HOP TO IT: Mattis orders fighter jet readiness to jump to 80 percent — in one year.

In a memo issued Sept. 17 to the secretaries of the Army, Air Force and Navy, along with acquisition head Ellen Lord and acting Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness Stephanie Barna, Mattis acknowledges “budget constraints and shortfalls in aviation squadrons across the force” have led to “systemic underperformance, overcapitalization and unrealized capacity” in the fighter fleets.

“For change to be effective and efficient, we must focus on meeting our most critical priorities first,” Mattis wrote in the memo, obtained exclusively by Defense News.

Specifically, that means achieving a minimum of 80 percent mission capability rates for the Pentagon’s F-35, F-22, F-16 and F-18 inventories — a number well above the mission capability rates those aircraft now achieve.

A plane that can’t fly is as good as a plane shot down by the enemy, only the enemy didn’t even have to expend an pricey missile.