The source I shared wasn’t citing an opinion.
J-35A fighter (PLAAF) + FC-31
- Thread starter ACuriousPLAFan
- Start date
The only thing I'll say, is that readiness rates of US 4th gen aircraft has also fallen significantly*. This isn't everything, but I think it's strong evidence that USAF's inability to transition to 5th gen smoothly is tied strongly to institutional decay rather than something inherent to the complexity of 5th gen aircraft.
By contrast, China's capabilities are rising. It is integrating more complex aircraft, more various types of them, all while managing to keep older aircraft in very good shape. At least visually. They've also weather several serious reforms in the last few years. That says a lot.
*Yes, some of that is down to age, budgets, all kinds of contextual factors, but...
Well, I think I made my point sufficiently clear.
The age of American F-35 airframes might affect readiness to some degree, but it ain't the most impactful factor in play, at least per the USG.
According to the on F-35 readiness — or lack thereof — that I previously cited, the F-35 is a hangar queen first and foremost due to:
This is not at all surprising given the embarrassing realities brought forth by decades of US industrial decay, which inevitably impact the DoD's capacity for sourcing spare parts essential to maintaining, repairing and otherwise sustaining its F-35A/B/C fleets.
OTOH, considering where the People's Republic's industrial base currently stands, the PLAAF and PLANAF are almost certainly outperforming their American counterparts in terms of fifth generation fighter readiness, ceteris paribus.
I will say again, that for PAF/pakistan, in my opinion, the counter/establishing status quo/threat arent potential S57s, but the dams canals india is poised to build blocking indus waters..
Recently 2 days ago there was a local conf with many invitees from various governments called just to make this point clear that Pakistan consider this an existential crisis and will fight a war if its not stopped peacefully.
F35 is at like 25% readiness rate, and its not just USAF having this issues, its world over.
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You can find other F35 related stories from other countries having readiness issues,
Why? One of the big reasons Because the main repair / support /maintenance stuff is all handled by select few Lockheed staff, they have to be dispatched to sites and there arent enough of them to handle the needs world over, not even for USAF.
Airforce cant do shit about F35s themselves.
Even if PLAAF readiness rates are at like 50% atleast THEY CAN REPAIR without having to wait for the McDonalds repair guy to arrive 2 weeks later.
that person is a really good source and likely better than declassified congressional reports. So yeah, you should take his statement a little more seriously.
Good source, yes, but caution is nonetheless warranted. In the same breath, he said:
Yet folks here also proudly talk about PLAAF pilots outflying USAF in training hours. Not everything is true for all units and all aircraft at all times; there are nuances involved with F-22 vs F-35 fleets and so forth. But at the end of the day, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
The PLAAF can be flying a lot more in average training hours than the USAF and the F-22 specifically can also be accumulating more average flight hours than the J-20 and F-22 mission readiness rates can also be lower. These are not contradicting conditions. The PLAAF could just be doing more of its tactical employment training through other airframes (there’s probably a decent share of 5th gen tactical training exercises that don’t absolutely need a 5th gen plane), and the USAF could just be putting more hours on F-22 airframes that aren’t at mission ready states (mission ready is not the same condition as flight worthy).
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Yes, that's why I said there are nuances involved. Also note that the conversation was about F-35 readiness rates, not F-22.
I was curious about the point raised here so I did do a search across the world for F-35 readiness:
UK: 33%
Australia: 30%
Japan: 51.5% (in 2024, down from 69% in 2021)
Israel: 90%
I think if Israel's numbers are true then it proves with sufficient priority and preference in resources F-35 can indeed have very high readiness. Perhaps it's even a contributing factor for why the readiness is so low in some other countries.
There might be differences in methodology, no? Different tolerances for what constitutes “readiness.”