Biden Adm. Fumbles F-35, Free World’s Fighter, Despite War In Europe

Something inexplicable has happened during the runup to the release of the Biden administration’s proposed 2023 defense budget next week.

Bloomberg News reported on March 16 that the administration’s request for F-35 fighters would be slashed dramatically from what had been expected.

As Bloomberg’s ace Pentagon reporter, Anthony Capaccio, put it in his story, “The Air Force will request 33 F-35As instead of the 48 planned, the Navy will request 13 of its version instead of 26 and the Marine Corps will request 15 rather than 20.”

None of these services has made public statements indicating changes in the program’s production profile were contemplated, so the notion that all three might cut in unison is very unusual.

It is even more unusual that cuts would be proposed in the midst of a European war, as Russian forces rely heavily on air power to wear down Ukraine’s will to fight an invasion.

F-35 is, after all, the Free World’s fighter; with Germany’s decision on March 14 to buy 35 F-35s, every major U.S. ally except France has signaled that it will rely on the fighter for its future air power.

Even neutral democracies, including Finland and Switzerland, have signed up to buy the fighter for their defense, saying it offers the best performance at the lowest price.

As Wikipedia observes on the first page of its lengthy F-35 entry, planned U.S. purchases of the fighter “will represent the bulk of the crewed tactical air power of the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps for several decades.”

So why, while Russia is on the march in Europe and China is steadily growing its military presence in the Pacific, would the Biden administration suddenly cut the planned buy from an average of 80 over the last three years to a mere 61—when the expectation had been for an order of 94?

Having followed the program for 20 years—prime contractor Lockheed Martin is a longtime contributor to my think tank—I can cite chapter and verse on how well F-35 is performing.

The fighter has met all its goals for stealth, the key to future survivability.

It defeats adversary aircraft by a 20-to-1 margin in combat exercises.

It greatly outperforms legacy fighters in air-to-air, air-to-ground, surveillance, jamming and other core missions.

It costs much less to produce than a commercial jetliner.

And it is the most reliable, maintainable tactical aircraft in the joint fleet.

So, there are no problems that would justify cutting now; as the head of the fighter’s joint program office observed several years ago, “F-35 is the most lethal, survivable, connected and interoperable fighter aircraft ever built.”

At the moment, all three variants of F-35 are forward-deployed defending NATO allies in Europe, escorting allied aircraft in the Mediterranean, and protecting U.S. maritime interests near China.

The admiral commanding a naval strike group recently returned from operating F-35s in the South China Sea opined in Defense News on February 14 that based on the unique capabilities of the fighter, his service needs to consider doubling the number of F-35s in each of its sea-based squadrons.

There is nothing in the public record or in the current geopolitical landscape that remotely explains why now is the time to cut back on the Pentagon’s biggest investment in future air dominance.

Reporter Capaccio cites an unnamed source as stating the administration is trying to save money on retrofitting new capabilities into the fleet.

Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners suggests that maybe planners are cutting in the expectation Congress will add back money during its review of the 2023 budget.

But these are not the sort of moves that countries make when military tensions are on the rise around the world—especially tensions fomented by advanced industrial rivals.

Something else is going on here, and until the 2023 budget is released on March 29, we probably aren’t going to learn what the administration’s rationale is for such untimely cuts.

It’s a safe bet that warfighters in all three military services receiving the F-35 didn’t spontaneously line up in support of cuts to their most important tactical aircraft program.

But we will have to wait until at least next week, and maybe until budget hearings, to get some insight into administration thinking on the matter.

At the moment, this looks like a monumental screw-up, the kind of political mis-step that undermines all the positive feelings generated by the administration’s deft handling of Ukraine.

It also looks like the kind of issue that Republicans will jump on to burnish their military credentials as midterm elections loom.

My think tank has received funding from several companies with an interest in the F-35 program, including BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies.