Planned purchases of the Air Force model would increase from 38 jets next year to 42 in fiscal 2028, 46 in 2029 and 48 in both 2030 and 2031, according to projections released Friday.
Navy and Marine Corps purchases would see an increase to 47 jets next year from this year’s 23. The Navy and Marine Corps plan to purchase 43 in 2028 and 38 or fewer each year from 2029 to 2031.
In 2024, he called the F-35 “an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none.”
The planned F-35 purchases would be good news for Lockheed, the No. 1 US defense contractor, with the total number of F-35s requested up to 85 jets from the 47 Congress approved for this year.
That comes even though the Government Accountability Office has said that the warplane’s readiness rate — the amount of time it is seen as usable for missions — is below standard. Efforts to upgrade the jets’ software have also stalled.
