The US’s airpower edge faces a growing paradox: the F-35 is indispensable for a war over Taiwan, yet increasingly unavailable for such a fight.
This month, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that persistent supply chain bottlenecks and flawed contractor oversight have caused the F-35 fighter jet program’s full mission capable rate to plummet to just 25%, down from 38% in fiscal year 2021.
The US Congressional watchdog found that fleetwide readiness has systematically degraded, with the broader mission-capable rate dropping from 67% to 44 % over the same period.
In response to these critical shortfalls, the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) updated its sustainment strategy via the Global Support Solution (GSS) Reset, an overhaul requiring an additional US$13.7 billion through 2031.
However, investigators warned that achieving readiness goals is severely threatened by ongoing private-sector capacity limits on key components and an annual funding gap exceeding US$1 billion by the mid-2030s. Furthermore, the JPO consistently mismanaged performance incentives, paying Lockheed Martin millions in fees for metrics that failed to align with military service readiness requirements.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) has concurred with the watchdog’s recommendations to implement formal risk mitigation plans and restructure future defense sustainment contracts.
The implications reach well beyond maintenance metrics, directly affecting the US’s ability to prevail in a potential conflict over Taiwan. In an August 2025 report, the US Department of the Air Force stresses that the F-35 is the foundation of the US’s future fighter force structure, with its cutting-edge suppression of enemy defenses (SEAD) capability being critical for future combat success.
While the US has the F-22 stealth fighter, the F-22 is optimized for air superiority, whereas the F-35 is a multirole aircraft. Moreover, the US stopped building F-22s in 2011, leaving just 187 irreplaceable aircraft, while the F-35 remains in production. The result is that no other US fighter combines the F-35’s stealth, versatility and scalability.
Those readiness challenges are becoming more acute as China rapidly expands the industrial capacity behind its next-generation fighter force.
J. Michael Dahm reports in an April 2026 Air & Space Forces Magazine article that China’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) is expanding production infrastructure to build 300 fourth- and fifth-generation fighters annually.
Dahm says that Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (CAC) operates 5 J-20 production lines, producing 100–120 stealth jets annually after adding 4.3 million square feet of space.
He adds that Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) added 500,000 square feet for J-15, J-16, and initial J-35 fifth-generation batches, while building an entirely new 4-million-square-foot facility with a 12,000-foot runway north of Shenyang.
Dahm notes these expansions total over 8 million square feet, eclipsing Lockheed Martin’s entire US F-35 complex in Fort Worth. Consequently, he says the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is projected to outpace combined US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighter inventories by 2028, securing the world’s largest fighter force by 2029.
The problem for the US is that the aircraft best suited to penetrate China’s defenses is also the one increasingly unavailable to do so. That dependence on the F-35 stems from the increasingly hostile air-defense environment US forces would probably face over Taiwan.
While the US has a substantial force of older fourth-generation fighters such as the F-15, F-16, and F-18, their lack of stealth features makes them unsuitable for penetrating the heavily defended airspace likely to be encountered in a near-peer conflict with China over Taiwan.
In such a scenario, China is likely to deploy land and naval-based surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to cover much of Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait, and the surrounding waters.
Exploring that possibility, Lonnie Henley notes in a March 2023 China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) report that China’s integrated coastal air defense umbrella employs imported Russian-built S-400 systems with a 400-kilometer range and S-300PMU variants with a 200-kilometer range.
Henley adds that these systems are paired with advanced domestically built HQ-9B systems reaching 300 kilometers, providing overlapping proximity that allows Chinese military forces to isolate the contested airspace tightly, readily attack incoming allied combat cargo aircraft, and subject all potential landing strips across Taiwan to repeated, devastating bombardment.
Hence, it is possible that only stealth aircraft such as the F-35, F-22, B-21, B-2, alongside stealthy drones such as the RQ-170 and RQ-180 could operate inside that umbrella to perform SEAD missions, with older types such as the F-15, F-16, and F-18 restricted along the edges of denied airspace, launching long-range air-to-air missiles at targets cued in by stealth platforms.
Nor are emerging drone wingmen likely to solve the problem anytime soon. Brian Moscioni notes in a June 2025 Belfer Center report that whereas advanced AI software can successfully manage low-level flight maneuvers, high-level cognitive functions—including final target prioritization and overall engagement strategy—still require human reasoning and clear decision-making.
Furthermore, Moscioni says that extensive adoption in military operations remains heavily constrained by unresolved systemic issues, including computational processing latency, software hallucinations, complex ethical concerns, and a fundamental human trust gap.
More broadly, the F-35’s struggles reflect a readiness crisis affecting the US tactical air fleet as a whole. John Venable and Joshua Baker point out in a September 2025 report from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies that chronic underfunding of spare parts has driven the average mission-capable rate of the US fighter inventory to just 59%.
Venable and Baker note that despite US DoD directives targeting an 80% combat readiness goal, the collective availability of the F-16, F-22 and F-35 fleets has never exceeded 70%. They stress that this overarching logistical gridlock leaves only 354 combat-coded F-15E, F-16, and F-35 strike assets capable of immediate warfighting employment to counter peer-adversary threats.
A May 2026 report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) suggests that China’s quantitative gains have translated into substantial force expansion, with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) now fielding approximately 2,400 combat aircraft, including 15 brigades of J-20 stealth fighters.
However, the CASI report says that the quantitative advantage faces strong headwinds, such as a historical reliance on imported Russian engines and component designs. It also notes that sweeping anti-corruption purges and procurement disruptions across the wider defense industrial base continue to threaten high-end modernization timelines.
The US’s challenge in a Taiwan contingency may be less about developing advanced military capabilities than keeping them available for combat. In a conflict where stealth aircraft could determine control of the skies, the decisive question may not be how many F-35s the US possesses, but how many are ready to fly when the war begins.
