Deep Cuts to U.S. Air Force F-35 Procurements Are Increasingly Inevitable

The U.S. Air Force has been confirmed to have received its 500th F-35A fifth generation fighter in July, marking the first time a single service fields stealth aircraft in such numbers. The F-35 is one of just four fifth generation fighters in production today, alongside the Chinese J-20 and J-35 and the Russian Su-57, making it the only NATO compatible fighter of its generation available for countries in the Western world and their strategic partners. The fighter’s production scale currently accounts for close to half of all fighter production in the Western world, with orders having been placed to equip over 20 services including the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The U.S. Air Force has been by far the largest client for the F-35, and has made procurements at rates of approximately 48 per year, although this is set to be cut to just 24 in Fiscal Year 2026 due to budget shortages and the need to prioritise funding for the development of the F-47 sixth generation fighter.

Although the U.S. Air Force officially still plans to procure 1,763 F-35A fighters, such large acquisitions are increasingly considered far from likely, with procurements potentially not reaching even 1000 fighters, and possibly not even as many as 850. The cutting of planned annual orders from 110 to 80, 60 and finally just 48 provided one early indicator of this. A significant recent development expected to further diminish the Air Force’s demand for the F-35 has been China’s unveiling of two new sixth generation fighters in December 2024 already at flight prototype stages, which raised the prospects of the F-35 fleet being left a generation behind. This directly caused a drop in Lockheed Martin’s stock value, and resulted in the Pentagon allocating a higher priority to the F-47 program. Other factors have included a sharp contraction of the Air Force, very low availability rates in the F-35 fleet, and major overruns in procurement and particularly in operational costs which make the fielding of a fleet of over 1700 fighters appear effectively impossible.

One possible factor in the F-35’s favour is the likelihood of major delays to the development of the F-47, with Lockheed Martin having pitched new F-35 variants with ’5+ generation’ capabilities that could become increasingly attractive for the Air Force as a stopgap should development of the service’s first sixth generation fighter take longer than expected. The far higher projected costs of these enhanced F-35s, however, and their limitations compared to sixth generation fighters, means production on a large scale appears far from likely.