F-35 leading USAF Fighter MCR rates.

Hello everybody, saw abovementioned information from Mr.Spazsinbad about 70+% capable rate, but after found GAO report and figures a "little bit" worse(0-40%). Can somebody explain this huge difference

It's apparently because the GAO looked whether they achieved 80% readiness. So if some types never passed that mark, they could've gotten 0/9.
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/11/air ... worse-gao/

There's no definitive way of measuring readiness.
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/ ... ds/173411/

Overusing the fleets (navy and air force) is likely the biggest reason for shortfalls. Too many deployments/surges, not enough downtime for personnel and machine maintenance. For F-35 it's not possible yet, so there the reasons seem to be buying too many (the procurement money doesn't cover the maintenance build-up so the politicians adding extra planes to the orders taxes the maintenance).

Nov ‘20 report on years 2011-2019?

Hello everybody, saw abovementioned information from Mr.Spazsinbad about 70+% capable rate, but after found GAO report and figures a "little bit" worse(0-40%). Can somebody explain this huge difference

The difference is that he's using current data, and not data from 2011-2019.

Fighter Mission Capable Rates Fell in 2021
22 Nov 2021 John A. Tirpak

"Mission capable rates dropped in 2021 for every Air Force fighter type except the A-10, reversing progress in 2020, according to data released to Air Force Magazine.

“Mission capable” rates are a common measure of readiness and relate to an aircraft’s ability to perform at least one of its core missions; for example, the multirole F-16 is tasked for air-to-air combat, ground attack, or suppression of enemy air defenses. By contrast, “full mission capable” refers to an aircraft that is ready to perform all of its assigned missions. Full mission capable rates were not provided.

The Air Force aims for MC rates between 75 percent and 80 percent on most aircraft, but none stood at that level as fiscal 2021 ended.

The declines are noteworthy even though the Air Force has sought to de-emphasize the rates and instead focus on unit readiness as a more accurate way to evaluate combat capability. Also noteworthy is that 2020’s gains were achieved at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when greater restrictions were placed on the physical proximity of workers in backshops and depots.

The F-35A rate declined from 76.07 percent to 68.8 percent from 2020 to 2021 as an increasing number of F-35s came due for their first big engine overhauls. A shortage of engines has grounded about 40 F-35As over the past year, a level that the F-35 Joint Program Office predicts could hold for several years.

Still, the F-35A mission capable rate remained above that of 2019, when it was just 61.6 percent.

With operating costs disappointingly high, the Air Force has throttled back on new F-35A purchases until the more capable Block 4 version is ready and operating costs can be brought down to a more sustainable level. Congress has gone along, with members recognizing that adding airframes has only exacerbated a shortage of parts and made it harder to achieve objective mission capable rates....

...When Jim Mattis was Defense Secretary early in the Trump administration, he ordered the Air Force and Navy to raise MC rates for fighter aircraft to 80 percent. The Air Force never achieved that goal, saying at the time that MC rates were not a meaningful indicator of overall readiness for war. A frontline deployed unit typically is close to 100 percent mission capable because parts are prioritized for such units, while squadrons recently returned from deployments can see MC rates decline rapidly."

Source: https://www.airforcemag.com/fighter-mis ... l-in-2021/

Back to the average rates for US Fighters........

Data provided by the Heritage Foundation.
Is the F-35 superior? (I do not know how to read this table. )
https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/ ... R_USAF.pdf

Is it achievable?
https://www.defensedaily.com/f-35-susta ... air-force/

F-35 Sustainment Contract To Pay Bonuses for Improved MC Rates
By Frank Wolfe |03/09/2022
Lockheed Martin [LMT] is to receive incentive bonuses on its sustainment contract for the F-35 fighter by achieving an “up to” 75 percent mission capable (MC) rate for the U.S. Air Force F-35A and a 61 percent MC rate by fiscal 2023 for the U.S. Marine Corps F-35B and U.S. Navy F-35C, ...

GAO ver
https://www.gao.gov/assets/720/713906.pdf

CBO ver
F-35ABC https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57966
PDF ver https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-04/57842-F35.pdf
F-15CD, F-16CD, F/A-18CD, F/A-18EF https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57713

Availability and Use of F-35 Fighter Aircraft
April 2022
At a Glance
Complementing earlier research by the Congressional Budget Office, this report examines the availability and use of the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) F-35 fighter aircraft. The F-35 has three variants: the F-35A, operated by the Air Force; the F-35B, operated by the Marine Corps; and the F-35C, operated by both the Navy and the Marine Corps.

CBO’s key findings are as follows:
･Growing Fleets. DoD currently operates about 450 F-35 aircraft and plans to operate about 2,500 of them by the mid-2040s. F-35s began operating in 2011.
･Aircraft Availability. The availability of F-35As and F-35Cs declined from 2015 to 2018 but increased in 2019 and 2020. (Availability is measured as the percentage of time an aircraft can be flown in training or on missions.) The availability of F-35Bs has been generally increasing since the aircraft began operating in 2012. In 2021, the availability rates of all three fleets of F-35s were higher than those of most of DoD’s other fighters. The F-35 fleets are much newer than most other fighters, and newer fleets typically have higher availability rates than older ones.
･Depot-Level Maintenance. Many of the oldest F-35s have spent long periods—totaling a year or more—undergoing depot-level maintenance (that is, in-depth maintenance beyond the capability of personnel where the aircraft operate), in part because DoD had to upgrade the earliest aircraft to updated operational standards. Newer F-35s may not require as much time undergoing depot-level maintenance, because they received the upgrades when they were manufactured.
･Annual Flying Hours. Total annual flying hours for each fleet of F-35s have generally increased along with fleet sizes. In recent years, F-35Cs have flown more hours per aircraft than have F-35As and F-35Bs. To date, all three fleets have flown fewer hours per aircraft per year than the average annual number of hours (over the service life of the fleet) anticipated in DoD’s plans.
･Lifetime Flying Hours. All three fleets of F-35s are a mix of new aircraft with few flying hours and aircraft with more than 1,000 lifetime flying hours.
･The Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Although other types of DoD’s aircraft experienced increased availability and decreased flying hours during the initial months of the pandemic, there has been no consistent change in either measure for the F-35 fleets since the pandemic began.

Shockingly, the CBO study found that the F-35 currently had the highest Availability Rates of All U.S. Fighter/Attack Aircraft. (!?) (Ooooh My Goooooooood........................ )
But, We must cut back on that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GAO ver 2019-2020-2021.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105995
https://www.gao.gov/assets/730/720260.pdf