Big surprise in the F-35B deployment to the USS Wasp and it isn't about the jet

Failure in leadership. When reading the report below of the last F-35B deployment to the USS Wasp you may conclude that this show has little to do with combat capability. While it may be about the F-35B, it is also about a shocking lack of prep work for the deployment. In the USAF I have seen B-52 Wing Commanders fired for less.

Let us look at the problems.

The aircraft were unreliable. There wasn't much "operational" about the whole thing. Given the program history, I expected that.

Nearly 14 years after the F-35 was selected to be the Joint Strike Fighter, for this very important event, the USS Wasp had poor voice and network communications with the "combat" aircraft.

Even the mission planning and post mission debrief was a joke. Who was in charge of having all of this gear available? Dual entry of mission details? A dinky F-35 pilot cell area. A day to download mission data. Get this...lack of white boards.

The prep work for ship-board maintenance was a joke too. Lack of proper, working, power conversion connections. Lack of various deck equipment needed to support the aircraft type. Who was in charge of getting maintenance prep work for this very important deployment?

No credible demonstration of low-observable repair.

There was a press day. However the press were "journalists" in name only as it took the this report to get anything resembling a true status of this fraud by trick or device.

While I am a huge critic of this program, I am very disappointed by the planning for this event. The low quality of planning for this event could only have contributed to the (expected) low aircraft availability rates.

It is just bad staff work at the squadron and higher headquarters level. This is bread and butter stuff we expect senior leaders to sort out. Given the complexity of another aicraft...you could probably have gotten better planning out of this event if MV-22 guys were in charge.

We can look at this failed F-35 aircraft design but I am really disappointed in the lack of attention to detail for this deployment to the USS Wasp. Given what I read, I don't care what the aircraft type is, the leadership and management for this event was substandard.

I suggest printing out the whole report, budget the time to read it somewhere and scribble notes onto the printout to collect your thoughts. If you are a current or former senior aviation officer, I think you may agree that some senior people need to be replaced. I would not want them planning for deployments for any other aircraft type. This unfortunately leads all the way up to flag rank.




Additional reading.