Middleboro Review 2: Unnecessary secrecy

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Unnecessary secrecy

For the first time ever, the Pentagon’s testing office created two versions of its annual report – a public and a non-public, unclassified version. Although the two versions have much overlap, the public version is missing meaningful details about the troubled F-35 program.

The Project On Government Oversight obtained a copy of the non-public report, which contains information the public needs in order to pressure policymakers to fix problems in the F-35 program that could harm U.S. service members.

The office’s previous reports were filled with charts containing data about the fleet’s readiness rates and maintenance data. But this year the public version contained only two charts, while the non-public version had eight. The public version charts were also missing labels that defined acronyms or provided detailed explanations.

For example, the non-public version breaks down data into six separate charts in which the reader learns that the Air Force’s F-35A fleet is not meeting its goals. The Pentagon aimed to boost reliability and ensure the planes could fly on average for 20 hours before experiencing a critical failure. The public version only shows that the time between critical failures is worsening. But the non-public version shows that the flight time has dropped from 16.8 hours in 2020 to 11.2 hours.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the lack of transparency. One thing to note about the information in the non-public report is that it is not classified. It is “controlled unclassified,” a label misused by some in the federal government to conceal information that could be embarrassing to them. Read the full analysis for more.

We will continue to push Congress to require more transparency around the F-35 program and to limit further purchases until program officials can complete a design that is proven to be effective and suitable for service.