As I reported in the Ottawa Citizen, the Canadian military is refusing to say whether it received a new and potentially controversial U.S. government audit on the F-35 fighter jet. Check out that article: DND refuses to say if it received secret F-35 report from U.S.

The Department of National Defence/Canadian Forces has refused to answer questions about whether the U.S. shared the recent report on the F-35 with the Royal Canadian Air Force, illustrating the secrecy surrounding the planned purchase of the American stealth fighter. The report was completed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in July.

The non-partisan GAO said U.S. Defense Department officials concluded that its yearly assessment of the $1.6-trillion (US) program contained Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) – which meant none of the report could be released to the public. Anthony “Tony” Capaccio, the veteran defence reporter for Bloomberg News, was the first to report on the situation.

It was interesting to see the disinformation spread about my article on Reddit by the usual anonymous information operations types used by the Canadian Forces. They claimed that since the report was secret, then of course, it couldn’t be released. They obviously didn’t read the article – the point was that DND and the RCAF were refusing to even confirm they got the report. That level of secrecy is becoming very common these days at National Defence headquarters in Ottawa.

In contrast, government officials in the United Kingdom acknowledged they didn’t receive the report. But the RCAF seems fixated on secrecy when it comes to the F-35. Here are a couple of my other articles on the issue:

Canadian military won’t release records discussing RCAF commander’s F-35 photo

Liberal government increases secrecy over multibillion-dollar defence purchases

Previous GAO reports, released to the public and U.S. lawmakers and F-35 customers, have been highly critical of the F-35 program, warning about a lack of spare parts and pointing out about the plane’s lack of availability for flight operations as well as technical problems.

The Block 4 version of the F-35, the type that Canada plans to buy, is at least $6 billion over budget and five years behind schedule, the GAO revealed on Sept. 3, 2025.

In addition, the GAO released another report in early June 2026 that determined the F-35s were only fully mission capable about 25 per cent of the time. Being fully mission capable means the aircraft can perform all assigned missions. In 2021, the F-35 was deemed to be fully mission capable 38 per cent of the time.

But it was the GAO’s next report – an audit in July on the production and modernization of the F-35 – that the Pentagon completely blocked from public release. GAO officials confirmed it was the first time in 20 years of F-35 reports that an entire study was kept secret from the public.

An excellent summary of the previous GAO reports, that were made public, was written about online – these reports detail a litany of problems with the F-35.

2023

• “The Department of Defense’s most expensive weapon system—the F-35 aircraft—is now more than a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over original cost estimates.”

Source: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106047

2024

• “Contractors continue to deliver engines and aircraft late – a trend that has worsened in the last few years. The program also faces delays in updating the aircraft’s software and has been slow to modernize the engine and other aircraft components.”

Source: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106909

2025

• “In 2024, aircraft deliveries were late by an average of 238 days. To encourage timely delivery, among other things, DOD paid the contractors hundreds of millions in incentives over the last several years. Nonetheless, delivery time frames continued to worsen – but DOD continued to pay incentives.”

Source: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107632

2026

• “The F-35 is DOD’s most costly weapon system, but it hasn’t met performance goals and costs to sustain the aircraft continue to increase.”
• “In 2025, DOD launched a new $13.7 billion strategy to improve F-35 readiness by 2030. The strategy aims to address challenges we’ve identified, such as a lack of spare parts. However, we found that multiple issues could threaten its success – such as constrained industry capacity to meet increasing demand for parts.”
• “DOD also paid its contractor hundreds of millions in incentives since 2020 to improve F-35 readiness, but these incentives haven’t been effective.”

Source: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108113