[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1549 Introduced in House (IH)]
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118th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 1549
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on contract
breaches and other failures under the F-35 aircraft program.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
October 22, 2024
Mr. Gaetz (for himself and Mr. Moulton) submitted the following
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on contract
breaches and other failures under the F-35 aircraft program.
Whereas the Department of Defense started the F-35 program in 2001 to develop a
fifth-generation fighter aircraft intended to replace a range of aging
aircraft in the United States military services' inventories;
Whereas the F-35 Lightning II aircraft is the Department of Defense's most
expensive weapon system, with the Department estimating the F-35 program
will cost over $2,000,000,000,000 to buy, operate, and sustain over its
lifetime;
Whereas the F-35 program is more than a decade delayed and has cost
$209,000,000,000 more than originally planned;
Whereas the F-35 program resulted in a Nunn-McCurdy breach in March 2010 after
the unit cost of each aircraft grew by more than 50 percent over the
original program baseline;
Whereas the F-35 program has revised its baseline schedule four times since 2012
due to delays in development;
Whereas the Department of Defense currently estimates the Air Force will pay
$6,600,000 annually to operate and sustain each individual aircraft,
which is well above the $4,100,000 original target, and the Air Force
increased the amount of money it can afford to spend per F-35 aircraft
to $6,800,000 per year;
Whereas despite increasing projected costs, no F-35 variant met its performance
goals from fiscal years 2019 through 2023 for mission capable rates, the
percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions,
or for full mission capable rates, the percentage of time during which
the aircraft can perform all tasked missions;
Whereas the monthly average readiness rates for the United States F-35 fleet is
53.1 percent mission capable and only 29.3 percent full mission capable,
far below the Department of Defense target of 90 percent mission
capability for the F-35A and 85 percent for the F-35B and C;
Whereas the Department of Defense has consistently failed to invest in adequate
depot capacity, which contributes up to a 10-percent reduction in the F-
35's mission capable rate;
Whereas the Department of Defense sends 73 percent of all F-35 aircraft parts
back to industry sources for repairs due to lack of depot capacity,
despite depot repairs being twice as fast;
Whereas the F-35 Joint Program Office reported in 2023 that the F-35 fleet would
fly 300,524 hours per year, which is a reduction of almost 82,000 flight
hours per year or 21 percent from its 2020 Annual Cost Estimate because
it is too costly for the services to operate;
Whereas Pratt & Whitney, subcontracted to produce the engine for the aircraft,
did not deliver any engines on time in 2023, with an average delay of
more than 2 months, and delivered 97 percent of the engines late in 2022
and 96 percent of the engines late in 2021;
Whereas the F-35 engine needs to be overhauled more often than originally
anticipated, from approximately every 2,000 flight hours to every 1,600
flight hours, because the current system does not have enough power or
cooling capabilities to support both current and future capabilities;
Whereas Lockheed Martin, the prime aircraft contractor, delivered 91 percent of
aircraft late in 2023 and 50 percent of aircraft late in 2022;
Whereas Lockheed Martin is not meeting its goals for the number of hours its
workforce spends on scrap, rework, and repair, which occur when
production defects result in additional work to fix the defect;
Whereas hardware and software delays associated with the Technology Refresh 3
(TR-3) upgrades resulted in the Department of Defense refusing to accept
delivery of aircraft from July 2023 through July 2024, until Lockheed
Martin was able to deliver a minimally acceptable TR-3 configured
aircraft;
Whereas, despite the year-long delay, the TR-3 configured aircraft are not
combat capable and can only conduct training missions until Lockheed
Martin delivers the full TR-3 capability, which is currently estimated
to take 12 to 16 months;
Whereas the TR-3 delays have also subsequently delayed the Block 4 modernization
effort for the F-35 aircraft, which is necessary to address new threats
that have emerged since the Department of Defense established the
aircraft's original requirements in 2000; and
Whereas, in February 2021, General CQ Brown acknowledged the serious issues with
the F-35 program and said the Air Force needed to explore new and more
cost-effective measures by ``not ruling out starting from scratch. I
want to be able to build something new and different, that's not the F-
16'': Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives
that--
(1) Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors' inability to
deliver F-35 aircraft with modernized capabilities on time and
within projected costs have degraded our military's
capabilities and raised the risks for our warfighters;
(2) Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors are in breach of
contract with respect to the deliverables on the F-35 aircraft
contract; and
(3) the Department of Defense has failed to adequately hold
itself and Lockheed Martin accountable for the numerous
failures within the F-35 aircraft program.
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