DOT&E’s report shows that the current IOC plans for the F-35A and F-35B should be rejected as unrealistic. Without meaningful oversight from the Department of Defense or Congress, however, these IOC declarations will go unchallenged.

The F-35 program is designed so that there is no requirement to prove its combat capability before approving an annual production rate of 57 aircraft, a rate unprecedented for any fighter with so little operational testing accomplished and so many unresolved problems.

Further production of the F-35 at this point, let alone an increase in already high and unwarranted production rates, is unsupported by the DOT&E data. But that data is being ignored to continue funding a politically driven acquisition program.

The F-35’s unrealistic production and IOC schedule is divorcing the declaration of initial operating capability from operational reality.

Deferring combat capabilities, increasing future costs, and increasing the risk of delivering seriously deficient combat effectiveness mandates revising the current schedules for IOC and for production ramp-up.

Further accelerating a program with this many major design, safety, and reliability problems is a disservice to our people in uniform who have to fly, maintain, and go to war with this weapons system.

Despite Congress’s rhetoric regarding reform and accountability, they are rewarding the cooking of data, reckless program concurrency, and disastrous acquisition management by approving and funding the F-35’s current path. Their accession and approval will ensure that future acquisition programs have even worse outcomes.

Read POGO’s full analysis of the DOT&E report here.

Mandy Smithberger is the director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight, where this article originally appeared.