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The Devil is in the Details for the F-35

Posted: April 30th, 2019

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.  He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.  

OPINION — While the media and Congress have kept the public focused on the Mueller report and the next election, there are national security budgetary issues that are piling up that require attention.

For example, a lack of spare parts has kept some 350 F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighters, already deployed at sites worldwide, from flying or conducting any of their tasked missions, 30 percent of the time, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last Thursday.

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