Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Mike Fredenburg
“Are the military services babying the F-35 to obscure its true costs while continuing to get enormous sums of taxpayer funding for a plane that has consistently failed to live up to performance expectations? From the very beginning, the F-35 program has been plagued by hundreds of billions of dollars in cost overruns and repeated schedule delays. Moreover, even as promised capabilities have been delayed by well over a decade, billions poured into fixes haven’t resolved ongoing reliability issues, crippling its operational effectiveness, and rocketing the program cost to over $2 trillion dollars — 400% more in inflation-adjusted dollars than its 2007 Government Accountability Office estimate.” (01/23/26)