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Next thing you’ll see is them dropping from this
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That looks fake.
What extracted it out of the bay?
No parachute or carriage.
What did they do, roll it out the back by hand?
Latest FY2018 F-35 SAR 14% more CPFH in an apples to apples look.

F-35 is no longer clean sheet design. the engine and shape are pretty much standard for past 20 years.
While drawings existed for a while, final design did not occur till 2005-ish (Post SWAT).
The final F135 for the test program was only delivered in 2010.
Per the latest SAR, the F-35 is only 10% more costly to sustain than the F-16.
Not to mention extra wing pylons 🙂
No
If you have the parts.
The F-35 has shown in numerous “surge” exercises that it can do just fine.
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@Msphere You’re going to have to be more specific in your question.
Draft Report referenced by Bloomberg is released by GAO
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-75
http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/687982.pdf
This is what I see.
1. 172 day repair time is for “depot level” repairs only and is caused not by the complexity of the issue, but because they are 6 years behind (original plan?) building the depots.
LM is producing new F-35 too fast, hence 108 aircrafts with a dubious future and others lacking spare parts.
Increased build rates means lower prices.
The spare parts is a budget (or lack thereof) issue. This was primarily driven by Sequestration and the continual use of CRs (Continuing Resolution), pardon the pun.
With a budget this year, this should help. 2015 was the 1st actual budget in 6 years but it was followed by a CR in 2016.
The primary focus has to be building jets, even if you know that you will have parts issues. The reason is that a jet takes 3 years to build and it has to fit into a plan that affects large areas of the force structure (basing, personnel, etc). If you find some money later, it is a lot easier to buy more parts than it is to increase your build rate.
Quite low as compared to many other planes.
Actual, doing an apples to apples (ie MFHBF to MFHBF) comparison, it’s doing quite well.
Case in point, MFHBF (mean Flight Hours Between Failure). All for the last year trended much higher than their predicted values. They are not only exceeding expectations, but they beat 4th/5th gen systems at the same point in their lifetimes. Even above that, they beat these systems at ANY time in their lifetimes.
Still in SDD, the F-35 is doing 3.5x better then the Classic hornet, at least 2.5x better then the F-22, and at least 2.5x better then the Super Hornet.
Doing a little research shows:
~”In the 4 years following its introduction, the F/A-18 {Classic Hornet} had an MFHBF rating of 2.2″ [1]
~”F-22 KPP of MTBM is 3.0 at ‘System Maturity (3.2 actual at the time)'” [2]
~”Objective Super Hornet MFHBF = 2.9, Actual in 2000 = 2.0″ [3]
[1] https://www.ida.org/idamedia/Corporate/Files/Publications/IDA_Documents/CARD/ida-document-p-4330.ashx
[2] https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/_files/F22AssertionsAndFacts.pdf
[3] https://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/10919/ADA393241.pdf?sequence=1
The whole S-200 story is what we call here in the US “Tabloid Journalism” and is only good for emergency toilet paper.
Given that, nobody is concerned that “If this turns out to be true” will ever happen.
This was akin to the “Su-24 crippled an Aegis class cruiser” story.
https://medium.com/dfrlab/russias-fake-electronic-bomb-4ce9dbbc57f8