32 iterations and still about 1,000 unresolved deficiencies

You must know that I'm talking about the F-35 once more. The Defense Department’s Operational Testing has released its annual report and, once more, the F-35 has problems beyond being our costliest weapons system. The director of the Testing unit said, the availability of the fighter jet for missions when needed -- a key metric -- remains “around 50 percent, a condition that has existed with no significant improvement since October 2014, despite the increasing number of aircraft.” In fact, there has been ‘No significant improvement’ in aircraft available in years. Aircraft have been sitting idle over the last year awaiting spare parts from the contractor, Yet, Lockheed has been developing the plane for 16 years.

Despite these problems, more than 600 aircraft already will have been built. That’s about 25 percent of a planned 2,456 U.S. jets; 265 have been delivered to date.