I wouldn't take it as any failure has to be immediately serviced in order for the jet to be effective. Make no mistake, it's a maintenance nightmare for alot of

I wouldn't take it as any failure has to be immediately serviced in order for the jet to be effective. Make no mistake, it's a maintenance nightmare for alot of reasons, but if all you want to do is put ordinance on target, which is probably your situation if you're using improvised runways, it'll be just fine for at least awhile. You'd be surprised at how many failures an aircraft is allowed to fly with, and, more than likely, unless you've flown on a brand new aircraft, you've flown exclusively on aircraft that had a dozen or more things that are wrong with them that need to be repaired. The military world is no different, and with lockheed's nepotic service contract on these jets, I'm sure they get grounded for all sorts of trivial stuff.