ISLAMABAD – The US military’s fleet of F-35 stealth aircraft will miss the80-percent readiness goal set by former Defense Secretary James Mattis for2019, a new report has revealed.

Acting Pentagon chief Mark Esper, Trump’s nominee to replace Mattis, told aSenate hearing recently that America’s fleet of roughly 300 F-35s, operatedby the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps “is not expected” to reachMattis’ readiness goal by September 2019, which he set before quitting hisposition in protest to President Donald trump’s foreign policy.

Esper blamed the issue of “transparency” for pilots as the main reasonbehind the issue, referring to the aircraft canopies, according to theNational Interest reported.

“Transparency supply shortages continue to be the main obstacle toachieving this,” Esper told the congressional committee. “We are seekingadditional sources to fix unserviceable canopies.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) had warned about the canopyshortage for the F-35s in an April report.

The F-35 uses specially designed canopies with anti-radar coating thatprevent radar waves from bouncing off the inside of the cockpit.

The canopies “failed more frequently than expected,” the GAO pointed out inits assessment.

Lockheed Martin Co, the company making the F-35, has been searching foradditional subcontractors to help boost canopy-production, according to thereport.

The canopy issue is also expected to affect the US Air Force’s F-22 stealthfighters, Air Force brigadier general Heath Collins, the service’s programexecutive officer for fighters and bombers, said in June.

The failure comes even as the Air Force funneled $750 million intomaintenance accounts for the F-22 and F-16 fleets in 2018 and 2019 t meetMattis’s goal.

The F-22’s complex systems and delicate, radar-absorbing coating requireintensive maintenance. The F-35 is proving equally hard to keep in the air.