US to continue F-35 deliveries following halt: Reports
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After stopping deliveries of F-35s due to a Chinese magnet being built into their engines, the Pentagon is ready to restart the supply.
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A formation of F-35s over the Hill Air Force Base, Utah (US Air Force)
The US Pentagon approved on Friday the resumption of deliveries of F-35 fighter jets after there was a temporary pause due to it being discovered that a component of the aircraft was sourced in China, Politico reported on Friday.
The Pentagon suspended last month its deliveries of new F-35 fighter jets after learning that a magnet in the jet's engine was made in China using unauthorized material.
According to Politico, Pentagon notified Congress earlier on Friday that it had decided not to replace the component built into aircraft that have already been delivered to customers.
An F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin spokesperson informed Russian news agency Sputnik that the US Department of Defense was expected to announce this decision on Saturday.
The F-35 program has run into various bumps, including sourcing shortages issues of certain parts of the staple aircraft since 2019.
The US stealth fighter jets, the F-35As, were rated as "operationally unready" 234 times over a year and a half since January 2021 in South Korea due to malfunctions, a South Korean lawmaker said on Tuesday.
The multi-billion project's future is looking quite grim, with grounded fifth-generation fighters only being able to carry out missions for 12 days on average in 2021 and 11 days in the first half of 2022.
Over the same 18-month period, the older F-4E and the F-5 were only grounded 26 and 28 times, respectively.
Despite their low operational rates, stealth fighters have been gaining impetus since their introduction. The Swiss parliamentary committee on security policy in early September gave the green light to the purchase of 36 US-made F-35A fighter jets for the national army despite resistance from the country's opposition.
In late August, the Swiss government announced the impossibility of holding a referendum on the issue before the expiry of the US sales offers on March 31, 2023. The administration asserted that delaying the replacement of the fleet's 55 ailing planes would have detrimental effects on the country's security.
Germany, too, revealed in March that it would acquire 35 Lockheed Martin F-35s from the United States to upgrade its aging Tornado fleet, marking the first defense deal for the country since Chancellor Olaf Scholz's promise to spend some 100 billion euros on upgrading Germany's defensive capabilities in response to the war in Ukraine.
Read next: F-35 defects put Israeli air force in dilemma: Israeli media
The United States Air Force in late July even went as far as grounding its F-35A jet fleet, citing a potentially faulty component in the ejection seat that could endanger pilots in an emergency, a concern that has also grounded other types of military planes used for training.
