The military aircraft billed as America’s latest and greatest fighter jet, the F-35, has been recalled globally to fix an engine problem that led to the grounding of some planes and the halting of new deliveries.

The Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) ordered the fix earlier this week, calling for all of the jets to be retrofitted within 90 days.

• The order applies to all of the nearly 900 F-35s that defense contractor Lockheed Martin has delivered worldwide, including those that have been grounded since a December 15 crash at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in Texas.

An investigation found that engine vibration led to the crash, in which a hovering F-35 that was landing vertically suddenly bounced upward before lurching forward and skidding around on its nose and right wing.

• That incident involved the F-35B Lightning II variant of the fighter jet, which is used by the US Marine Corps.

Lockheed responded by suspending acceptance flights for new F-35s, which are required before the aircraft can be delivered to customers. The Pentagon and the maker of the F-35’s propulsion system, Pratt & Whitney, stopped engine deliveries later in December.

Investigators reportedly traced the problem to engine vibration, which the JPO said occurred rarely and was thought to be an issue in recently built F-35s.

A Pratt & Whitney executive told reporters earlier this week that engineers had developed an “immediate resolution” for the problem and that “some jets” would need to be retrofitted, Breaking Defense reported.

• However, the JPO order applies to all F-35s, including those supplied to foreign militaries. The US has sold F-35s to such countries as Israel, Japan and the UK.

Some US lawmakers have estimated that it will cost $1.3 trillion to sustain the nation’s F-35 fleet, partly because of poor reliability.

• According to one estimate, only 30% of the jets, on average, are capable of performing all of their assigned tasks at any point in time. US Representative Adam Smith, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, has called the F-35 program a “rathole.”

The F-35 is far from alone in its troubles.

• Only four of the 49 types of US military aircraft were reliable enough to meet their “mission capable goals” in most of the years between 2011 and 2021, according to a government report issued in November.

Source: RT