Technical Challenges Delay Mass Production of F-35 Stealth Fighter Yet Again

The entry into mass production of the Lockheed Martin F-35 single engine fighter has seen the latest of many delays, after the Pentagon again postponed a review of its combat capabilities which was a necessary prerequisite to increase the scale of production. This combat capability assessment was supposed to occur in 2017, but has been postponed repeatedly with latest date having been set for December 2020 before being moved again to an undetermined future date. The Pentagon has announced that the new date will be announced “based on an independent technical review.” Delays to testing of the fighter’s combat capabilities follow multiple reports that the fighter, despite having officially entered service in 2014, is still very far from fully combat ready, and may not be suitable for high intensity combat until after 2025. Had testing been completed in 2020, mass production was scheduled to start in 2021. The Defence Department’s undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment Ellen Lord cited "technical challenges" as the cause of the delay, alongside the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The F-35 is the only fifth generation fighter in production in the Western world, with rival F-15 and F-18 jet’s produced by Boeing being fourth generation designs dating back to the Cold War era. European states appear to have no plans to develop a comparable fighter, with several such as Britain, Poland, Belgium and Italy instead investing in acquiring F-35s from America. China has fielded a next generation fighter of its own since early 2017, with the J-20 heavyweight twin engine platform forming the elite of its combat fleet. Russia inducted its first fifth generation fighter into service in December 2020, although production rates will remain low until 2025. Despite being a smaller fighter with less of an emphasis on high end air to air combat, development of the F-35 has been extremely costly and suffered from considerable cost overruns, with development costs alone having reached over $400 billion. The program has been widely described by analysts as ‘too big to fail,’ in that despite considerable development and performance issues, investment in the program has been so considerable that cancellation is not feasible. Despite the significant cost of development, the unit cost of the basic F-35A variant is relatively low compared to other Western fighter designs due to both the very large scale of production and the greater efficiency of the U.S. defence sector relative to those of European competitors. The fighter's operational costs, however, are much higher than those of the aircraft it is replacing which has led officials to seriously question whether acquisition is viable on the large scale previously projected.