The USG is pressuring "allied" buyers of it's F-35B carrier hopping variant to start ramping up their flight hours for the troubled aircraft (archived). In addition to a mountain of "must fix" issues handicapping the jet, a serious bureaucratic problem is looming in reliability standards that demand 75,000 flight hours to issue a declaration of "maintenance maturity" may be issued though only 45,000 flight hours have been achieved across all F-35Bs produced. The F-35B is the only fixed wing aircraft operating out of the Queedom's newest capital ships, though the ships are having their own problems with seaworthiness.

All of flight hours are being counted equally towards the "maintenance maturity" milestone despite onboard software being rapidly iterated through "agile" development methods with "Block 3F" software already in use and an upcoming "Block 4" release impending.