Lockheed Martin’s aeronautics chief is upbeat about the resumption of F-35 deliveries following a roughly year-long pause, as it also looks to boost production of the F-16V.
Deliveries of F-35s to the US Air Force (USAF) resumed recently following a customer-imposed delivery hiatus owing to challenges with the fighter’s latest software standard.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics president Greg Ulmer declines to state how many F-35s have accumulated in storage, but expects to start delivering 20 aircraft per month, comprising seven stored and 13 freshly-built jets. He estimates that it will take 12-18 months to “unwind” Lockheed’s stock of stored F-35s.
The delays stemmed from problems with the stealth fighter’s Technical Refresh 3 (TR-3) software.
Ulmer notes that the company has commenced flight acceptance for TR-3 aircraft, and that the US government has formally accepted 10 examples already, some of which have ferried to the end customer.
Following certification by the US government, aircraft then can be certificated for international customers. This will eventually set the stage for overseas deliveries to resume.
Ulmer also touches on the capabilities of the TR-3 jets, which feature hardware updates such as new cockpit displays, vastly greater processing power, a new memory unit, and an improved distributed aperture system.
Deliveries are being undertaken under what Ulmer refers to a “training delivery capability”.
“About ninety-five percent of the combat capability is in there,” says Ulmer.
“A lot of the weapons software is already in the airplane; we just haven’t done the flight tests and then the certifications for that. We’ll release the airplane with the software present, and then as we do the weapons testing they may release capability. As those get validated through test and certification, we’re targeting late next spring with the formal full combat capability software.”
Discussing the F-16 programme, Ulmer observes that Europe’s first two F-16Vs have been delivered to the Slovakia from the company’s Greenville production facility in South Carolina.
This year Ulmer predicts that Greenville will produce 19-20 F-16s. In 2025 the company aims to produce three monthly, and four monthly in subsequent years. The company has a backlog for 128 F-16s and is also eyeing potential sales in the Philippines and Thailand.
Regarding Taiwan, Ulmer confirms that the country will receive all 66 of its on-order F-16Vs by the end of 2026.
Story updated to reflect clarification from Lockheed about time required to “unwind” stock of stored F-35s.
