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Sept. 19, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak 6park.com
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—It will take up to 18 months to
clear the full backlog of F-35s that went directly from the production
line into storage, company aeronautics president Greg Ulmer told Air
& Space Forces Magazine. The company did reach one noticeable
milestone in July, though, delivering its 1,000th Lightning II fighter
with little fanfare. 6park.comUlmer, speaking with Air & Space Forces Magazine at AFA’s
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Air, Space & Cyber Conference, said he couldn’t provide the specific
rate at which Lockheed is delivering its stored F-35s, but said “it’s
going well. It’s going to take us 12-18 months to get those aircraft and
[the] backlog out.” 6park.comEighteen months is longer than the Government Accountability Office estimated in May. The sequence of delivery has been approved by the users, Ulmer said. 6park.com
Lockheed has declined to say exactly how many F-35s went into storage during the delivery pause,
but it is likely 100 or so. One of them had the distinction of becoming
the 1,000th delivery when it was sent to the 115th Fighter Wing of the
Air National Guard at Truax Field, Wisc., in July. 6park.comUnlike previous milestones like the 100th F-35 produced or the 100th F-35 delivered to the Air Force,
there was no public announcement or ceremony at the time. Lockheed
Martin’s Director of Operations Frank A. St. John noted that 1,000
fighters had been delivered in an interview with CNBC, but did not say where it had gone. 6park.comThe 1,000th airframe delivered was not necessarily the 1,000th
produced. The fighters are not being delivered in the order that they
were built, Ulmer said, but are being mixed with deliveries of
fresh-off-the-line airplanes. This approach causes “less disruption” to
the factory routine of building, testing, and delivering the jets. 6park.com“We don’t want to disrupt the flow,” he said. 6park.com
6park.com 6park.com 6park.com 6park.com 6park.comWhen they went to storage, the jets weren’t sealed up and simply
parked, Ulmer said. Typically, each jet receives four checks when it
rolls out of the factory; two each by Lockheed and two each by the
customer. When the stored jets were completed, they got one check each
from the company and the customer, and only need one more check each,
Ulmer said. 6park.com“They were in warm storage” with occasional power-ons, he said. “It’s not like we weren’t taking care of those airplanes.” 6park.com
The Joint Program Office “asked us to help inform them of what
the most efficient unwind” would be, he said, and then the JPO worked
with the services and foreign customers to set the sequence of
deliveries. 6park.com“There are, you can imagine, milestones out there of significance
for different customers,” Ulmer said. Some countries are getting their
initial jets, such as Poland and Belgium, while “Australia is pursuing
full operational capability, and they needed their full complement of
aircraft. … So these are the kinds of priorities that define who got
what capability, when.” 6park.comHe added that he’s heard no complaints from customers about the sequence of deliveries. 6park.com
6park.com 6park.com 6park.com 6park.com 6park.comAll the jets that go out the door—or deliver from the storage
area—are loaded with the Tech Refresh 3 hardware, “and they’ll all get
the TR-3 software inserted before they deliver,” he said. 6park.comThe yearlong hold on deliveries was due to the fact that jets
were built with TR-3—faster processors, a new display and other
improvements—but the TR-3 package had not yet been fully tested, and the
government declined to accept the jets with it. The JPO now expects that full TR-3 testing will be finished in 2025. 6park.comUlmer declined to be more specific as to when in 2025 that will
happen because “there are still things you could find in discovery”
during testing. 6park.comAs a stopgap—because both U.S. and partner countries needed to
receive new airplanes to conduct training and have combat capability—JPO
director Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt in July approved deliveries with a
“truncated” version of the TR-3 software, so handovers could resume and
pilots could train with the new version of the aircraft. The truncated
version allows training with many of the systems and weapons that will
be in future jets. 6park.comUlmer said he disliked the term “truncated” and prefers “full combat-capable training software release.” 6park.com
6park.com 6park.com 6park.com 6park.com 6park.comSchmidt took his time approving the release, as he was waiting for a
version that was more stable in flight and needed fewer reboots per
sortie. Several new versions of the software have been issued since
July, giving the aircraft what the JPO calls a “more robust training
capability.” 6park.comIn a May report, the GAO estimated it would take a year to
deliver the stored F-35s alongside the new ones, for while Lockheed told
the government it could deliver 20 per month—one every business day,
roughly—the GAO noted that the company had never done better than 13 per
month. 6park.com“Even at this faster rate, delivering the parked aircraft will
take about a year once the TR-3 software has been completed and
certified,” the GAO said. The watchdog agency reported, though, that the
Defense Contract Management Agency deemed the 20 per month figure
“feasible,” though it also said that rate would stress the workforce
needed to accomplish the deliveries and lead to “coordination
challenges” with the government. 6park.comEach aircraft being delivered is “a full-up-round,” Ulmer said,
with all the TR-3 enhancements, including the updated Digital Aperture
System hardware, which provides 360-degree all-weather and night
visibility on the pilot’s helmet visor. 6park.comThe version being delivered has “90-95 percent of the full
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capability in it,” he asserted. “It has much of the weapons capability
in it. … We just need to get through the flight test and the
certification air worthiness associated with those capabilities out of
flight test and then into our customers hands.” 6park.comUlmer predicted that the delivery total for F-35s in calendar 2024
will be 75-110 jets—as planned, and then “next year, I’ll say,
156-plus.” That’s the number predicted by the company three years ago. 6park.com“I told you, we didn’t slow the production system down.
International demand is very strong,” he said, noting the latest buy of
32 airplanes from Romania. 6park.com“And I think you’ll see a lot of international, existing
customers, increasing their program of record. So I see us running at
156-plus. Because we have a backlog.” 6park.comHe cautioned that all of these estimates are subject to “external
factors and things you don’t have control over,” like bad weather,
which could delay the TR-3 test program. But “we’re not going to cut a
corner. I call it ‘build slow to go fast.’ We have to have certified
pilots. We have to have chase aircraft. You have to have the weather
until you get IFR clearance. So we’ll follow all the rules and go as
fast and as safely as we can.”
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