The U.S. Air Force slashed its request to Congress for Lockheed Martin’s most advanced fighter jet in half, dealing a blow to the defense industry titan, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.
The branch slashed its order of F-35 fighter jets from 48 units to only 24 units in their procurement request documents sent to Capitol Hill this week, according to Bloomberg. Critics have long lambasted the fighter jet as an example of the pitfalls of Pentagon contracting due to its extremely costly development and timeline delays, as the F-35 was projected in 2024 to cost the Pentagon $2 trillion over the coming decades while it spent more than 20 years being behind full production levels.
As of May 2024, there were around 630 F-35s in service across the U.S. military, with more being sold to other nations for their armed forces; at the time, the military had plans to acquire nearly 2,000 more F-35 jets.
The procurement request may undergo major changes in Congress, and Lockheed Martin has many allies on Capitol Hill, according to Bloomberg. In total, Lockheed Martin has spent more than $3.5 million in lobbying congress so far in 2025, according to Open Secrets data.
The F-35 is a fifth-generation fighter designed to be a multi-role aircraft that incorporated vertical take-off and landing and stealth capabilities in order to facilitate use by all branches of the armed forces, according to the contractor. Lockheed Martin delivered its first jet in 2006.
So far, 967 jets have been contracted, and Lockheed Martin has delivered 747 units, according to Bloomberg. However, many of the jets have suffered from persistent readiness issues attributable to maintenance problems.