F-35 is the biggest money sinkhole ever
GAO says despite hundreds of millions in incentive fees, Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney delivered planes late for years
Stavroula Pabst
Sep 09, 2025
“The latest GAO report underscores once again that the F-35 is not now, and will never be, fully ready for combat,” William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told RS. “The program, which was touted at the outset as representing a ‘revolution in military procurement,’ was doomed from day one because its variants were meant to carry out a huge range of potential missions. It has done none of them well.”
To Hartung’s point, the GAO found in 2023 that the F-35 was only mission capable slightly over half the time.
“It’s time for the Pentagon to cut its losses and phase out the program now, before we waste billions of additional taxpayer dollars on a flawed plane that spends almost half its time in the hangar getting repaired,” Hartung told RS.
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