The low MC rate is driven 90% of the time by its LO signature requirements which aren't much of an issue when just doing continuation sorties stateside. In a deployed environment it won't be an issue because it's just a matter of staying on top of the maintenance.

When you take aircraft into war, it's actually much less work to maintain them, because you're actually flying them LESS than when you're at home station. Fuckin' Bagram was like a vacation.

Back in the Block 1B/2A days the jet was a nightmare but it was basically supposed to be at that point. By the time 3F rolled around, nearly all the problems had been fixed. We'd land them on the regular with vastly fewer issues than even the best legacy fighter.

What most people don't understand is that fighter aircraft, now, speaking F-15Es, F-16s, F/A-18s, they fucking break almost every single flight. Every single one. Getting a Code-1 lander is a miracle. So when we land a 10-line go and we only get two Code-2 writeups and some nuisance faults it's a pretty fantastic thing.

There's actually two problems with the F-35 that nobody reports on because nobody doing reporting knows anything.

1. The aircraft isn't very maintenance friendly, and it's pretty much a massive pain in the prostate to do what seems like some basic-ass shit.

2. Sometimes the breaks are hard breaks and it's going to be seriously fucked for days, if not weeks, especially if you have fiber problems in the ICP rack. Ugh.

The low MC rate is driven 90% of the time by its LO signature requirements which aren't much of an issue when just doing continuation sorties stateside. In a deployed environment it won't be an issue because it's just a matter of staying on top of the maintenance.

When you take aircraft into war, it's actually much less work to maintain them, because you're actually flying them LESS than when you're at home station. Fuckin' Bagram was like a vacation.