The Senate’s proposed National Defense Authorization Act would go away the military’s planned purchases of 68 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters in fiscal 2025 unchanged.
The chamber’s draft NDAA, which members of the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled Friday, represents the newest of three different approaches lawmakers are taking to F-35 purchases for next 12 months, which have to be reconciled sooner or later.
The Air Force’s FY25 budget proposal requested money to purchase 42 F-35As, and the Navy and Marine Corps budgets would buy 13 F-35Bs and 13 F-35Cs.
The House’s version of the NDAA would drastically slash F-35 purchases, cutting the initial order all the way down to 58. That bill, which the House narrowly approved Friday, would then bar the Pentagon from accepting delivery of 10 of those remaining jets until it shows problems with the F-35 are fixed.
However the House’s proposed defense appropriations bill, a separate piece of laws, would add eight more F-35s — two F-35A and 6 F-35C jets — for a complete of 76 latest fighters in FY25.
House Armed Services Committee staffers said members of the panel “have grown frustrated with the F-35 program,” most recently with the delayed Technology Refresh 3 upgrades. The TR-3 hardware and software upgrades, which can give the F-35 higher displays, computer memory and processing power, at the moment are a couple of 12 months overdue, and the military has refused to simply accept delivery of the latest jets since July 2023.
This led the committee to propose cutting F-35 purchases within the House NDAA and reinvesting the roughly $1 billion that may save to make sure the jets work properly.
The Senate NDAA would also grant the Air Force’s request to retire 56 A-10 Warthog attack planes, 65 older F-15C and F-15D Eagle fighters, and 11 F-16 Fighting Falcons. But it surely would block the service’s effort to retire 26 F-15Es and 32 F-22 Raptors.
The House NDAA likewise would allow the A-10, F-15C, F-15D and F-16 requirements, while blocking the retirement of the F-22s and temporarily pausing the F-15E retirements.
The Air Force said those older Block 20 F-22s will not be combat-capable and would cost an excessive amount of to arrange for a fight. The service subsequently desires to retire them to unlock money for other priorities.
And the Senate NDAA would require the Air Force to carry onto 16 E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft until they may be replaced by the Boeing-made E-7, or until the service can retire the E-3s without causing a capability gap.
The Senate NDAA would also add money for the Air Force to purchase five more HH-60W combat rescue helicopters, while reducing funding for the Survivable Airborne Operations Center “doomsday plane” and the VC-25B Air Force One as a result of contract delays. A program to expand the C-40 VIP transportation aircraft fleet would even have its funding cut.
The Senate draft also calls on the Air Force to submit an annual report on its tactical fighter force structure, and for the Air Force and Navy to jointly conduct a study on the military’s future air superiority mission within the 2030s and 2040s. The 2 services are working on their very own future fighter aircraft they each call Next Generation Air Dominance, which could start to come back online starting within the 2030s.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.