, maintenance and repair times much too long but which can be explained by the lack of personnel during the pandemic of COVID-19.
• ... (for 352 pages!)

The E-4B National Operations Airborne Center strategic command aircraft, which accompanies the U.S. President or even the Secretary of Defense on their trips, costs $372,496/hr to fly! (GAO-23-106217, p. 155)

On the heavy-lift helicopter and tiltrotor side, costs vary widely:

• $3,920/hr flight time for a CH-47F(GAO-23-106217, p. 251)
• $42,767/hr flight time for a MV-22B Osprey (GAO-23-106217, p. 296)
• $45,612/hr flight time for a CH-53E Super Stallion (GAO-23-106217, p. 289)
• $48,535/flying hour for a MH-53E Sea Dragon (GAO-23-106217, p. 263)
• $79,958/flying hour for a CV-22 Osprey (GAO-23-106217, p. 309)

The report also provides other information, such as total flying hours flown for the entire fleet of a single type of aircraft. Cumulated with the cost per flight hour, some of the amounts are also considerable. For example, the cost per flight hour for the B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers is $88,354. With nearly 14,298 flight hours flown in FY20, this represents a budget of $1.263 billion, or 1.190 billion euros. For comparison, the Air Force and Space budget in 2020 was 7.5 billion euros!!