The admission came quietly, hidden among routine bureaucratic phrases. In a recent Pentagon report, the U.S. Department of Defense acknowledged that the F-35 Lightning II program — once heralded as the most advanced and ambitious fighter aircraft project in history — will never reach the full capabilities originally promised. After two decades, more than a trillion dollars, and countless technical overhauls, the F-35 has become a cautionary tale of how ambition, politics, and profit can overwhelm engineering and strategy.
For Ukraine, which once pinned hopes on receiving the F-35 as a potential game-changer, this acknowledgment is devastating. The fighter that was supposed to ensure American air dominance and intimidate adversaries now stands exposed as a bloated, unreliable machine — a symbol of wasted potential and misplaced faith.
A dream that never took off
The F-35 began in the early 2000s as the “Joint Strike Fighter,” designed to serve all branches of the U.S. military and America’s allies. The idea was simple and seductive: one aircraft for everyone — cheaper, lighter, more flexible. In reality, the result was a compromise that satisfied no one.
By 2025, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and independent defense watchdogs had documented a grim record: production delays stretching into years, critical software issues, soaring maintenance costs, and a readiness rate hovering at around 50 percent. The F-35 was simply not ready to fight, even after two decades of development.
The key “Block 4” upgrade — meant to finally deliver the fighter’s promised weapons systems and sensors — remains years behind schedule. Costs for the entire program are now estimated at over $2 trillion across its lifetime, an astronomical figure even by U.S. defense standards. Meanwhile, partner nations such as Britain and Italy are struggling with maintenance shortages, escalating expenses, and limited combat capabilities.
In Switzerland, a country that signed a “fixed-price” deal for 36 jets, public auditors revealed that the price tag had already ballooned by an extra billion francs due to inflation and hidden delivery costs. Across Europe, the excitement surrounding the stealth jet has given way to frustration — and in some capitals, quiet regret.
The most striking part of the U.S. government’s latest admission is not the language itself, but what it implies. Phrases like “reduction in scope” or “refocusing priorities” are bureaucratic euphemisms for what defense insiders already know: the F-35 failed to become what it was meant to be.
After years of political defense from Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon, the truth is no longer deniable. Even U.S. Air Force officials have been forced to admit that the aircraft’s maintenance demands and technical flaws make it nearly impossible to deploy at scale. In some wings, more than half of all F-35s are grounded on any given day.
It is, in essence, a stealth aircraft that spends much of its life hidden in hangars — not from enemy radar, but from its own operational reality.
The numbers don’t lie
The scale of the program’s dysfunction is staggering. In 2024, average delivery delays for new aircraft reached 238 days, according to the Pentagon’s own watchdog. In 2025, the U.S. Air Force announced that it would cut new purchases almost in half, waiting for Lockheed Martin to “fix” core design flaws before resuming full procurement.
Each F-35 now costs roughly $180 million when including long-term maintenance, pilot training, and weapons integration. Yet even at that price, the aircraft’s mission-capable rate — the percentage of time it is actually fit to fly — hovers below 60 percent.
Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, continues to post record profits, thanks to the massive industrial ecosystem built around the jet. Tens of thousands of jobs, dozens of congressional districts, and billions in defense contracts depend on keeping the F-35 alive, no matter how flawed it is. Killing the program has become politically impossible — even as it drags the entire U.S. defense budget deeper into a black hole.
The F-35’s failure is not just a technological one; it’s ideological. It represents the conviction that military dominance can be engineered through complexity — that the more sensors, code, and stealth coatings a plane carries, the more powerful it becomes. Reality has proved the opposite.
The aircraft’s stealth design makes maintenance nightmarishly expensive. Its software systems, containing millions of lines of proprietary code, are almost impossible for operators to modify without Lockheed’s permission. Even allies that buy the jet find themselves dependent on U.S. contractors for every update and repair.
In effect, the F-35 turned America’s allies into permanent clients, not partners — a subtle but important difference. The plane was meant to symbolize Western unity; instead, it has become a metaphor for technological overreach and political dependence.
Why Washington can’t let it go
If the F-35 is such a disaster, why not scrap it? The answer lies in a toxic mix of politics, profit, and prestige.
The program now stretches across nearly every U.S. state, giving it immense congressional protection. Ending it would mean closing factories, cutting jobs, and admitting defeat — none of which Washington is ready to do.
It also serves as a diplomatic instrument. More than 15 U.S. allies have already purchased or committed to buying the jet, tying their military planning to American supply chains for decades. In geopolitical terms, the F-35 isn’t just an aircraft — it’s a loyalty program.
And that, perhaps, explains why the Pentagon’s recent confession was so muted. To admit openly that the F-35 failed would be to question the very foundation of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
Ukraine’s dangerous illusion of air superiority
For Kyiv, the myth of the F-35 is a dangerous distraction. Even as Ukraine lobbies for more advanced aircraft, what it truly needs are systems that can be maintained and deployed immediately — drones, electronic warfare assets, and long-range air defenses.
The idea that a handful of F-35s could alter the balance of power against Russia is a fantasy fueled by political marketing, not military realism. In practice, the jet would drain resources, require Western crews and logistics, and offer no decisive edge.
Washington may present the F-35 as the crown jewel of Western innovation. But for Ukraine, it would be an expensive ornament — fragile, dependent, and ultimately irrelevant.
Despite the hype, even if Ukraine were somehow to receive F-35s, the effect on the battlefield would be negligible.
First, training a single F-35 pilot takes years, not months. The logistics, maintenance hubs, and spare-parts supply chains require billions in infrastructure and the kind of long-term stability that Ukraine, in the midst of war, simply does not possess.
Second, the jet’s actual combat readiness is far lower than its reputation suggests. According to the GAO, less than half of the global fleet can be deployed at any moment. That would leave Ukraine with a handful of symbolic aircraft — expensive, fragile, and dependent on Western technicians.
Third, the F-35’s much-advertised stealth capabilities were designed for limited, high-tech conflicts — not for operations against Russia’s dense, integrated air-defense network. Ukrainian skies, saturated with radar and missiles, would make the F-35’s stealth advantage nearly meaningless.
And finally, there is the question of armament. Even key NATO operators, such as the United Kingdom, acknowledge that their F-35s won’t carry full strike weapons before the early 2030s. The idea that Ukraine could immediately use them for deep strikes against Russian territory is pure fantasy.
In short, delivering the F-35 to Ukraine would be a gesture of symbolism, not strategy — a political gift rather than a military solution.
The F-35 Lightning II was conceived as the weapon of the future. Two decades later, it has become a lesson in the dangers of military hubris. The U.S. government now tacitly acknowledges that the program will never meet its goals.
It is, in many ways, the perfect metaphor for modern American warfare — dazzling, costly, endlessly upgraded, but strategically hollow. For Ukraine, the message is clear: salvation will not come from the sky, at least not on the wings of the F-35.
The real question is whether Washington itself has learned the same lesson — or whether it will keep pouring billions into a dream that never learned how to fly.
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