F-35 Still Marred by Quality Woes, Pentagon Test Office Says

Lockheed Martin Corp. is still delivering F-35 fighter jet aircraft with quality defects after 13 years of production, according to the Pentagon test office’s annual weapons-evaluations report.

Quality defects from the production line “are still being discovered in the field,” the assessment found. In one case, a US Marine Corps squadron in California found defects with “a number of F-35C aircraft delivered” to the unit for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, it said.

On the positive side, internal reports by the Pentagon’s F-35 program office indicate a 47% drop between 2016 and 2023 in poor production-line practices resulting in ...