Dunford: Pentagon Reconsidering Planned Size of F-35 Fleet

The U.S. Defense Department is rethinking how many F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets it plans to buy as part of its most expensive weapons acquisition program.

The Pentagon officially plans to purchase a total of 2,457 F-35s, including 14 development aircraft, at an estimated cost of $391 billion, according to acquisition documents published in December and released in April.

But that quantity may change as automatic spending caps force officials to make trade-offs between investing in future technology and responding to current threats, from pro-Russian separatists in Europe, to territorial disputes involving China in Asia, to Islamic militants in the Middle East.

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