The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program closes out 2025 not with solutions, but with the official certification of a management crisis that has long moved beyond technical issues and has now become a systemic risk. The latest report by the Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG-2026-039), published on December 19, serves as the “forensic evidence” of the warnings we raised last September regarding the program’s lack of predictability and chronic cost overruns.

While the GAO report released in September focused on production bottlenecks and the troubled development of TR-3, this new OIG audit dissects sustainment and exposes an alarming disconnect between public spending and actual operational capability.

GAO: F-35 Modernization Costs and Delays Escalate Sharply

Waiving requirements as standard practice

One of the most critical points highlighted in our September analysis was the emergence of a “ghost fleet”: airframes delivered but not combat-capable. The December 19 report elevates this concern to the contractual level.

The Inspector General (DoD OIG) reveals that the Joint Program Office (JPO) deliberately omitted Full Mission Capability (FMC) and Aircraft Availability (AVA) metrics from the June 2024 sustainment contracts. Instead of penalizing Lockheed Martin for poor operational performance, the JPO chose to dilute contractual requirements. This is not merely an administrative failure; it is a technical capitulation. While the GAO criticized distorted incentives, the OIG confirms that the Department of Defense (now effectively functioning as a Department of War) has disbursed USD 1.7 billion for a service that fails to meet the minimum availability standards required by the Armed Forces.

Operational capabilities under strain

From an operational capability standpoint, the gap between the F-35 and the fourth-generation systems it is meant to replace (F-16, F/A-18, AV-8) is becoming increasingly paradoxical:

  • Information dominance vs. physical availability: The F-35 delivers situational awareness unmatched by any previous platform thanks to data fusion. Yet the December report confirms that this complexity is also its Achilles’ heel. Availability rates are so erratic that technological superiority is effectively neutralized by logistical uncertainty.
  • Mortgaged life cycle: The USD 38 billion increase in life-cycle costs driven by premature wear of the F135 engine is not a theoretical projection but an operational reality. The OIG directly links this increase to the inability to manage spare parts and inventory data.

The “blackout” of technical and logistical data

Senior military leadership understands that a weapons system is only as effective as its supply chain. This is where the most profound difference emerges between the September analysis and the new report:

  • In September, the focus was on 4,000 missing parts at the final assembly stage.
  • In December, the OIG reveals that the government lacks visibility over inventory it has already paid for. Lockheed Martin has failed to integrate these data into the Government-Furnished Property Module.

This opacity creates a critical operational unknown: the Pentagon cannot independently verify which spare parts it owns or where they are located. This places the planned transfer of sustainment responsibilities to the Air Force and Navy in 2027 under an extreme risk of logistical paralysis.

Despite repeated negative reports, Lockheed Martin has delivered more than 1,270 F-35 fighter jets, and counting.
Despite repeated negative reports, Lockheed Martin has delivered more than 1,270 F-35 fighter jets, and counting.

Limitations, risks, and unknowns

The OIG report makes clear that the use of Undefinitized Contract Actions (UCAs)—contracts in which price and terms are agreed months after work has already begun—has become the operational norm. This generates systemic risks across several dimensions:

  • Flight safety: insufficient oversight by Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) at operational bases increases the likelihood that critical quality deficiencies will go undetected.
  • Block 4 degradation: delays to TR-3, combined with a lack of maintenance incentives, suggest that the current fleet could remain stuck in a degraded “interim” configuration for much of this decade.
  • Contractor dependency: without access to technical and inventory data, U.S. Armed Forces lose logistical sovereignty, becoming effectively captive to the original contractor (Lockheed Martin) for any sustained deployment.
British F-35: how poor planning and short-term management undermine technological potential

Can air superiority exist under logistical servitude?

The GAO’s September warning about a collapse in predictability may have arrived too late. The December report confirms that the collapse has already occurred and that the Department of Defense is now operating under a state of contractual exception. This maneuver appears designed to mask strategic weakness while maintaining—at any cost—the pace of replacing fourth-generation platforms. It amounts to doubling down: accepting as many incomplete airframes as possible in the hope that structural failures will be resolved later.

Under these conditions, the question is no longer when the F-35 program will stabilize. The real uncertainty is when customers—particularly European partners—will receive airframes meeting the definitive Block 4 standard, and whether they will ever gain genuine logistical control over the system. Without a deep reform that restores accountability, recovers inventory visibility, and reasserts government authority over contracts, the F-35 risks becoming a monument to inefficiency.

The outcome would be as paradoxical as it is dangerous: NATO’s most advanced fighter, designed to dominate 21st-century airspace, could find itself unable to translate technological weight into combat power—its airframes left idle, gathering dust at rear bases.