Lockheed Martin’s (LMT) F-35 fighter jets have risen in sustainment costs, about 44% to $1.58 trillion in 2023 from $1.1 trillion in 2018, the US Government Accountability Office said in a report Monday.
Despite the increase in projected costs, the US Department of Defense plans to use less of the jets due to reliability issues and the fleet’s overall availability, which has “trended downward considerably” over the past five years, the report said.
The DOD currently has about 630 F-35s in its fleet and plans to buy another 2,500 by the mid-2040s.
The GAO said it had made 43 recommendations to the DOD since 2014 to improve the fleet’s operation and sustainment, but an overwhelming majority of them were yet to be implemented. The recommendations include improving the F-35 program’s management of spare parts and reassessing government and contractor responsibility for different aspects of the fleet.