{"id":164669,"date":"2026-06-17T14:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T14:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/164669\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T14:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T14:02:07","slug":"us-fighter-jets-face-maintenance-issues-israels-ready-for-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/164669\/","title":{"rendered":"US fighter jets face maintenance issues, Israel’s ready for activity"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a US watchdog report earlier this week said that the American fleet of F-35<\/a> stealth fighters has seen reduced readiness and usability as maintenance issues drag down mission-capable rates, Israeli sources said that their F-35s were faring better.<\/p>\n

Multiple Israeli sources said that the Jewish state’s F-35s have remained more combat-ready than the report detailed for American F-35s, though none were willing to provide specific numbers they would stand behind.<\/p>\n

One source suggested that Israeli maintenance standards may be higher.<\/p>\n

Israel certainly has needed to use its F-35 aircraft more often in recent years than the US has.<\/p>\n

The Lockheed Martin-produced F-35 is the Pentagon<\/a>‘s most expensive weapons system, with the grand total of acquisition and sustainment costs expected to top $2 trillion.<\/p>\n

However, according to a report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), just as aircraft and maintenance costs have risen, persistent problems have limited how often the aircraft<\/a> can fly.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the American military has invested billions of dollars to improve readiness, but these efforts have failed to deliver results.<\/p>\n

The GAO report said that the mission-capable rate for one mission fell from 67% to 44% between 2021 and 2025, while the full mission-capable rate dropped from 38% to 25%.<\/p>\n

Next, the report flagged several problems that contributed to the decline, such as spare-part shortages and software issues.<\/p>\n

Although the Pentagon is trying to reverse the trend by investing $13.7 billion in readiness, the lag time to see a practical impact could be measured in years, and the funds earmarked so far may be insufficient.<\/p>\n

This could perpetuate current problems, such as overreliance on contractors for support, parts capacity constraints, and cost gaps in keeping the F-35 running throughout its life cycle.<\/p>\n

In the past, there have even been instances in which F-35s crashed, leading to the grounding of both Israeli and US F-35s for months.<\/p>\n

However, during Israel’s wars from 2023 to 2026, the F-35 has often been the lead fighter in multiple rounds versus Iran<\/a>, and has also had a key role on other fronts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a US watchdog report earlier this week said that the American fleet of F-35 stealth fighters has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[3763,2092,513,218,37,1045,179,7212],"class_list":["post-164669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-aircraft","tag-f-35","tag-fighter-jets","tag-iran-israel-war","tag-israel","tag-israeli-air-force","tag-military","tag-plane"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116765821962673845","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}