The US Air Force may cut short its planned purchases of F-35 jets, depending on how newer development efforts go, the service\u2019s outgoing secretary said Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur inventory objective for the F-35 is [1,763]. I don’t know what we’ll end up buying, and nobody can predict that right now. I know we’re going to buy more, and we’re going to be buying more for some period of time. At some point, this will be dependent on what we do with [Next Generation Air Dominance] and what we do with [Collaborative Combat Aircraft], we’ll probably revisit that, [but] I don’t think we’re ready to do that yet,\u201d Frank Kendall said during an event at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.<\/p>\n
Kendall emphasized that the F-35 isn\u2019t going away anytime soon, and even if the service decides to build a sixth-generation fighter under the NGAD program, it would be a \u201cvery expensive airplane\u201d that would require at least \u201cseveral years\u201d to field in quantity.<\/p>\n
But the Pentagon does need \u201cbetter performance\u201d out of Lockheed, Kendall said. The company is still reeling from a year-long F-35\u00a0delivery pause\u00a0caused by technology development problems with an upgrade package for the jet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not delivering what they’ve been promising, and they’re not doing as fast as they could by a wide margin,\u201d Kendall said.<\/p>\n
Lockheed and the F-35 program recently reached a\u00a0handshake deal\u00a0on the next two F-35 production lots\u201418 and 19\u2014but that deal might not be finalized until after the new administration takes over. Those jets will be more expensive than previous lots \u201cfor a variety of factors,\u201d Kendall said,\u00a0reiterating\u00a0previous comments from Lockheed officials.<\/p>\n
The incoming Trump administration has announced no plans for the F-35. Elon Musk, key adviser for President-elect Donald Trump and co-leader of an\u00a0effort\u00a0to \u201cincrease government efficiency,\u201d recently tore into the program,\u00a0calling<\/a>\u00a0the jet \u201cobsolete\u201d and a \u201csh*t design.\u201d<\/p>\n Kendall criticized Musk\u2019s comments, noted his lack of military experience, and encouraged him to learn more about the military before he makes \u201cprovocative\u201d comments.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a lot of respect for Elon Musk as an engineer. He’s not a warfighter, and he needs to learn a little bit more about the business I think before he makes such grand announcements, as he did,\u201d Kendall said.<\/p>\n At some point, the military could rely solely on autonomous drones instead of manned fighters, but that\u2019s \u201cdecades\u201d away, Kendall said. Other Air Force leaders have similarly\u00a0pushed back\u00a0on suggestions that the days of crewed aircraft are numbered.<\/p>\n Kendall has just a few weeks left in his tenure as Air Force secretary before the new administration takes the helm. Kendall said he has already met with the Trump\u00a0transition team<\/a>, who reportedly started making their rounds at the Pentagon on Monday.<\/p>\n Trump has yet to announce his pick to replace Kendall. Politico\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0earlier this week that Andrew McKenna, a major Trump donor and head of a small investment and advisory firm, is a top contender. If he gets the nod, McKenna would be one of several\u00a0Trump<\/a>\u00a0picks<\/a>\u00a0for top Pentagon jobs with little DOD experience.<\/p>\n Kendall said his successor\u2014whether that person comes from the national-security community or not\u2014should put themselves in a \u201clearning mode\u201d and heed the advice of professionals in the Pentagon.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it’s somebody who’s coming in who doesn’t know this community as well, my one major piece of advice is listen to the people who’ve been doing it for all their careers, and have a depth of knowledge and learn as much from them as quickly as you can,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US Air Force may cut short its planned purchases of F-35 jets, depending on how newer development efforts go, the service\u2019s outgoing secretary said Thursday. \u201cOur inventory objective for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[319,92],"class_list":["post-1646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-air","tag-f-35","tag-us-air-force"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/F-35.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1646"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1653,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions\/1653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}