The U.S. Navy's cadre of fighter pilots are not flying nearly often as they would like. Instead, many of the Navy's Boeing F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter squadrons are sitting on the ground with only two or three flyable jets available. The rest of the jets are awaiting maintenance for want of critical spare parts—and some of those parts are being cannibalized from brand new jets in an increasingly vain attempt to keep squadrons flying. There is a rough floor of about six aircraft that a unit is supposed to have even at low readiness levels.The 'have not' units are those squadrons based at home in the United States that are not immediately preparing to deploy. The 'haves' are those either flying combat missions over Iraq and Syria or those from high-priority areas, like the Japan-based units that are always kept at a very high level of readiness thanks to China and North Korea. Sources tell The Daily Beast that there are dozens of jets awaiting maintenance—and most of the planes are less than 10 years old, which by aircraft standards is practically brand new. Effectively, dozens of new jets worth billions of dollars are sitting on the ground useless.
Some drop in readiness is normal. Whenever a Navy squadron comes back from a deployment onboard a carrier, it loses some of its roughly 12 jets and readiness plummets before building back up. The problem is neither the Navy nor Boeing has enough trained engineers to inspect and perform needed repairs on the various versions of the F/A-18. The Navy and Boeing are trying to train more engineers, but talented people can't be replaced overnight. Engineers not only have to go to school, but they have to be trained and gain experience. All that takes a long time.