Navy: F-35Cs will have an additional five flight hours per month

The Navy's decision to extend the life of the Joint Strike Fighter by six years would give the service an additional five flight hours per month for the aircraft, according to a service spokeswoman.

The Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force as a whole will have an additional 1.6 million flight hours added to the JSF at a cost of about $45 billion in base-year 2012 dollars, Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, F-35 program executive officer, told reporters March 24 at the Pentagon.

"The Navy increased the forecast hours for F-35C fleet aircraft from 25 hours per month in the 2014 [selected acquisition report], to 30 hours per month in the 2015 SAR to support the fleet's predicted training requirements," Navy spokeswoman Lt. Amber Lynn Daniels wrote in a March 31 email to Inside Defense. "Life cycle O&S costs increased as a result of increased aircraft utilization rates."

Further, Daniels wrote that analysis and refinement continue with respect to the service's training and readiness maintenance requirements for pilot training, which may equate to airframe hours-per-month adjustments.