Aging fleet, maintenance woes push US Air Force to new low in mission readiness

The US Air Force’s mission-capable rate has plummeted to 62 per cent in fiscal 2024, the lowest in recent memory. This statistic reflects a concerning trend as the Air Force’s fleet of over 5,000 aircraft grows older, making it increasingly difficult to maintain operational readiness.

With a fleet of 5,025 aircraft — the smallest in the service's 78-year history — this 62 per cent mission-capable rate means that roughly 1,900 planes are out of commission on any given day. This marks a significant decline from previous years, suggesting that the readiness challenges faced by the Air Force are becoming more pronounced, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media.

The Air Force provided detailed statistics on the number of aircraft and their mission readiness, as first reported by Air and Space Forces Magazine. To calculate a fleet-wide mission-capable rate, more emphasis was placed on the service's most common airframes, such as the C-17 Globemaster, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. These planes make up a significant portion of the fleet, with rarer airframes receiving less weight in the calculation.

Heather Penney, a former F-16 pilot and senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, expressed concern over the data, stating that the situation is likely deteriorating further. “Readiness is often a lagging indicator,” Penney remarked. “And those aren’t even today’s MC rates,” she added, predicting that the situation will likely worsen by the end of 2025.

The Air Force, along with other military branches, has struggled for years to improve its mission-capable rates. During the Trump administration, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis set an ambitious goal of achieving 80% readiness for key aircraft models such as the F-16, F-22, and F-35, a target that ultimately went unmet.

In fact, according to a 2019 paper by analysts at the Air Force Institute of Technology and Air Force Materiel Command, the mission-capable rate may not fully capture the true state of the fleet. These analysts pointed out that aircraft awaiting depot maintenance or those not stationed at the unit level are not accounted for in mission-capable rates. Instead, they advocated for using aircraft availability rates as a more accurate reflection of the fleet’s status.

At the Air and Space Force Association’s AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allvin drew attention to the worsening situation in his keynote address. He presented a chart tracking the steady increase in the average age of the Air Force’s fleet — from about 17 years in 1994 to nearly 32 years in 2024. At the same time, aircraft availability has fallen sharply from 73 per cent to 54 per cent.

While Allvin praised the work of the Air Force’s maintainers, who face long hours and tough conditions to keep planes in the air, he acknowledged that the growing availability problems are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

By Vafa Guliyeva