Special to WorldTribune.com

Tests of the F-35 fifth generation stealth fighter jet in May revealed serious operational deficiencies, according to a Pentagon report.

In another major setback for the $400 billion Joint Strike Fighter project, the report said that the F-35s launched from a U.S. Marine Corps amphibious assault ship were unreliable and failed to carry any weapons.

A recent memo from the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), released in a report by the nonpartisan government watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO) contradicts the Marine Corps’ assessment that its version of the F-35 was combat-ready.

“Aircraft reliability was poor enough that it was difficult for the Marines to keep more than two or three of the six embarked jets in a flyable status on any given day,” the report, drafted in July, said.

According to the report, the six F-35Bs used in the demonstration, referred to by the Marines as Operational Test 1, failed to achieve the number of required flight hours necessary to be declared combat-ready and the DOT&E found the trials, “did not — and could not — demonstrate that Block 2B F-35B is operationally effective or suitable for use in any type of limited combat operation, or that it was ready for real-world operational deployments, given the way the event was structured.”

To qualify as a true operational test with results that would allow the Department of Defense to determine whether or not the F-35B is operationally effective and ready to be deployed, testing would have to be conducted under conditions more representative of real-world operations, the report says.

The report spotlighted artificial advantages present during the USS Wasp trials, such as a relatively empty flight-deck, “non-operationally representative (supply system) workarounds” to support the aircraft’s unreliable logistics system and “significant assistance from embarked contractor personnel” to help with maintenance, the report concludes that the flight tests aboard the Navy ship failed to simulate the realistic combat conditions necessary to show whether or not the F-35B is ready for actual deployment.

“This report indicates exactly what some of us have been warning about all along,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-California, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and a long-time critic of the F-35 program.

“The services are rushing to declare the F-35 ready for combat, ignoring clear readiness issues in order to show that the program is ‘back on track,’ but just saying something doesn’t make it so. The jets currently can’t perform many missions in the real world because of mistakes made throughout the development and procurement process,” she said.

  Another F-35 test said to fail, Joint Strike Fighter, Marine Corps, Report: F-35 failed ‘real-world operational’ tests for deployment, USS Wasp, WorldTribune.com