Deliveries of the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF’s) final batch of Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighters is expected to resume following the release of a “truncated” Technical Refresh 3 (TR-3) upgrade by the Joint Strike Fighter Project Office (JPO).
The last nine aircraft of the RAAF’s order for 72 F-35As had been scheduled for delivery in 2023, with full operational capability (FOC) for the type anticipated by the end of last year. The delays mean that FOC is unlikely until early 2025.
Ongoing delays to the TR-3 development have been caused by a combination of supply chain issues dating from the coronavirus pandemic, a lack of test resources, and software instability. This has resulted in all shipments of F-35s configured with TR-3 software to be suspended for more than 12 months, with over 70 jets delivered into storage to await release of the upgrade.
In the company’s April earnings call, Lockheed chief executive James Taiclet revealed there would now be two releases of TR-3 – a “truncated combat training” version which will be released in the third quarter of 2024, to be followed by a “fully combat-capable” TR-3 release in 2025.
In a line reminiscent of many others from the long and troubled history of the F-35 programme, Taiclet said testing of the new software with the new hardware had taken “longer than our team expected”.
The TR-3 upgrade is a combination of new processors, displays and software designed to host the next major upgrade of the F-35, known as Block 4. Combined, TR-3 and Block 4 will allow the aircraft to employ newer weapons, host an enhanced electronic warfare system, and use newer sensors with higher fidelity.
The truncated TR-3 release has been approved by the JPO, Lockheed, and partner nations – of which Australia is one.
Likewise, the Block 4 enhancement will also be delivered in stages, rather than in one massive upgrade, with various capabilities finding their way onto the jet in incremental steps and likely in a different order to that originally planned.
The JPO is reportedly prioritising “must have” capabilities that can be delivered sooner, while the head of JPO, US Air Force Lieutenant General Mike Schmidt told the House Armed Service Committee in April that “numerous Block 4 capabilities will not deliver until the 2030s”.
Australia declared initial operational capability (IOC) for the F-35A in December 2020 following the standing up of a frontline fighter squadron and a training squadron.
IOC also recognised that the RAAF had the capability to conduct type-conversion courses for pilots and maintainers in Australia, that it could produce its own mission data files, and that a sufficiently deep level of spares and sovereign industry support had been established.
At IOC, it was anticipated that FOC would be achieved in 2022-2023, while an additional tranche of up to 30 jets was then still under consideration.
Since then, deliveries have continued, and the RAAF now has two fighter squadrons and an operational conversion unit based at RAAF Williamtown, north of Sydney, as well as a fighter squadron based at RAAF Tindal, near Darwin in the north of the country.
The final nine aircraft were to have been rotated through the fleet as attrition spares and to cover deeper maintenance of aircraft at BAE Systems’ regional maintenance centre at Williamtown.
Since IOC, RAAF F-35As have travelled to Alaska and Nevada to participate in Red Flag exercises, and to Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia to participate in several regional exercises.
But the Australian government’s National Defence Strategy and accompanying Integrated Investment Plan released in April this year saw the additional tranche of F-35As abandoned.
Instead, the RAAF’s 24 Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornets, which entered service in 2010, will be upgraded with new processors, sensors, cockpit displays, and other enhancements in a programme roughly parallel to that of the US Navy’s Block III programme.
