Lockheed resumes F-35 deliveries after year-long pause

The U.S. military is once again taking delivery of the latest version of the F-35 fighter jet from Lockheed Martin, a full year after technology-development problems led the Pentagon to stop accepting the aircraft.

Two F-35s were delivered on Friday, one to Dannelly Field, Alabama, and one to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. 

“We have initiated a phased approach to the delivery of [Technology Refresh-3] F-35 aircraft,” Lt. Gen. Mike Schmidt, head of the F-35 Joint Program Office, said in a statement. “The first phase will deliver jets with an initial training capability in July and August. By the end of August, we will be delivering jets with a robust combat training capability, as we continue towards the delivery of full TR-3 combat capabilities in 2025. Our focus has been on providing our customers with aircraft that are stable, capable, and maintainable, and this phased approach does that.”

Scores of new jets have been stacking up at Lockheed Martin’s facilities since last July because of delays with the TR-3 hardware and software, which Pentagon officials say will be the “backbone” for a suite of capabilities called Block 4.

Even after an extra year of work, the full TR-3 capability is still 12 to 16 months away. F-35 customers have agreed to accept jets with an interim “truncated” version of the package. 

The Pentagon hasn’t said how many jets have been stored but noted that it is a “significant number.” Lockheed officials have said the number will reach at least over 100 aircraft.

It will take Lockheed a year to deliver all of the delayed jets, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, since Lockheed hasn’t proved that it will be able to meet its goal of delivering one jet a day. So many jets have piled up that Lockheed has been running out of places to put them, GAO also said, a situation that “creates unique financial and schedule risks to DOD,” GAO said. 

The Pentagon has also been withholding payments to Lockheed of $7 million for each undelivered TR-3 jet, Bloomberg reported, putting some financial pressure on the company.

TR-3 will bring a new cockpit display and a new integrated core processor needed for future sensors and weapons. But development problems with the TR-3 have major caused delays and cost overruns for the program.

Earlier this year, the program announced that it is developing a plan to “reimagine” Block 4 and define what are the “must-have” capabilities that industry can actually deliver. Delays in the program have pushed some of the original capabilities planned for Block 4 out to the 2030s.

Through “Reimagined Block 4,” the program will lay out a plan to deliver upgrades in a “combat-relative timeframe” with a subset of capabilities already planned in the program, but only those that “give us the most bang for the buck,” officials said. 

The F-35 program, the world’s most expensive weapons program, is on track to cost over $2 trillion.

Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated which F-35s the Pentagon had been refusing to accept. It was the TR-3 version.