{"id":69898,"date":"2025-03-06T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2025\/03\/06\/air-force-aircraft-readiness-plunges-to-new-low-alarming-chief\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:20:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:20:24","slug":"air-force-aircraft-readiness-plunges-to-new-low-alarming-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/air\/2025\/03\/06\/air-force-aircraft-readiness-plunges-to-new-low-alarming-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force aircraft readiness plunges to new low, alarming chief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AURORA, Colo. \u2014 Barely more than six in 10 aircraft in the Air Force\u2019s fleet were able to carry out their missions on an average day<\/a> in fiscal 2024, according to a Defense News analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fleet-wide mission capable rate of 62% is the lowest in recent memory. It comes as the Air Force\u2019s arsenal of more than 5,000 planes is aging and the service finds it increasingly difficult to keep some in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Air Force provided statistics on how many of each kind of aircraft it had in 2024, as well as the percentage of time each aircraft was ready to carry out its mission<\/a>. Those stats were first reported by Air and Space Forces Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To come up with a fleet-wide mission-capable rate, Defense News calculated a weighted average of all airframes. Using a weighted average places more emphasis on airframes that the service has more of \u2014 such as the C-17 Globemaster, F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter \u2014 and less emphasis on rarer airframes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the Air Force\u2019s fleet at 5,025 \u2014 the smallest in the service\u2019s 78-year history<\/a> \u2014 a 62% mission-capable rate equates to roughly 1,900 planes being out of commission at any given time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heather Penney, a former F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the figures are concerning, and suggest the situation is likely getting even worse this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReadiness is often a lagging indicator,\u201d Penney said. \u201cAnd those aren\u2019t even today\u2019s MC rates,\u201d which she predicted will be even worse when 2025 is done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Air Force, along with other services, has for years struggled to pull up its mission-capable rates<\/a>. President Donald Trump\u2019s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, in 2018 set an ambitious goal of 80% readiness<\/a> for F-16s, F-22s and F-35s \u2014 which went unmet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And judging by a similar metric \u2014 aircraft availability \u2014 the true state of the fleet may even be worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a 2019 paper by analysts<\/a> at the Air Force Institute of Technology and Air Force Materiel Command, mission-capable rates do not consider aircraft that are awaiting depot maintenance or are otherwise not possessed at the unit level. Those analysts said aircraft availability rates are a truer measure of how the Air Force\u2019s planes are doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his Monday keynote address to the Air and Space Force Association\u2019s AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin used that aircraft availability statistic to sound perhaps the strongest alarm yet about the state of the service\u2019s fleet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin sounded an alarm about declining readiness in the service’s aging fleet at the Air and Space Forces Association’s AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, on Monday. (Staff Sgt. Adam Shanks\/Air Force)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Allvin displayed a chart showing the increasing trouble facing the Air Force\u2019s planes. The chart tracked a steady growth of the average aircraft age in the fleet \u2014 from about 17 in 1994 to nearly 32 in 2024 \u2014 while aircraft availability plummeted from 73% to 54%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allvin praised the service\u2019s maintainers, who work long hours in tough conditions to keep their planes flying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t know this on the front lines,\u201d Allvin said of the growing availability problems, \u201cbecause of the miracles that are going on from our maintainers and those who are sustaining [airplanes]. \u2026 We\u2019re eating into whatever margin we had.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have proclaimed a focus on improving the military\u2019s \u201clethality,\u201d firing top brass<\/a> they perceive to be standing in the way<\/a>. Fresh budget cuts to the Defense Department have had the services clamoring to be spared from measures that would bring down readiness rates further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this environment, Penney said, poor aircraft readiness rates make top Air Force leaders vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more worrying to Penney is that there\u2019s no simple way to turn the situation around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s complex, because it\u2019s spares, maintenance manpower, maintenance experience levels [and] depots, which are so behind right now,\u201d Penney said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Tired iron,\u2019 even more exhausted<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The Air Force\u2019s current predicament, as Penney sees it, is largely due to the lack of enough major aircraft modernizations. Much of the Air Force\u2019s fleet was around during the Cold War, and there are several air frames \u2014 such as the B-52 Stratofortress, C-5 Galaxy and KC-135 Stratotanker \u2014 that were around during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Air Force officials commonly refer to such planes as \u201ctired iron,\u201d and quip that they \u201cfind new and interesting ways to break.\u201d Without enough modernizations to replace those planes with new airframes, the service is forced to sustain them longer and longer, trying to scrounge up spare parts to fix them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of the Air Force\u2019s 76 B-52Hs, which have been flying since the early 1960s, some companies that originally made spare parts are no longer in business. This often forces the service to find new sources for those parts, custom make the parts itself, or \u201ccannibalize\u201d parts from other Stratofortresses<\/a> that are even more broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The situation results in a slow and steady decline in the B-52\u2032s availability. In 2021, the bomber had a 59% mission-capable rate, but that has now slid to 54%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The overall numbers show a swift decline in aircraft readiness over the last few years, driven by some of the service\u2019s most crucial airframes, such as the F-35A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Air Force\u2019s overall mission-capable rate was nearly 78% in 2012, but steadily slid as the decade progressed to a then-low of slightly below 70% in 2018. Two years later, that fleet-wide figure had risen to 72.7%, and then dropped to 71.5% in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lockheed Martin-made F-35A \u2014 the cornerstone of the service\u2019s fighter fleet and one of the most expensive military programs in history \u2014 has been plagued with reliability and availability issues<\/a>. In 2021, the fighter was available nearly 69% of the time, according to the Air Force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the F-35A\u2019s mission capable rates have since plunged, and the jet was ready 51.5% of the time in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Joint Strike Fighter\u2019s lagging availability has become such a problem that its program executive officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, in 2023 announced a \u201cwar on readiness\u201d that seeks to improve how often the F-35 can fly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Government Accountability Office in 2023 released a report on the entire F-35 fleet\u2019s maintenance challenges, which said services lacked spare parts and technical data needed to repair the fighters. Maintainers were also not properly trained, GAO said, and an effort to expand repair depots was falling behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
To replenish spare parts stocks, sometimes airmen like aircraft metals technician Senior Airman Sean Consolazio, of the 60th Maintenance Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., make replacement parts from scratch. (Kenneth Abbate\/Air Force)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Chauncey McIntosh, a Lockheed vice president and general manager of the company\u2019s F-35 program, said in an interview at AFA that he is focused on improving the jet\u2019s mission readiness, and is working with the F-35 Joint Program Office to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most parts in the F-35 are lasting longer than expected, McIntosh said, and the company is focused on improving those parts that are less reliable, which the program refers to as \u201cdegraders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been able to drive down those top degraders, and there\u2019s only really a few left that we\u2019re focused on now,\u201d McIntosh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next major issue to tackle, he said, will be to ensure that repair depots have all the spare parts they need to fix F-35s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs we get the right parts, and get the right [funding from Congress for them], then we\u2019ll be able to go procure those parts, put those parts on the shelf,\u201d McIntosh said. \u201cThis is a growing fleet, so we need to make sure that the [spare parts inventory] keeps up with the fleet size \u2014 for not only the U.S., but all of our international partners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readiness drops across the fleet<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Other key airframes that dropped precipitously in recent years include the A-10 Warthog, the CV-22 Osprey, the F-16 fighter, the KC-46 Pegasus tanker and the T-38C Talon jet trainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n